Altered By Me

Life has been crazy for me lately. I am finding it very hard to find time for art these days.  And it is a little frustrating to me. It is amazing how a persons life can change so much in less then one year. It's not that I don't have any ideas or inspiration. It's that I can't seem to find the time to start a project, have it lay out on my table and work on it until I am done. I have been helping out with my grand children as some of you might know already. You can read here about the newest grand daughter Addison who was born in April with some health problems.   My other grand daughter is eleven months old and starting to walk. Hailey is Addison's big sister and will be 4 in a couple of months. I didn't realize how much work being a Grammy was going to be LOL.   So when I saw Michelle Wards GPP Team Crusade # 41 Grid Lock for the month of June I knew I had to do it.. Check out the link above to find out about this and all the other Crusades Michell...

Are you like me? I have so many things I want to blog about that I just don't know where to begin. And do I want to write a huge post covering everything? Or do I break it up and post a couple of post in one day? And then you know what happens? I just don't post anything to my blog. So I have just finished up one of the biggest swaps ever. On my arttechniques yahoo group I participated in a 4 x 4 fatbook technique swap. Technique swaps are great because you get to see and feel so many different techniques that you may have not done before. And even if you have done it before when someone else has done it they can get a very different look then you did when you did the same technique. When I signed up for this swap I was prepared to do 20 or 30 or even 50 pages in this swap just to get my hands on all those techniques. Well we ended up with over 100 people signing up for the swap. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally Sherre and Susan who are hosting the swap put a cap...

Back in the November/December issue of Cloth Paper Scissors I saw a technique that I knew I had to try. The article was written by Katie Kendrick . Using plain old card board recycled from boxes and cheesecloth ( see previous post on my major score of cheese cloth ) she created a beautiful mixed media journal. The old world feel of her journal called out to me. Pictured above is my practice piece I made following her instructions in the article. I pretty much flew by the seat of my pants without any theme, making each page as I went with whatever I had on hand. Some of the pages I love and a few of them I could do without. Over all I am pleased with how it turned out. I've got a theme picked out for the next one and am busy collecting items to use. My practice journal is small, 5 1/2 inches by 2 3/4. The next one will be a 5 x 7 and I will have more room to create in. Here are a few of the pages. Have a Happy Easter!

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...