Just "Screamed" Tie

When I saw Graphic 45's A Proper Gentleman Line -- specifically The Sophisticate paper- I had this project in mind. Doesn't the paper pattern scream "shirt and tie"? :)

I created a card very similar to this about 7 years ago for my father on Father's Day. I thought I would resurrect the template and create another one for the June Workshop. I love it! and hope you do too!

Cards for Men... June's Card Workshop

June is sneaking up on us!! WOW Where does the time go?

As June is Father's Day Month, I decided to create a card workshop where we would create cards for men. Case in point -- the card posted here. *smile* I think its perfect for a graduation or even a wedding -- any occasion where a man would wear a suit!!

Stay tuned for another card tomorrow..... and a couple more Tuesday June 1 the official start to the new workshop dates!! June's card workshop can be made available as a kit on request...

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

SCD Crown Challenge

So yes, it's Friday again and that means another "Something Completely Different" Challenge.
This week it's CROWNS......

I don't know about you, but ... when I think of crowns my mind automatically goes to "queens" and in turn (and this could be just because of all the Alice in Wonderland stuff happening this year) the Queen of Hearts. That's what inspired my twinchie.

Yes, it was created on an actual playing card that I cut down to size, sanded, lightly white-washed, and inked with Dusty Concord Distress Ink. You all know how much I love my distress inks BUT I am ALWAYS in awe when I decide to sand and I bring out my Tim Holtz Sanding Block love how it works! Makes things MUCH easier - I can sand the paper, not gauge it ... I digress .... hehe....

The Crown is from Sir Tim's Ideaology line (Adornments). I was thrilled to see that the small crown fit over my chipboard figure perfectly! It was meant to be.

Now, I didn't want to just ink or paint the chipboard. Here's another use for Perfect Pearls everyone!!! I turned my chipboard piece face side down into my Perfect Medium stamp pad and inked it up and then applied a generous amount of Perfect Gold Perfect Pearls with my round brush applicator. LOVED how that turned out. The Heart was cut from felt and attached with my 3 in 1 Glue.

Yes, I did stamp the background card after it was all painted and inked. I used Black and Russet Archival Inks to do this. The Stamps are from Scrolls Work: "Chess Board" and "Treat the Queen". I LOVE this Chess Board. I use it a lot as a Floor!! Remember this? (photo left) That's the stamp there too.... Remember to look at different ways you can use your stamps. They may surprise you!!

Anyway... thanks for another fun challenge ..... can't wait to see what the other people did with their crowns!!

Tearing it up...

...at the Beach!

This week's challenge over at Sunday Stampers is TEARING.
Here is my entry.

I just LOVE the Graphic 45 On The Boardwalk Line -- (betcha couldn't tell LOL) and it's been sooooooooooooooo hot here lately I've been dreaming of the beach and summer vaca. I just had to do something with it!

I ripped some coordinating cardstock scraps to make the water for this piece and added some Rock Candy Distress Stickles to give the waves that sparkly effect. I hope you can see that in the picture.
Before adding the "waves" .. I stamped a Local King Rubber Stamp Postcard onto my background piece that already had the beach image attached to it. The Stamps and the lady are also from the Graphic 45 Collection and the post mark stamp is from Stampabilities.
Love how it turned out. Hope you do too! Now go make something ... somewhere air conditioned! *smile*
On The Boardwalk Collection Pack and Individual Sheets are available for sale in the studio...

Hands On! Photography Workshop

I am excited to announce that Sue Sykes will be teaching a workshop at the studio on Saturday June 26 -- If you have an SLR camera and would like to learn more about taking photos without the automatic setting, I hope you can join us!

Sue has been behind a camera for more than 25 years, working professionally as a photographer for the last ten years. She writes the "Hands On Photography" section and keeps a photography blog for the Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine and also taught at this year's Kitchener Scrapfest. I can't wait to have her join us at the studio.

The workshop held at The Art House Studio will be similar to Sue's Scrapfest class. She will take the beginner/intermediate SLR camera user through photography basics, getting you out of the "automatic setting". This 5 hour class will include approximately 3 hours of instruction, time for Lunch (which will be provided) and a chance to take your new found photography skills "on the road". The Art House Studio is located across the street from the Grand River and Park Trails - the perfect setting for a photographic excursion. Let's hope the weather cooperates!

Saturday June 26, 2010
11am-4pm Workshop Price: $65 (plus GST)
due upon registration
Contact the Studio for more information and to register
519 954 6620

Something Completely Different....

is another blog challenge site I have been checking out. I decided last week when I made the commitment to do online challenges that this would be one I'd do. This week's theme is "PARIS" and the challenge was to create a "twinchie" based on that theme. (Twinchie is a 2"x2" square piece). This is what I came up with.

