Altered By Me

Here is a little sneak peek of some altered bottle caps I am working on for a swap on the Paper Imagery Designs Ning site. The bottle caps are recycled and colored with Alcohol Inks. Little circles of dictionary pages are glued into the center of the cap. I can't show the finished product cause I don't wanna ruin the surprise for the rest of the swappers. Well they are still wet and drying any way.

So I missed wordless Wednesday yesterday. I have been having some computer issues this week. I am not sure if I have the problem fixed or the computer gods are playing a cruel trick on me. After many hours of trying to figure the problem out I started uninstalling some new programs. I'm not sure if that fixed the problem or not but my computer is running at the moment and since I don't want to jinx myself I will move on to another subject. The picture above is what the corner of my kitchen table looks like at the moment. I am working with fabric as you can see. Many moons before I started playing with paper and mixed media I did fabric crafts. I've made quilts and cute little sachets and cute little fabric ornaments. I made whatever I felt like in other words. I have always collected fabric and sewing things.  I have boxes and boxes of lace trims, seam bindings, thread, and sewing notions. Most of the time I can't find half of it because it is put away. So I am wo...

Happy New Year! What goals do you have for this new year? Do you make New Years resolutions? I prefer to set goals for the year instead of falling into the old resolution game. My art goals for 2009 were to get published in a magazine. I am happy to report that I not only had a piece of my art published in a magazine but a piece of my fabric art was published in a book. Here is my 5 x 7 canvas board piece this is in the Winter issue of Somerset Gallery. It is the piece in the upper right hand corner. My other piece is a fabric piece that you can see in the new book Exploring the Latest Trends in Mixed Media Art, Vol 2- Recycled, Reinspired, Reinvented The book is now available here https://createspace.com/3363714 It is also available on Amazon.com  I want to take this time to thank all of my readers. Thank you very much! For those of you who have taken the time to leave a comment thank you. It's great to get feedback. Have a Safe and Happy New Year! S...

Dyeing with natural dyes are very easy. In my last post I showed you how you can use onion skins to dye fabric. Today I am going to show you the color dye you can get from using grapevine stems. Grapevine grows wild here where I live and I know it grows in a lot of places in the US. If you don't have any wild grapevine handy I am sure you could cut apart one of those grapevine wreaths everyone had hanging in their house years ago. They are still very popular and can be found in most craft stores. Below is a picture of two pieces of fabric. The white fabric is what I used in the dye bath. I am using the solar dyeing method which means I place my dye material in a glass jar and place it out into the sun. I happen to live in Florida and the sun is still very strong. If it is cold where you live you can try boiling the stems to release the dye. It will depend on the natural dye material used when you will start to see the water turn color. It took about three days for me to se...

This weeks challenge on the Paper Imagery Designs group is nests. I love the PID nests sheet and the atc bird sheet. They are a couple of my favorite PID image sheets. The above image is of the atc I did for the challenge. The image below is a 6 x 6 I also did for the challenge. It is my favorite of the two. I'm going to look for a piece of wood to mount it on. If you like to use bird and nest images as much as I do in your artwork. Check out the link above. Also check out the Inchie page for a couple of sheet of inchie images. Thanks for stopping by! Comments always welcome. Arlene

I just realized that I did not share my altered altoid tin on my blog. Sometimes I post my art to the PID blog and never get around to posting it on my own blog.   I made this altered tin for my February  dt challenge. Outside   Inside   I love the way it turned out. I didn't take a picture of the back of the tin but the outside is very textured. I built up layers of gesso and acrylic paint. My MIL's birthday is Feb 12th and since she loves Valentine Day I gave it to her for her birthday.   Technorati Tags: mixed media , altered altoid tin , Altered art  

