Making up for lost time

The last few day I've been a little busy with LBS (life beyond stamping. Anyhow that's what happens to me when I have dinner guests and have to clear my work from the dining room table. So now I am running to make up for all the fun I missed. I just completed this card for a challenge over at SC. I tried to jam a lot of fun things into this one! The fireweed is stamped on wet watercolor paper the edges colored with 4 distress inks. I distressed the edges with a distressing tool. The chipboard ornaments are cut with a CB and heat embossed with gold and white powders. A few embossed flourishes are added to the background and embossed in white. The final touch was a blast heat to the ribbon. TFL!

Bubble backgrounds arrive!

As one might guess after I learned to make bubble backgrounds the original one's sent for creating the ATC arrived! Many thanks Dymphie for your extra efforts to in sending the 2nd batch! I must confess I have been a little concerned now that I am deep into this project that I don't have stamps that one would specifically associate with bubbles...so I just had to take a leap and try to see what would work. The new batch of backgrounds have small bubbles which are great proportionately for the small ATCs. Dymphie felt the smaller bubbles were from a slight extra abundance of the soap.



Here I tried to use the full bubble background. The flowers and circles are scraps from a salt resist background I made for another project. The flowers are ones I have collected and dried in the past month.



On this one I use parts on top of a bubble background combined with a brown Paint Jewels background-a acrylic transparent paint. I stamp and embossed the background with flowers and leaves on the painted background. The bubble layers were then added, some dried flowers and a few final doodles.

Time to get these in the mail especially if it takes a couple more weeks for them to get back to Europe. Thanks for looking!

Bubble, bubbles-you can't just stop with one

Last month I signed on to an ATC swap hosted by Dymphie from the Netherlands. The task was to use bubble backgrounds she had created. Unfortunately neither of the 2 sets sent to me have arrived yet. To keep my commitment of sending 1 to an assigned person I decided I needed to make some bubble backgrounds myself. Dymphie kindly shared that she used Trish Bayley’s bubble tutorial: http://trishbayley.com/rubberwaffle/bubbleback.html Dymphie noted that she added an iridescent medium to some of the bubble mixtures. That caught my eye as another variation of the glimmer, shimmer effect some of us have been creating using distress reinkers for backrounds.


For my bubble backgrounds I started out with distress reinkers and a tad of perfect pearls which resulted in a very light background as you can see in the moose card below. I switched to using leftover metallic acrylic paint and it came out great. I am not sure if it is because I was using old paint but the quantities used in the recipe of water, soap, paint varied considerably from one color to the next. I did find that enough paint needs to be added so it can be seen on the surface of the bubbles. The bubble mixture in this photo needs more paint added.

While your making the slight mess of this project it is very easy to make some extras for future use. My first card with a bubble background is a birthday card made to meet Tami’s brown, green, blue color challenge.
If you try making some bubble backgrounds I bet you can't make just one!

A second glance-Duct Tape Divas

There are times when looking through a gallery of cards that one is overlooked until some of the details are described. Such was the case of this Regatta entry as it floated by me amid a large cluster. But from the 57 enties the judges recognized the intensive overall work these four ladies put into their creation of a convertible. As well these ladies created high fashion duct tape dresses complete with tiaras and captured an overall third place award. This second glance is a salute to the broad range of ways women express their creativity.

Creative Day!

Yesterday it was rubber duckies on the Chena River, today it’s anything that will float. Folks who live in the far north are often required to pull out all there creative skills to survive the ruggedness of this land.


Annually the Red Green Regatta provides the opportunity to have tons of fun with creative skills. One of the local’s favorite PBS shows for years was The Red Green Show. The RG character is a northern woodsman who fixes everything under the sun with duct tape. That is very familiar to all us as duct tape is a basic staple in every survival kit. The Regatta is an opportunity to create a vessel with miscellaneous items held together with duct tape to float down the river. As always today's regatta was an explosion of creativity and inspiration.



Speaking of creativity there was a little time for finishing a contemporary silver anniversary card for my sister and BIL. I will entry this one into the Caardvarks ribbon challenge. The silver threaded background is a piece I have held in my stash for a few years. I wove silver ribbons through it and ended each with a bead. The ribbon holder is an embossed CB die cut. The Stampendous flower image is accented with stickles. The leaf was hand cut and stamped with a SU sentiment. The corner embellishment is by magenta and colored with Souffle pens.

Hope you too found some fun inspiration today!...Jan

Perfect summer day!

Oh a glorious summer day with beautiful sunshine and warmth in the high 70's, clear skies for miles and a little time to sit in a bird sanctuary area to watch a demonstration on beginning watercolor painting. Later went downtown to the river with a few thousand community friends to watch the annual Rubber Duckie race. Yes, we all cheer them on as they float by in hopes that the first one across the finish line is ours with the lucky # we have purchased.

In between all of the summer fun I have been trying to learn more about the workings of this blog and work on a few birthday presents and other things I would like to get in the mail. So some quick little projects to share...This first one is all scraps to make a 4x4 notecard. I used paint jewels on the sunflower to give it some depth.

I picked and dried a few more wildflowers...so made a little 4x4 incorporating them. Used sparkle modge podge to attach them. The background is from DCWV's luxury stack of pearlize paper--a beautiful RAK sent to me from my friend Fern/Moosemama-thanks a bunch it makes a beautiful backdrop for these flowers!

Here I added flowers to a glassine envelope.

I know that this seems like a lot for a envie but I will use it when I am enclosing a special note that is "the gift" I am sending. I will tie the envie with a sheer gold ribbon.

I hope the summer sun is good to you and the flowers are blooming and bringing joyful colors to your corner of the world...Jan

A sampling

Welcome to my blog and a small corner of the world

This blog will mainly focus on sharing some of the rubber stamping, inking and altered art that I currently enjoy creating.

This week I decided to enter the contest at Art Impressions. The rules ask one to incorporate this picture of rocks along with one of their stamps into a card. The entries will be posted on their site in August and everyone can vote for their favorite.

"May this only be a small bump in the road...Get Well Soon!"

For this card I began with creating the background with Paint Jewels-an acrylic transparent paint by Delta for paper, wood and metal which I found on clearance at M's. The car image was embossed in a rusty cooper and colored. Finally the photo was cut and torn to give a visual perspective of the car on a rocky road.

Thanks for visiting my first blog posting!...Jan