I inked a glossy piece of cardstock with blue white and red inks (softly) and stamped an image of the Eiffel Tower with Black Archival Ink on it. I then adhered the image of the two women (from Graphic 45s Fashionista Line) with Claudine Hellmuth's Matte Medium, deco punched one corner and added embellishments. Very fun.... Thanks for the Challenge SCD. I look forward to joining in on a regular basis!

Interested in visiting "Something Completely Different".. here's the link.
Have fun! be creative!

On another note......
I hope all my fellow Canadians had a FABULOUS May 2-4!! It was a glorious weekend here in Southern Ontario and I had a blast opening our family trailer and re-connecting with our summer family. Looking forward to a GREAT SUMMER with you all!!

Sunday Stampers....

Continuing with the Challenge Blog thing...

Sunday Stampers Challenge is another blog challenge I've been following. I have participated before but I will make a better effort to do the challenges on a weekly basis.

It's good for the soul.

Anyway - this week's theme is "RED".

I took the cue and googled quotes with the word RED in it for inspiration and found this completely fun one by Gwyneth Paltrow:

Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kickass Red Lipstick!

Yep -- that's it! Out came the Red Distress Inks (Barn Door and Aged Mahogany) and Stampabilities "Kiss" stamp and I love the bathing beauty from Graphic 45's On the Boardwalk Collection.

Something quick and fun and made me giggle...

Have a creative day!

One Gingersnap Creation....

I've decided to try my hand at a few challenges from out there in blog world. I've been following and admiring the work of the people who post on these sites for a while now -- I've been following a few of their personal blogs too. It's all good fun and high time I join in "officially"

This week's challenge over on Gingersnap Creations is quotes - or quips - even sayings....

Well, this is a 8x8 canvas that I started while at the Barrie Crop that uses some Tim Holtz Paper Stack pages, (including that fun little dismembered head (for you, Mindy) that I cut out of one of the sheets.) a Scrolls Work Butterfly Stamp, some pens and a little bit of Ideaology and Distress Stickles. I had FUN.... and isn't that what it's all about? *smile* Thanks for looking!

It's HERE, It's HERE

Remember a while back when I teased that I was super excited about something but couldn't tell.....

WELL... I was super excited because not only was I asked if I wanted to try for the Cover Layout on the summer issue of the Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine... but my layout was one of the Cover Challenge entries selected to be published in it!

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

AND... Today's the day I can share it with you BECAUSE... The studio issues of the Canadian Scrapbooker just arrived on my doorstep. YEP -- I have them available to purchase here at the studio and when you do ... turn to PAGE 8. You will see this layout that I created for them:

Pretty cool eh?

THANK YOU CANADIAN SCRAPBOOKER!!

I'm just thrilled that you chose my layout

To Celebrate....

I have 12 issues of the Canadian Scrapbooker here for sale. When you come in to purchase the magazine you will receive a little gift from me AND a chance to win your next issue of the Canadian Scrapbooker for FREE!

Yahooooooooooo!

Wait! Did I already say that? :)

Cropping the day away

in Barrie!

Thanks for a wonderful weekend in Barrie, girls! I enjoyed my day with you having fun and being creative. I had lots of questions about paint, image transfers and grunge -- can't wait to see what you create with your idea boosts! I loved the layouts and all the cards created -- there was even a canvas too! FABULOUS!

I know I won't be back in Barrie for a day crop -- I will certainly miss it...BUT I hope you join us in Cambridge in November. Perhaps I will have to see about that bus trip - *wink* AND THEN there's the Nottawasaga Retreat!! *double wink*

More pictures are posted on the Art House FACEBOOK PAGE

A Card a ...

Mother will love -- At least she better! *wink*

I am heading to Barrie to host a Day Crop this weekend (NOTE: the studio will close Friday at 4pm for the weekend so I can do this ...) and I am bringing along my Mother's Day stuff for my Ma! I held on to it for a week to give it to her in person. I hope she likes it.

This is one of the cards I created at our NSD Crop held on May 1. Some Basic Grey Paper (and Tim Holtz too!), a chipboard butterfly that I inked, stamped and covered with Glossy Accents, a little swirly thing a la Sizzix and three itty bitty "pearls" I created with Liquid Pearls (LOVING that stuff!!)

Anyway -- thought I'd share
No peeking Mom!

How FUN!!!

I was on the Scrolls Work Blog this morning and was thrilled to see that I won their Blog Sketch Challenge for my card using their "Flight of Frank" steampunk stamp! YIPPEE!!!!

