Feature Friday- 8/31 Guest Artist Norma G

Hello there peeps,

Today we feature another great project from Norma G over at Little Honey Bee Studios.  Enjoy!

Hello, Hello Friends! 

Norma G. here and I'm back with a Day of the Dead tag.  Now I have to tell you, I was very excited when I first saw all of the awesome Day of the Day PWP stamp sets.  In fact I might have even squealed just a little, lol.  I'd never seen any stamps with these types of designs before and although I'd never made anything related to Day of the Dead before, I just had to have them.  So I'm excited to share what I came up with, this is my Day of the Dead tag:

Let's get to work shall we!

I started out with a size 8 manila tag and inked it up with Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Picked Raspberry and Salty Ocean.  Next I randomly stamped the flowers from the Muertos Stamp Set and the fairy tile from the Mélange 3 Stamp Set.  I outlined some of the flowers with a white pen to help them stand out a bit against the dark background.  Then I added several ribbons to the tag and adhered two rows of black lace to the bottom of the tag.  To finish off the background I inked the edges with Golden Fluid Acrylic in Cobalt Teal and then inked it with TH Distress Ink in Black Soot.

Next I used my Cricut to cut out a frame.  This is “frame 1” from the Sentimentals Cartridge.  I cut a piece of black cardstock at 4.5" using the shadow feature.  Then cut the frame again in yellow cardstock to layer on the shadow.  Before adhering the yellow frame, I ran it through my Cuttlebug with an embossing folder and inked it with TH Vintage Photo (inking helps the embossing to show up better).  Once it was all inked up, I attached it to the tag.

For the focal point, I choose a stamp from the Skeleton Couples Stamp Set.  I stamped it on a scrap of white cardstock, colored it in with oil pastels and doodled a border with a Faber Castell marker.  Next I cut a little piece of cardboard and peeled off the top layer to expose the corrugated ridges and inked it with Cobalt Teal.  When I was happy with all of the coloring, I attached it to the tag.

I colored in the doodled flowers and stamped image with a white pen.

Time to finish this off!!

I used a double heart fabric appliqué from Tattoo, Inc. and tucked in some black lace.  The black flower is by Paper Studio and I inked the edges with Golden Fluid Acrylic in Primary Magenta, highlighted the inner petals with Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic in Indian Yellow and added a gem to the center. 

I made the beautiful rose with Spellbinders Spiral Blossom One.  I cut the rose out of some red rose pattered paper, inked the edges in TH Vintage Photo and spritzed it with ART-C Copper & Red Glimmer Mists.  I tucked in a little flower painted in Indian Yellow to help balance out the yellow frame.

I made the stick pin using a red tipped pin by Industrial Chic by Susan Lenart Kazmer and various Bead Treasures glass beads.

For the final finishing touches, I hand wrote "mi amor" with a white pen on black cardstock, cut and attached.  

The heart charm is a little treasure I found at a local flea market :D

 This project was so some fun to make and it was actually my first time making a tag.  I'll definitely gonna be making some more soon! 

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  We'd love to hear what you think, so don't be shy :D 

Have a Wonderful Day!!

Hey there peeps,

If you're a die hard follower here on the Aviary, you might have noticed there was no "What's Up Wednesday" yesterday.  I've been really sick, so please excuse my absence.  To try and make up for it, I want to share with you a blog post from Living an Artful Life.   

A dear old friend of mine, Debbie Gunion, used our Vintage Technology set on a card over on her blog.  Debbie is super talented and has been in the industry a long time.  I highly suggest you follow her blog.  Drop by, and tell her "hello" and that you found her from Paper Wings Productions.

Check back tomorrow for another great guest blog appearance from Norma G!

Enjoy the flight,
Carrie

Mixed Media Monday- Featured Guest Artist Robin Nowak

Hey there peeps,

Today we are featuring another guest artist here on the Aviary, Robin Nowak.

Bird, Crown, and mica

Bookcover

  

by Robin Nowak

Gather all of your materials together:

book board (or chip board), card stock for the cover, stamps, inks, eyelets, paint dabber, and wet wipes.

For this project, I used Bird Melange, Royal Melange, and Text Melange stamps from Paper Wings Productions

Begin by measuring your paper to coincide with the width of your cover. The width of the cover of this book is 2 ½”. The height of the cover is 3”, so make sure your image will fit inside of those dimensions.

