Something exciting….

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Mixed Media, Yearlong Album

Tags

Ronda Palazzari, Stencils, The Crafter's Workshop, Yearlong Album

…happened to me about a week and a half ago.

I tweeted sneak peek pics of the Yearlong album cover for the class participants to get an idea of what we would be doing in class.

Ronda Palazzari, who designed the awesome Confetti stencil I used, saw the pics and sent me a direct message through Twitter, saying she loved it and could she please include it in a blog post about her stencils?

Umm, let me think about that, YES!

So today the post is up on her blog and to be included with artists such as May Flaum and Marjie Kemper is a total thrill!

And thanks Ronda, I’m so glad you like the album!

By the way, Ronda also teased me, saying that her new stencils (coming in July) were even better than this past release! I offered to give them a test run, make sure they worked ok and all, but I don’t think she’s going for it – sigh. 🙂

Be BOLD.

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Art Journal, Mixed Media

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Tags

Art Journal, Dina Wakley, Donna Downey, Dylusions, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, Mixed media, The Crafter's Workshop, Unity Stamp Co.

As soon as The Paperie received the Sally Carly stencils by Dina Wakley for The Crafter’s Workshop, I had to give them a test run – along with the Tiny Circles and Pie Chart stencils designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and Ronda Palazzari, and a couple of Dylusions ones too.

To begin, I re-enforced my journal seam with gold chevron washi tape and I love, love, love how it resisted the mist on the gold parts! That was completely unexpected because I just grabbed the first washi tape at hand and stuck it on – awesome surprise!

I used both the positive and negative pieces of the stencil to get different layers of colour with Dylusions Ink Sprays and black gesso. I also did a lot of outlining with my white Uniball Signo Gel Pen, some stamping in black archival ink, and layers of white gesso, Inka Gold, and shimmer mist through the other stencils.

I love how all the layers turned out , especially the Tiny Circles on the head of the first girl:

And the Perfect Pearls Mist through a Dylusions stencil on the second:

Finally, I added Donna Downey phrases from her Art & Possibility set, available through Unity Stamp Co. This may be my new favourite stamp set – the sentiments are fabulous!

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the results – and I really love all the stencils and media that came into play!

What fun things have you done this week? Link me up in the comments – I’d love to see it!

Summer Life

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Mixed Media, ScrapBook

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Martha Stewart, Scrapbook Layout, Simple Stories, Tim Holtz

I was doing some organizing – or attempting it anyway! – when I came across this LO and I’m pretty sure I’ve never shared it here. Plus, it’s a sunny and warm picture and I could cry right now I want warm weather so badly!

Most of this came from a Paperie kit – the snippets of Simple Stories paper, the Dear Lizzie tag, the alphas stickers, but I added the gold Martha Stewart doily:

the Ali Edward’s for Technique Tuesday stamp:

and some awesome Teal Silks and Tim Holtz filmstrip ribbon:

Love the white space in this one, empty of even mist spatters. Sometimes, it just needs to be a little cleaner than usual!

Hoping to get my YLA2013 LO’s done this week so I can post what I’ve done with them. I’m also working on finishing up the February LO’s of Krista’s Keeping Track of Life (KTOL) class. I have the main one finished off with silver thread, now I just need to do the pocket pages and they’ll be ready to share as well!

Cross your fingers you see something completed and posted in the next couple of days!

I saw the moon more clearly….

21 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Art Journal, Mixed Media

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Art Journal, Dyan Reaveley, Dylusion Ink Sprays, Dylusions, Gesso, Mixed media, Ranger, stamping, Stencil, The Crafter's Workshop

I have to say, this art journal page didn’t turn out as I envisioned. Probably because it started out all wrong, and then got covered up, and then…… You know, everything snowballed and the end product was vastly different from what I had originally been going for.

However, I did get to play a lot and what’s not fun about that? 🙂

The original page had a lot of Dylusions Ink Sprays, which I love, but it just went all wrong. So I covered it all in gesso, played with the texture a bit – ran a fork through, that type of thing – and then let the gesso work its magic as it dried:

And I ended up with the same colours I started with, just much more subtle and with a lot more interest and texture.

I added some Viva Decor Ferro, which my kiddies say is like mud, so they love it, through a Dylusions Letter Jumble stencil:

And I used a Pearl paint dabber sprayed with gold mist for the moon and quote:

I also stamped some of my favourite leaves, added some more mist through the Dotted Flowers stencil, and paper pieced some houses on vintage book paper.

