Altered By Me

I recently decided to jump into some swaps on the yahoo groups I belong to. This is a charm swap hosted by Kelly on the arttechniques group. If you interested in the group or the swap there is a link on the side bar. The base of the charms are made from altered games pieces. The game pieces have been painted and decorated with an inchie I trimmed. I then layered a piece of a vintage music sheet on top of the inchie. On top of that is an image of a vintage girl. To finish the piece off I hung a beaded dangle.

Here is a simple example of how you can change the look of a background by simply aging and distressing your background. Even though I have just started making artist trading cards in the past few months, I have done decorative and tole painting in the past. The same techniques can be used in any craft project where paint is used. The "before" background has a layer of yellow acrylic paint. I then colored in the corners of the atc with a pink water color pencil. I blended the watercolor pencil with a wet paint brush and let dry. I then glued the vintage lace trim diagonally across the edge of the pink paint. Here is where the aging and distressing comes from. By painting over the entire atc including the lace with white gesso you can age the entire piece. Before the gesso dried completely I wiped some of it off with a dry paper towel allowing some of the background paint to peek through. Once the gesso was dry I then took a pad of sepia ink and using my finger I smeared ink a

Here is a picture of an ATC that I did for an Artist of the Month Challenge Swap being hosted by Sherre from the yahoo group Arttechniqueatcs. The idea of the AOM swaps is for you to do a technique that the featured artist uses in their art work. Then of course we swap our atc’s. The whole idea is for you to stretch your creative juices and use a technique that you might normally not use. Of course this will make you a better artist all around and possibly help your own artistic muse fly. Well let me tell you I struggled with this. This is my first AOM challenge and it is not that I could not figure out the artist Lynne Perrella’s techniques. She is a wonderful artist who puts layers upon layers on her art to give a piece depth and beauty. I had no problem with that. My background for this ATC has five layers not including the image, butterfly stamp, alphabet & number stamps or text images. I think I got the layers part down pat. The problem stems from trying to copy another arti

Here is a piece that I made today. I have been having fun this past week playing around with different ways of doing inkjet transfers. Both of the images on this piece are transfers made using the plain & photo paper transfer method found on Cyndi Lavine's Technique Tuesday Blog. I love the way the images are transparent. Ever since I read Dan Brown's novel " The Da Vinci Code " I've been fascinated with Leonardo Da Vinci. This is my tribute to him and all of the mystery that surrounds him.

Blogger is giving me a fit with these pictures! Here are some ATC's that I made this past weekend. Beware. Some of them are not the average ATC . My family is very outdoorsy so some of the things I create reflect that. Last week I found an animal encyclopedia that the binding was falling off. It made it very easy for me to tear the pages out. I have a problem tearing up books to use in my crafting. I am also a big reader so destroying books does not come easy to me. But since this book was already falling apart I decided to make some ATC's using the animal pictures. I figured my " exercise " would be to make an ATC using the animal pictures and embellishing with things from nature. I used bark from a cypress tree in my yard and handmade paper that I made from lemongrass and a wild reed that grows on our property. I really love the monkey one! The pretty one is made of fabric that is sewn onto a background of muslin. If your interested in learning how to do paper i

I've recently joined a few yahoo mixed media art groups to try and get my creative juices flowing. I have wanted to start playing around with altered art but for some reason I have been having a hard time. For years I have been admiring artists online and reading anything I came across on the subject but for some reason when I sit down with my supplies I stare at the blank background and wonder where to start. So I joined the Arttechniques group and the Arttechniquesatcs group . These groups have really helped me. The technique group is where artist can post images of their ATC's or other art work and then share their technique. I have really learned alot in the short time I have been a member. So each time I tried to alter a book it was like writers block only instead of not being able to write I could not create. This was something new to me. I have always been a "crafty" person. I could sit down with a pile of plastic flowers, lace and a gluestick and end up with