I used a script stamp from the Text Melange set. Stamp the image, then turn it upside down and fit the image where the other one ends. Do this until you fill the length of your paper.  Fill in the edges of the paper so it looks like it’s one continuous background.

After the paper is filled with script, come back with the small postal stamp and add a few accents.   Using the sweet bird from the Bird Melange set, I centered him on the background paper I just created.

For this technique, use your Acrylic Paint Dabber in Snow Cap.

Go ahead and cover your stamped image with the Dabber. Don’t worry, you will still be able to see the image faintly when you’re done. Go outside of the lines of your image and cover a little of the background while you’re at it.  Let the paint dry. Use a heat gun to speed things along if you like.

Now ink up your stamp again, this time use a permanent ink like staz-on or India Ink. Center your stamp directly over the first image as exact as you can get. Don’t fret if you don’t do it exactly, ghosting makes it even more unique.

This is where your creativity really kicks in. Start tearing your paper down to size. Always tear towards you so that you can really showcase that torn edge later on. As you tear, check the size of your paper with the size of your book cover. Remember, you also have a crown to fit on the front.  Tear the crown too. I decided not to use the filigree shapes on either side of the crown after all, so I just tore them.

After you’ve gotten your images the way you like them, start laying them out on the cover. Continue to tear away pieces until your images fit.

Find two pieces of mica that will fit on the front cover. It’s better if they are different shapes. If they appear too dark, you can always peel a few layers off and lighten them up.

I liked the idea of the mica separating the images, so the bird goes on the bottom, then a piece of mica, then the crown, then another piece of mica.

Mess around with it until you find a design that you like. 

Take your images and your favorite Distress Ink color (in this case I used Walnut Stain) and darken the edges.

You can see how the torn edges begin to stand out when you ink the edges.

When the ink is dry, take a wet wipe and wipe/blend the Distress Ink. The dabber paint acts as a resist. Wipe off as little or as much as you like.

Here is my result. I like how the Distress Ink blends with the Dabber and the edges are much softer.

Don’t forget to do your crown too!

When the crown was dry, I used a colored pencil to brighten it up. I liked this bright yellow. It will show up nicely under the layers of mica.

I chose a sentiment from the Bird Melange set and stamped it in black ink on a piece of scratch paper. I covered the first two lines of the sentiment because it would have covered my entire image.

Take the mica you’ve chosen to go on top of your layers and center the sentiment towards the bottom of the mica and between the edges. Tape it into place.

Now use clear embossing ink and ink your stamp. If it doesn’t print well the first time, just wipe it off with a wet wipe (and dry it really well) and do it again. It took me several times to get it just right.

Cover in white embossing powder and shake off the excess.  If the image isn’t as clean as you want it to be, use a small paintbrush to remove anything you don’t want. Just know you cannot put it back so be very careful!  Heat set it being careful not to burn yourself. 

 If you want, you can use an x-acto knife to very gently scrap off the dots of embossing, but I kind of liked the texture it made. Also, you can use a permanent gel pen to touch up anything that didn't emboss well. I used a uni-ball signo to touch up the ‘s’ and ‘h’ of the first word.

Ok—start layering!!

Glue or double side tape the crown image to the cover.

Do the same with the bird and mica. Layer the bird/mica on top of the crown and finally, put the last layer of mica, with your embossed sentiment, on the top of the pile.

I used a small bulldog clip on the outside edge of the cover to hold the layers where I wanted them to stay.

Use your crop-a-dile or use a screw punch to make at least 4 holes through all of the layers, one near each corner.

Add your eyelets then set them.

Your cover art is finished!

I tore the overlapping pieces of mica to be flush to the cover edges, but again, it’s all about what you want.

I also added an extra hole on the front to use when I bind the book together. It’s always fun to add a little extra design element to a book.

Measure for holes for the binding of the book. Use the crop-a-dile or screw punch to make the holes, set your eyelets, and bind your book with whatever stitch you like.

Feature Friday: Framing a Scene

Happy Friday peeps!

Summer may be waning, but the fun here at The Aviary sure is not.  Have you seen Norma G.'s beautiful mixed media notebook tutorial Monday or Julie's pretty card Wednesday with great ideas on how to make multiples of one card?

Today, I thought I would challenge myself by building several scenes using our Framer (Day Framer, Details Framer, Life Framer and Snapshot Framer--I chose to use the Life Framer and Snapshot Framer) and Window sets.