All in all, I’ll live with it. After all, isn’t experimenting the main thing here? I also learned to put tape on my journal seams, as you can see from the colour that seeped through from a later page.

Luckily, I don’t mind the extra pop of colour here but I won’t be taking that chance any more and am having fun now playing with different washi tapes. You’ll see some of that next week!

What have you done this week? Any fun things to link me up to and show me? You know I’d love to see it!

YLA2013 | Album Cover

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Classes, Mixed Media, Techniques, Yearlong Album

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Album cover, Luminarte, Mixed media, Ronda Palazzari, Silks, Stencil, The Crafter's Workshop, Yearlong Album, YLA2013

This may be one of my favourite projects ever. The colours, the texture, the dimension, the shine and, hello! That stencil.

Seriously people, that stencil may be my favourite of all time, maybe even edging out the Pomegranate one. Yes, it’s that good. It’s so good that I could even say I’m in love with Ronda Palazzari for designing it and Jamie at The Crafter’s Workshop for making it. I love it so much that I made sure everyone in my Yearlong class got the 12×12 one as well.

Moving along, this lovely project also happens to be the album cover we are making for the Yearlong 2013 class. Obviously, as it is a mixed media album no one will have the exact same cover but I’ll be teaching all the techniques I used and showing how I got that awesome texture (hint: teabags may have been involved!).

I also used modeling paste which made the hearts pop:

And gave fabulous dimension to the spine:

The paints I used were Luminarte Silks to give it that awesome shimmer and shine:

And for those who don’t have Silks yet (I stress the word yet, they are a necessity!) I’m working on a way to use your regular acrylics and make them into a faux shimmer glaze. If it works, I’ll do a tutorial some Tuesday soon.

If you can’t already see the reason I love the Confetti stencil, here’s why:

It’s like paint spatters, and blobs of molding paste, and quirky hearts all thrown together with great, but still imperfect, border to tie it all together.

And here’s a closeup of the front so you can really see how it all came together:

The back is very similar, but the paints blended a little differently. Plus, I still think I’m going to add a small camera stamp and my signature:

I had truly planned to do an album title and some decoration but I couldn’t bear to cover this up so… I guess we’ll have to go with Happy as an album title! 🙂

I’ll be back next week with the LO for this month, so look out for that later and keep an eye on Instagram (#YLA2013) for sneaks of it!

KP Weekend!

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Cards, Classes, Techniques

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Distress Ink, distress paint, Distress Stain, Dyan Reaveley, Dylusions Ink Spray, Gesso, Kelly Purkey, Perfect Pearls, Ranger, Stencils, The Crafter's Workshop, Tim Holtz, tissue wrap

This past weekend, The Paperie hosted Kelly Purkey and we all had an awesome time!

Krista and I were lucky enough to share the teaching floor with her and do classes so there were lots of different styles and projects for participants to make. Kelly taught a LO class, plus a mini album from scratch. Krista did a completed Dear Lizzy Daybook mini and I did a tag technique workshop. Since I don’t have any pictures on LO’s or in albums yet, I’ll show you the tags I taught and be back another time with the other goodies!

First of all we played with Dylusions Ink Spray and gesso, plus the Tim Holtz Easter Blueprints stamps (CMS144):

I love the texture the gesso provides!

Then we used Distress Ink and Perfect Pearls powder to make a great background that we layered with the Vintage Things Blueprints set (CMS152):

Hello, Perfect Pearls and silver gel pen:

We did a soft background using Distress Stains, the Sewing Room Sizzix Bigz die, and some tissue wrap:

Love the dimension the tissue wrap adds:

Finally, we all played with the brand new Distress Paints! We marbleized, stenciled, and painted:

And added some amazing mirrored sheet letters to finish it off! Unfortunately, I only have this one cell phone picture of this tag but I’ll update with better pics tomorrow when I get my tag back.

It was a bit hairy at the end of class, trying to get them all done but all in all, I think we pulled it off and everyone liked their tags – whew! Plus, they all got to take home a new Distress Paint and a 6×6 Crafter’s Workshop stencil of their choice, pretty sweet!

The weekend as a whole, starting Friday night with a wine & cheese, leading into classes all day Saturday and then a crop, ending with another full class day on Sunday, was fabulous! I think everyone was pretty tired by the time it finished but it was worth every moment. Plus, we got to get a jumping picture with Kelly at Signal Hill in front of Cabot Tower – the icing on top of a very good weekend, even if we did freeze our faces off to get it!

