A pocket full of posies

After watching the video tutorial on painting a transparency with alcohol inks and blending fluid in a aqua pen of course I had to give the new technique a try. But first I hooked my friend Jennifer into agreeing to play along with this experiment. We agree to reveal our results tonight.

Clear Paintables are transparencies that one buys with designs preprinted for easy coloring. Since they are not proportioned to fit cards I decided to try to make my own by stamping with Stazon ink and using the alcohol ink on the back side. I tried a couple different images until I found one with larger painting areas. Unfortunately I could not get the alcohol ink to build layers of colors which makes them so fantastic. I did use recycled plastic instead of transparencies so I have more work to do to see if that makes the difference. I did use some metallic pearl behind the background...I like that look a lot. I confess I had to use my Sharpie markers to fill in a few spots where the alcohol ink would not stay. This is a fun and fast technique--definately worth more experimentation!

Don't forget to check out Jennifer's work she will be posting tonight too!

Happy Easter!

No matter how you celebrate Easter Sunday, March 23 is a very special day. The last time it was this early was in 1913, and the next will be in 2060! So for some of us this will be the only time we experience Easter this early...do take a moment to think about how special this day is.

Last night I colored a few eggs but equally important I enjoyed re-using the dye to color some shipping tags...what can I say, some of us incorporate our favorite hobby every chance we get!

The yellow (a tad brighter than the photo shows), orange and red tags are wonderful. The blue, purple colors didn't dye as well. I do love the pastel colors!

Happy Easter my friends!...Jan

Yes, the tomato plants are growing!

Ah-h I had planned to show you my tomato plants 2 weeks after the last pictures but the new photos were blurry. Unfortunately I trimmed the plants back before I knew about the photo issues. So now it is several week later and the plants are now filling out nicely. They are requiring more water nearly every other day and nutrients every week to 10 days.

On the left is a photo of the first blossom. Today it was 10 degrees above outside so spring is coming but nonetheless I am happy to have this little spot of springtime to brighten my living room!

Gettting the Grunge On

"Getting the Grunge On" is the name of 2 swaps I am currently hosting. The idea is to experiment with grungeboard and use some on a tag. This first one I worked to create a distress look. I started by swiping some gesso on the tag and ink the background. The gesso acts as a resist. This tag asked for an animal theme.





For the 2nd tag I wanted to experiment with using grungeboard in a more elegant way. This tag required a flower so I choice to use a versamark resist technique with Nick Bantock's rose madder ink.

It was a wonderful surprise to learn that
the grungeboard did not not flake apart like tagboard which has caused many frustrating moments for me in the past.
Also I love cutting it in my cuttlebug. Yes, it does smell somewhat like leather but that was manageable for me.