After you stamp out your frame on cardstock there are several ways to build the scene within a frame:

1. Masking.  You can create a mask of your frame using a masking product or a piece of computer paper with repositionable tape. 
2. Cut Out Scene.  You would stamp your scene inside your frame not worrying about stamping over the frame and simply cut out the inside of the frame and place it on another (clean) stamped image of your frame.
3. Cover Frame.  Similar to the previous option, you would stamp your scene inside your frame not worrying about stamping over frame and the cover the outside frame with another (clean) stamped and cut out image of your frame.

Whichever way you prefer, make several scenes using stamps like London, Paris, Royal Melange, Luc, Louise, Marcel and Sophie.

Now you can add your scenes to all sorts of things.  Place them on a stamped tag:

Stamps used: Window; London and Writing Backgrounds on scene; Double Dot Border and London on background.

1. Stamp scene, color in with Copic markers and cut out inner rectangle.  Adhere inner rectangle to another window image stamped upon patterned paper.  Cut out.

2. Stamp solid Double Dot Border in blue to cover a tag.  Stamp outline Double Dot Border over a few of the solid Double Dot Border in black.

3. Paint a block of gesso where framed scene will be placed.  Outline with dash marks made with black pen.  Adhere framed scene to tag.  Stamp sentiment three times.


Create a simple card (or card set):

Stamps used: Life Framer; Paris, Sophie and Text Melange on scene/heart; Lace Border on card base

1. Stamp scene and color in with Copic markers.  Stamp and cut out frame from patterned paper.  Adhere patterned paper frame over scene and cut out.

2. Stamp heart and color in with Copic markers.  In grey ink stamp Text Melange over heart.  Stamp sentiment from Sophie.  Cut out and add to frame.

3.  Stamp solid Lace Border in blue on card base.  Stamp over solid Lace Border with outline Lace Border in black.

4. Adhere frame to card base.


Find a way to use some scraps by adding your framed scene as a focal image:

Stamps used: Snapshot Framer; Royal Melange and Text Melange on scene; Hanging Stars and Marcel on Snapshot Framer; Backgrounds on background

1. Mask outer frame.  Stamp scene and color in with Copic markers (I did a little masking of the king on this one). Remove mask.  Stamp sentiment from Marcel.  Stamp star from Hanging Stars with yellow and orange inks.

2.  I found two pieces of scraps (or leftovers) to create an interesting background that I adhered onto the card base.  The dark blue embossed background comes from my Mermaid project).  The other was a piece of patterned paper that I had punched a lot of stars for my Once Upon a Time project--for this I merely cut a strip from that.

3. Adhere framed scene to card with dimensional adhesive.


We would love to see your take on framed scenes.  Please post them to our flickr group or on Pinterest.

Have a weekend full of fun!

Take flight,
Shay.

Stamps: Backgrounds, Double Dot Border, Hanging Stars, Lace Border, Life Framer, London, Marcel, Paris, Royal Melange, Snapshot Frame, Sophie, Text Melange, Window and Writing Backgrounds
Ink: Memento in tuxedo black, Tsukineko; Jenni Bowlin for Ranger in Chicken Feed, Lemon Drop, Soap Powder and Weather Vane
Cardstock: Georgia-Pacific
Patterned Paper: Crate Paper and Studio Calico
Other: Copic Markers; American Crafts black pen; Claudine Hellmuth Studio by Ranger gesso; Stampin' Up! star punch; Scotch dimensional adhesive

What's Up Wednesday - Making Multiples of the Same Card

What's Up Peeps?!

I have a card with a few techniques to share with you today.  This is a card I made to trade at the recent CKC Houston show.  I had just gotten my Paris and Royal Melange sets, and just had to make time to play.  This card is very different from what I usually do, and I wanted to trade something that had several components but was easy to put together.  I made 20 of these in several stages.  Let me break down the thought process and how I achieved this finished project.

Card base: I used the border strip in the Paris set on the left side of the card and added a strip on patterened paper.  I knew how large I wanted the pattern behind the photo frame, so I planned where it would be attached to the card and made a mark in pencil to know where to add the pink flourish from Flourish Fun 2.



Masterboard / Handmade Background Pattern:  Very much like Shay's masterboard that she demonstrated recently, I took 2 pieces of paper and sprayed them with Dylusions spray inks.  Then, I added a variety of stamps in the same color family as the orange and pink inks and turquoise paperstrip.  I measured and cut the masterboard accordingly and adhered to the card base.

