Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Transfer Chunkies




 


 






 


Here's a look at the 10 black and white packing tape transfer pages I made for this month's chunky page swap.  Labor-intensive, but oh so fun!  Sure, I raised some eyebrows cutting and burnishing magazine pages on my tray table, but hey, it was a great project to do on the long plane ride back from Kansas!

Bloom





With Spring finally here, what better way to illustrate  Sophia's "Beginnings" theme than with flowers?  I had seen these die-cut flowers made from recycled soda cans and decided to give it a try.  How addicting!  I used pages out of Sophia's book and rolled strips to created the background.  I then took a dozen cans, cut them open and ran them through my Big Shot to make the flowers for this spread.  I colored them with alcohol inks, assembled them with glue dots and added ribbon stems.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Altered Domino Books





Recently, my cousin was in town and wanted to get together to make ART!  I decided to have a few friends over so we all could try our hand at making altered domino books.  They were all able to finish their books that evening.  I, on the other hand, took several more days to complete my book.  I was very happy with how this one turned out.  The more I make, the more I realize how many different ways you can decorate these little domino books!

Here is a fabulous tutorial so you can make your very own altered domino books:
http://vimeo.com/user25508078/review/87991652/849063fc6f

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Ice Queen or Glinda, the Good Witch of the North?


My dear sister-in-law will soon be celebrating her 50th birthday and I wanted to make her a tiara to commemorate the occasion.

How I struggled to figure out how to make a base without knowing her head size.  I didn't want to guess and then have it not fit her.  That's when I resorted to using a pre-made tiara as the base for her crown.  (You can see the little rhinestones at the  very bottom in this picture).

I knew I wanted to build the crown up so it had some height.  To do so, I looked for chicken wire.  Do you know you have to buy and entire roll of that stuff?  You can't just buy a square foot--unless you're lucky enough to find someone who will sell you a scrap piece.  Fortunately, I found a 1 foot square piece in the scrapbooking section of a local floral craft supply store.  I was never so happy to see a scrap piece of chicken wire before in my life!

I toyed with how to anchor the chicken wire to the tiara.  When that was done, I had every intention of trimming it down into a crown-like shape.  On second thought, however, the height of the chicken wire was really appealing to me.  There were so many possibilities...

I think because the tiara already came with rhinestones, I was compelled to stick with that color scheme.  I pulled out all like-colored items to decorate the crown:  iridescent garland, crystal drops and picks, a silver glittered butterfly.  All of these items worked beautifully together and this is how it turned out!

It's a bit top-heavy as you can imagine, but my sister-in-law was absolutely tickled when I presented it to her.  She is now convinced I should start up a side-business making crowns and tiaras.