My Cards Unboxed at Operation Write Home!

This is the most recent box of cards I sent to Operation Write Home. Sandy said she had filmed it and it was such fun to hear her comments. I see one card that one of my friends made too. This box included a few pieces of "any hero mail" for the first time, where some of my friends helped me write letters to be distributed to any service person. I hope to do some of that in each future box. 

I've already got a good start on a new box of cards. I have such fun making them and it's nice to know that they are acceptable.

Learning to Use Gelatos

I'm determined to learn to use Gelatos, because the colors are just so delicious. Barb kindly let me play with hers at a crop, and I realized that they take a little practice. So instead of rushing out and buying the complete set, I bought two sets of 4 colors each not included in the main set, and got to work.

First here's a practice piece Barb showed me how to do. The cardstock was coated with gesso. When dry, colors were scribbled along the top, then misted heavily until they began to drip. After that dried, she inked up the bird stamp with purple gelato, misted it and stamped the bird twice.

The next one was gelatos scribbled over a white heat embossed background of triangles, which was then smoothed around with my fingers. The gelatos found all of the holes in the embossing and I don't care for the way it turned out. I would try again, probably with a different stamp and probably with a gessoed background.

Then I decided to try scribbling a gelato over a dry embossed background. After spreading it around with my finger, I decided this had possibilities.The actual piece has lots more orange in the holes which didn't show up so well when I scanned it.

I tried Barb's advice next: gessoed the background, worked different colors into the leaf stamp and then misted before stamping. The amount of mist makes a difference; in fact the second leaf is less sharp and no doubt had more water on it. I'm liking this.

Finally, my favorite project and the one that made me decide I "need" the whole set of gelatos. I stamped in black, then stamped the flowers again on scraps of white cardstock. I then colored and blended the flowers without any regard to staying in the lines, because I fussy cut each of them, adhered to the card and added some dots of Liquid Pearls. I LOVE the way the colors blended with my fingertips!

Other things I've learned from YouTube videos:  blend the colors with a baby wipe; use a water brush directly on the color tube to pick up color; shave off tiny chunks to blend with water in a mister; scribble on a mat and blend with water for watercolors. 

I'm having fun playing with these, and like that they are so portable. I will be ordering my full set soon.

I Have a Byline!

I offered to help out in the Community Garden, and before you know it, I was asked to help write an article for the Abacoa Community News about the Earth Day Celebration. Had I known I would be writing about the event, I would have taken notes when I attended, but I did the best I could from memory. I asked Megan, who presently does the write ups, to go over it and change whatever she liked, and she made a few improvements, but most of the article is mine (except for the last couple boilerplate paragraphs about the garden, which I copied from Megan's last article).

What fun to see my byline on my article!

http://www.seabreezepublications.com/papers/1406/AbacoaCommunityNews/index.html#p=22

Tim Holtz June Tag

I've always enjoyed Tim Holtz's 12 tags series, but they've always had too many complex steps and too many materials I didn't have for me to attempt one. This month I happened to have enough of the materials used, and the process was not overwhelming, that I thought I would try one. I was pleased with the way it came out.

Well, that was fun, so I tried various stencils with different distress inks:

And ended up making another, although I still like the butterflies best.

Update 6/22/14: I made three of the stenciled designs into cards today:

Watercolor Odds and Ends

Class is over and I found I had some odds and ends of samples and experiments on my desk. Some of them I cut into words, feathers, a bow, labels and the like. Some were usable as a background. Here's what I came up with to finish off the watercolor bits:

The next class has been announced and it's Stretch Your Stamps 2. I'm excited about that because I had been thinking about taking the first class, but it's so much fun to take the classes live and be able to interact with the other students that I hadn't gotten around to it yet. Anyway, I registered today even though class doesn't start until July. These are great classes and I learn so much!

Watercolor for Cardmakers, Day 11

The Gallery and Forum are closing and I've at least been able to do one or two projects from each day's lessons (thank goodness for this catch-up week). Today I finished two cards from Day 11:

Day 11, Card 2. My first attempt at this one was a big, muddy mess. The second time around I let more of the color show, but try as I might I couldn't get my black any darker than gray. I first embossed my sentiment directly on the panel. It looked great suspended there among the cosmos, but it didn't entirely emboss and I couldn't fix it with my white pen so I ended up re-stamping the sentiment on black paper.

Day 11, Card 3. This project on vellum went pretty well. The white pen "stitching" on the back did not show up on the front at all, but did no harm. Ordinarily I would adhere vellum with glue underneath the flowers where it wouldn't show, but the vellum was curled and would not have laid flat. I gave the back side a shot of spray adhesive, which warped the vellum a bit and I didn't get a perfectly flat result. If I work on vellum again, I would sew it to the background. Sequins cover some of the spots I'm not happy with, although I liked the card better without them.

That's the last of my watercolor efforts for now. Tomorrow the next class will be announced and I can't wait to see what's coming up!

Watercolor for Cardmakers, Days 1, 7, 10 and Bonus

Finished 4 more cards today.

Day 1, Card 2: I like these bright swatches of color confined within a space.

Day 7, Card 2. This turned out better than I expected. It helped that the stamp I used had some areas of shading that made it easier for me to pull color onto the petals and keep in mind what parts should be darker.

Day 10, Card 1. I like the way the distress inks blended over the watercolor pencils. I could have done a better job on the top two butterflies as it's hard to see the definition between them. I also have a butterfly stamp just this size, so I inked up the body and antennae and stamped them. 

This last one was designed and presented by a young woman still in her teens, and it's one of my favorites!

In the entire class of 11 days and a bonus day, I've only had one disaster that probably is not salvageable (although that won't stop me from seeing if I can work over it tomorrow). I have one more card I'd like to make on vellum, and hope to try that tomorrow.