Photo Frame: I stamped the Snapshot Framer 40 times on white paper.  I needed double the amount because I one half was for the frame itself, and the other half was used for stamping the Eiffel Tower from the Royal Melange set.  Later, I would be able to cut the small rectangle and add it to the clean photo frames.  The cloud effect was created with aqua markers and a paintbrush with water.  I just picked up the aqua/skyblue color and added it to each Eiffel Tower to create a cloudy sky look.  Before adding the tower image, I stamped "merci" from the Louise set on the photo frame.  The whole Snapshot focal image is adhered with foam tape.


With the holidays quickly approaching, many of you will be making multiples of cards.  This process of breaking the project down into stages and then an assembly line could be very helpful in creating many handmade projects for friends and family. 

Thanks for stopping by the Aviary!
Take Flight!

Julie

Supplies:

Stamps: Paris, Royal Melange, Louise, Flourish Fun 1 & 2, Script, Snapshot Framer
Ink: Memento ink in tuxedo black (Tsukineko), Distress Inks (Ranger), Chalk Ink (Color Box)
Cardstock: Neenah Solar White
Patterend Paper: Stash
Other: Dylusions sprays (Ranger), Aqua Markers and paintbrush.

Mixed Media Monday- Guest Artist Norma from Little Honey Bee Studio

Today, we have our first guest blog appearance from Norma over at Little Honey Bee Studio!

Hey Friends, Norma G. here!

I’m super excited to be today’s guest designer here at The Aviary!

Carrie, thank you so much for inviting me over :D

Today I’d like to share an altered journal that I made using several of my fabulous PWP stamp sets, paints, a stencil, paper scraps and a composition notebook. Here’s a little peek of the finished project:

Okay, now let’s get started!

I started out by applying Gesso to the front and back of a plain composition notebook.

(Tip: I like to insert wax paper behind both the front and back cover to keep the paint from ruining the notebook paper while I'm working on my project)

Once the Gesso was dry, I used Modge Podge to adhere various scraps of paper to the front and back covers.

Next, I used a Crafters Workshop 6x6 Template and Gesso to stencil the Mini Tie Dyed design to both sides of my journal.

Now to start adding color!

I used Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic in Ceruean Blue to create frame.

I applied the color loosely because I like to have variations in color instead of one solid even coat.

Time for some stamping fun!

I used the Paris &  Royal Melange stamp sets to emboss the medallions and scrolls. The fun neon colors are both from Zing. I also used the script stamp from the Background Writing Set to build up my background.

With the background complete, it's time to work on the focal point and finishing details.

Stamp one of the beautiful ladies from the Melange 1- Women Set onto the notebook and on a scrap piece of cardstock and set aside. Use an oil pastel to color around the stamped image on the notebook and blend outward with your finger.  This will create a nice glowing effect.

The sentiment I choose for my project is from the Bird Melange Set. I stamped and embossed it on white cardstock then cut it into strips and inked with Tim Holtz Black Soot Distress Ink.

Using a Bic White-Out Pen, I doodled circles around the embossed medallions to add interest.

Next color the stamped image on cardstock (I used Prismacolor pencils on my project). Once you've colored her in, fussy cut and adhere to the cover.

The Finishing Touches :D

I used a charcoal pencil to freehand a heart behind the stamped image. Then colored it in using oil pastels in various shades of red, blending with my finger (the heart helps to draw the eye directly to the focal point).

Since the sentiment is about flying, I thought she needed some wings.

I used the angel wings from the Wings Stamp Set and embossed with Enchanted Gold embossing powder by Ranger for a little shimmer. Next I fussy cut and tucked in behind her back.

Using the scrolls from the Paris PWP Stamp Set, stamp and emboss with black powder above and below your focal point.

Stamp the little bird from the Bird Melange Set with the Orange Neon embossing powder onto cardstock, fuzzy cut and adhere. I also used an orange epoxy bird from my stash.

Using Black India Ink, frame out the focal point and outline the circles.

Finally, adhere coordinating patterned paper to the insides of both the front and back covers. I used TH Black Soot to ink all of the edges for a nice finished look.

Here's a look of the backside of the journal :D

I'm very happy with the way this project turned out and I hope you've enjoyed seeing it come together too. Thanks so much for stopping by!!!

Get those stamp set out and play :D