I was going to wait until this weekend to post video #2 BUT -- guess what it was of? Video #2 is all about how I created the "Flight of Frank" Card using some Alcohol Ink Techniques -- YES!!! This month's "Technique of the Month". So I thought I would celebrate my good fortune and post this video today. Thank you Scrolls Work Stamps!! Can't wait to receive more fun stamps to play with..... (I had to trim the video for time reasons... film editing, a skill I still need to master! hehe)



I have another order placed with Scrolls Work Stamps and will be re-stocking their Alice in Wonderland Stamps and bringing in some new ones too!! I have all the stamps I used to create this card and more in the studio RIGHT NOW!!! ... just sayin :) hehe

Products Used in the Video:

Scrolls Work Stamps: Flight of Frank, Thingamajig and Mesh

Glossy Cardstock

Blending Tool with Felt and Foam

Alcohol Inks: Aqua, Stonewash and Sunshine Yellow

Alcohol Ink Blending Solution

Archival Ink: Jet Black and Russett

Rusty Hinge Distress Ink

Tim Holtz Ideaology Spinners and Long Fasteners

Grungeboard

Graphic 45 - On the Boardwalk Line and coordinating cardstock

Beacon 3 in 1 Glue and Foam Squares

My First Video....

Now, be kind!! *wink*
January -- this is for you!!! You asked about Perfect Pearls and I haven't been able to do an online tutorial for you yet ... so.... I made Perfect Pearls the first video. Hope you ALL like it!



I just thought I would add what products were used here on this post. I will make sure that this list is on future videos -- practice makes "Perfect" *smile*

Perfect Pearls - Perfect Gold, Perfect Pearl, Perfect Copper, Interference Green
Mini Mister
Perfect Medium (Clear) Stamp Pad
Perfect Brushes
Heart Stamp from Tim Holtz "Urban Chic" Stamp Collection
Black Glossy Cardstock from Ranger.

All of the above products are available to purchase in the studio.
I am open to shipping too.

ENJOY!! Thanks for watching!

Lights, Camera......

Craft!!

Yep, you guessed it! I am gathering materials today for a video shoot tonight!

The Queen of All Things (Sheri) is dropping by the studio later -with video camera in hand - to start filming a Web Series that will feature me doing some product demos and techniques of product that I use in my art and that I have in the studio. I'm so excited!! Wish me luck!!

I have the first few webisodes planned -- but, as always -- I'm open to ideas. What would you like to see? Feel free to leave a comment in this post or email me with your suggestion!!

Now, off to get camera ready! ...might take a while :) LOL

Loving the Technique of the Month Club!!
last night we had a lot of fun with Alcohol Inks -- showing the girls different ways to use them. You saw the one card that I posted yesterday (and I was THRILLED that most of the girls chose to do a Steampunk card with me!) - This was the card (and the technique) it was inspired from... Making Pansies/Poppies with Alcohol Inks, a Blending Tool and a little felt!

Love this effect!!!

Thanks for coming out to the Technique of the Month Club ladies! I love having you all in the studio learning, laughing and creating.

Cheerful Steampunk? :)

I love this "Thingamajig"! LOL
This card was inspired by two things -- the Blog Challenge over at Scrolls Work Stamps and tonight's Technique of the Month Club... I'll be showing them a couple of different ways to use Alcohol Inks without doing the "smooshing thing" .... The background elements of this card were all done on Glossy Cardstock using Alcohol Inks: Here -- I'll share :)

First thing I did was drag a Felt Blending Tool with Aqua Alcohol Ink on it across a piece of glossy cardstock.

Next I cut a cloud shape out of felt and attached it to my blending tool and coloured it with Silver Mixative and a Little Blending Solution and "stamped" 3 clouds with it.

The "Flight of Frank" stamp (#9010) was stamped on the card with Jet Black Archival Ink and "Thingamajig" (#1301) was stamped randomly in Russet Archival Ink. I LOVE how you can stamp right over the silver mixative and it will look like the reverse!! So cool!!

A Grunge flower center that I had lying around was inked with Sunshine Yellow Alcohol Ink and then stamped in Russet with "Mesh" (#2547) to add some interest and dimension. I then attached 2 Ideaology Spinners to it with a Long Fastener and attached it to the card.

Now its time to colour with Alcohol Inks!!
Because the areas I wanted to colour were little, I didn't colour with my Blending Pen (I know ... shock) Instead I put a little dot of each colour I wanted to use on a felt square placed on my blending tool. I used Sunshine Yellow for Frank's jacket, Stonewash for Frank's pants and... if you look carefully... I also highlighted the clouds with a little bit of Stonewash too. What did I use to apply the ink? A Blending Nib!! Put the end of the nib on the ink dot and it absorbs enough to use as a tint. LOVE that discovery! Gotta play kids :) Gotta play! :)

Lovin' how this turned out!
This, as I said earlier, is one of the cards I will be showing the girls how to make tonight... it was inspired by another technique that I used for another card project that I will show you tomorrow.