12 on Twelve | March 2013

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in 12 on Twelve, Family

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

12 on Twelve, Nikkor, Nikon

I decided to take out my neglected 50mm lens yesterday and use it for all my pics – I had forgotten how much I love that lens! It’s actually the reason I have a decent camera. I came home from a scrapping retreat and told D that I wanted to take pics that were sharp but blurry. Luckily, he actually knew what I meant and handed over his old Nikon with this lens. Now that I’ve put it back on the camera, it may be a while before I take it off again!

1. My regular selfie.

2. Miss M actually wanting her pic taken at breakfast.

3. Reading on the Story Sofa.

4. Playing in the snow (who else wants to eat up that sweet face?)

5. Being silly in the snow.

6. Sliding in Tricia’s yard – she has the best hill and the best slide!

7. Reading while waiting for her ride to school.

8. “Take a picture of this face, Mama!” (not so sweet this time but still chewable)

9. Everyone left early so Mr. G and I walked to pick Miss M up at school.

10. “Mama, this is a fabulous surprise!”

11. He knows the letters to his name now and types them into everything (the writing thing however, no interest!)

12. Kitting for my class this weekend during Kelly Purkey’s visit!

I actually had too many pictures this time around – that lens is awesome! – so I think there will be some LO’s in my future!

No Journey is too Great…

11 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Art Journal, Mixed Media

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Art Journal, Dylusions, Dylusions Ink Sprays, Ranger, Stamper's Anonymous, Tim Holtz

I mentioned quite a while ago that I planned to start art journaling. And I did plan to start, really.

But it never happened.

Until recently! I finally opened up my Dylusions journal and put some stuff on the page. I have three or four started now but here’s my first one:

I love the bright colours – the Dylusions Ink Sprays are amazing!

This is actually the second take on this page, the first one was a mess of some stars that didn’t work out the way I had envisioned so I covered it up and went for it again. I still kept the stars:

But I added my beloved Tim Holtz car and Dylusions leaves:

And a great quote:

Plus some Dylusions stencils, metallic paint, and a bit of white gel pen.

I really like how it ended up, and am loving the more recent pages I’ve done even more. Playing with product just never gets old, does it?

I’ll be back next week with another page – trying to keep this regular and being held accountable here will help!

Technique Tag Class | Sneak Peek!

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Cards, Classes, Techniques

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

card class, Distress Ink, Distress Stain, Dylusions Ink Spray, Gesso, Kelly Purkey, technique tags, The Paperie

It’s a bit late but I’m back with sneak peeks of three of the cards for next weekend’s Technique Tag Card Class during the Kelly Purkey weekend at The Paperie!

The first one will be made using Distress Inks and Perfect Pearls:

Then we’ll do a pretty one with Distress Stains and Inka Gold:

And the third is made with gesso, mist, and alcohol ink!

We are actually making four cards but the last one uses a top secret and very fun product so no sneaks for that one – it will be an awesome surprise to the class goers!

If you haven’t signed up for this awesome weekend – and why haven’t you? – I think there’s still a couple of spots available! Kelly is teaching a LO class and a minialbum class, Krista will be doing an Amy Tangerine Daybook, and I’ll be doing a bunch of technique tags that we’ll make into cards! Plus, there’s a meet and greet with Kelly on Friday night and a crop night on Saturday! It’s going a be full and very amazing weekend!

Things on Thursday…

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Sara in Things on Thursday...

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Quilt, Things on Thursday

1. I’ll be back tomorrow with sneaks of the technique tags I’ll be teaching in my card class during the Kelly Purkey weekend – it’s almost here!

2. There are only two Things on Thursday today because this one is big….

…I’m making a quilt!

I’ve wanted to do this for years but I’m a master procrastinator so it just never happened. Finally, my friend Marg who, among many other arty things, also quilts, offered to teach a few of us! This is the first one we’re making, just a little strip quilt, but I’m pretty impressed with how straight my seams are and how well I lined them up on either side of the quilt – they’re off a bit but I expect all of you to overlook that part! 🙂

Doesn’t it look like the perfect size for a baby quilt? I’m really hoping I don’t mess the rest of it up because my plan is to give this very special first ever sarathings quilt to a wonderful friend. She’s expecting her first baby and I may actually be more excited for her than I was for myself – really, I’m that thrilled!

She was also one of the very first people to meet little Miss M – my quilt top holder-upper helper:

So I think my friend deserves something from me that is as fabulous as she is. Please tell me the colours are good for either a boy or girl though honestly, I don’t really care either way!

Wish me luck on the rest and cross your fingers that I don’t destroy it along the way!