All the Stamps and products used in this card are available at the studio (the paper is Graphic 45 On the Boardwalk) ..... just in case you'd like to try this for yourself!

Have a creative day!!!

I drew a number....

for my National Scrapbook Day RAK... 3 of you made a comment on my post below. I decided to enter all three of you, picture or not, in this draw :) and that I'll have to do an online "how to post a link" tutorial so those of you new to blogging and posting will know how to do it! *wink*

Anyway.... without further ado..... the winner is......

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random
numbers:1
Timestamp: 2010-05-05 01:05:16 UTC

Kathryn.....!! I'll put something in the mail for you this week! Hope you had a great NSD!!

A little Steampunk..

Well, I have been DYING to create something with some of Scrolls Work's Steampunk stamps ever since I got them into the studio!! Love this little Contraption.... and the saying that goes so nicely with it! :)

The rest of this card was Ranger all the way -- I used more of Tim Holtz' paper stack to create the backgrounds -- the 6x6 sized World Map paper in the stack was cut down and used as a background and then I used some of Claudine Hellmuth's Matte Medium to adhere some tickets that I cut out of another one of Tim's papers to the left side of the card and then some of Claudine's white acrylic paint was washed over the whole thing to tone it down and highlight the texture. yum yum yum.....

I stamped the "contraption" in Jet Black Archival Ink and coloured it in with Prisma Pencils. The Saying was then stamped with Russet Archival Ink. Yippee!!!

From there I snagged some postage sets from my Scrolls Work selection and stamped the Japanese Postage onto white cardstock and then inked them with distress inks and then attached them to the card with matte medium. Love how the Distress Inks react when you do that. I stamped directly on the card too... and then, before the inked dried, I brushed some Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls on them to give them a luminous quality... :)

Finally I took Claudine's acrylic paint again and painted some "clouds" on the card and then attached some of Tim's Ideaology Corners to it to add a little bit of desired metal effects. The whole things was then mounted on some matching background paper in Tim's Stack and then on a card form.

Hummmmmmmmmmm.... who should this go to?

So glad to have gotten my Steampunk fix!

For those of you who are asking yourselves - "what is steampunk?" Here you go!:

Directly from Wikipedia: Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative
fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term
denotes works set in an era or world where STEAM POWER is still widely
used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but
with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality. Also see Robert Sandberg's work.

Happy Birthday!!

Today we are celebrating my hubby's birthday.

He is not this stellar young man you see in this card -- but add glasses and he kinda reminds me of what he might have looked like as a lad -- goofy smile and all *wink*.....and I LOVE the bow tie!

I created this card on Saturday during our NSD Crop... I got Tim Holtz's new Paper Stack in the studio (finally after being back ordered for a few weeks... not that I'm bitter! LOL) and I just HAD to break into it. The May calendar, the script paper and this fun photo are all pieces from the stack. Yummmmmmmm... I'm loving it!

The Birthday hat is one of the Scrolls Work Stamps that I have in the Studio as well. I coloured it up with a little PrismaColor Pencils and spirits and Voila... One festive Birthday Card I'll give to him tonight.

Don't forget to post a link to one of your NSD creations (or a picture of what you did on that day....) in the comment section of yesterday's post for a chance to win a mystery RAK from me!

Paper, Paper, Paper.....RAK!

I hope you had a fantastic National Scrapbook Day!

A studio-filled group of ladies and I had a lot of fun crafting, cardmaking and scrapbooking the day and night away!

We played a little game, grazed on lots of food and got down and dirty with a little ink, glue and paper! There were "gift-ies" too! Gotta Love it!

I had so much fun I didn't realize until it was too late I didn't take photos of everyone at the Crop. What's up with that? But here are some shots of the "goings on" -- Love the Garden Party hats ladies!!! :)

I hope you all had as much fun yesterday as I did!

POST A LINK TO A PHOTO YOU TOOK OR A PHOTO OF SOMETHING YOU CREATED DURING NSD in the comment section of this post for your chance to win a mystery RAK from me!! This RAK is open to anyone who'd like to enter - you must post a link to your photo and make sure I have your contact info so I can let you know when you win!. RAK giveaway closes Tuesday May 4 - 5pm EST

Have a great day ladies!!
Can't wait to see what you did to celebrate!!