  For a limited time Paper Imagery Designs is offering two sheets of Valentine images created by some of the design team members. These images were created just for these special Design Team sheets . If you've purchased these sheets and make a piece of art using my images please let me know and I will post your artwork to my blog. The images I created are the "be mine" and "precious love".   Chris is a member of the Paper Imagery Designs yahoo group . This weeks challenge is polka dots and hearts. Here is the art work she made using the Valentine image I created for the designer sheets. What a beautiful piece of art she created with my image. Thank you for such a great compliment Chris! You can see more of Chris art on her Timeless Art blog.     Technorati Tags: Paper Imagery Designs , Designer Sheets , Mixed Media art , Timeless Art        

Art journaling has had an explosion of interest in the past year. Or at least on the groups I belong to I have seen allot of people becoming interested in it. There are a few blogs out there doing daily prompts and challenge. I really don't know how the people who participate get anything done besides their journal page for the day. I can not finish a page a day and that could be because my art journal is a whopping 8 x 11 inches big. My journal is a cheap sketch book I bought at Borders. I glue music sheets, dictionary pages, book pages, scrapbook paper, tissue paper, dress pattern paper or packing paper to the pages and then depending on my mood I paint, ink or gesso the pages. I usually do about 5 sets of pages at a time. This method reinforces the thin sketch paper so it can take the abuse of painting or inking. It also gives me an interesting background that is ready to go when the mood strikes me to work in my journal. The above picture is from a page that I created using K...

    I was blog hopping this weekend and came across Michelle Wards Green Pepper Press Street Team Blog linked from another blog that I read regularly  Pam Carriker's Blog . I love Pam's art!!!  I've been planning on doing one of Michelle's challenges forever but just never got around to it.   When I saw her current challenge, Properties of Gesso I knew I had to do it. I am a technique junkie. I love finding background techniques and trying them out. I use gesso in my art all the time and I know I've stamped with it but  I'm not sure if I've used it as a resist. I happened to buy some index cards at the dollar store on Saturday and thought I would try the technique out on the cards. I'll either use them in my journal or just keep them as technique cards.   I did the resist on one side and on the other I just stamped the white gesso. I really didn't leave the gesso to dry as long as Michelle suggested to get a complete resist but I lo...

  Doesn't it feel good when you feel like you've accomplished something? I've been busy this past week finishing up some art projects that I committed myself to. One project is way over due in my mind. There was no time limit set for this project but I've been feeling like I've had something hanging over my head just knowing that I promised two pieces of art. So hopefully they will be going postal next week.   On another note I can't believe my six months is up with the Paper Imagery Designs DT team. These six months have just flown by. Technically my six months aren't up until the end of this month. So I still have some work to do.   I've decided to apply again. Lori and Melissa are two of the best people I've ever worked with. Their image sheets are top quality and I'd be proud if they decide to have me again.   If your interested in apply for the new designs team go check out the blog . Lori is taking applications until the end o...

A few weeks ago I started doing a Technique Thursday for the Paper Imagery Designs Yahoo group . Every other Thursday I feature a new technique on the PID blog and then the members of the Yahoo group make a piece of art using that technique. This past weeks technique is Masking Tape Distress. The girls are doing such a great job on the group that I decided to add a little fun into the mix and will be giving away this atc in a random drawing from the members of the group who participated. The vintage woman is from Victorian Women sheet # 265 Join the yahoo group and you will receive a discount on your purchases at the web site. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene Technorati Tags: Blog Give Away , Art Give Away , Paper Imagery Designs , Technique Thursday , Techniques , Vintage Images , Mixed Media 4 x 4 , Altered Art

I've been so busy since my last post, then I realized it had been over two weeks since my last post so I figured I had better find something to show you all. Summer vacation has come to an end here and my youngest daughter started school on Monday. So with all the running around that goes into getting a child ready for school I haven't had much time to post to my blog. Yesterday was a fun day........if you call being without electricity for almost five hours fun. Hurricane season has blown in with a fury and we had our first storm last Monday night and all day Tuesday. Tropical Storm Fay was her name. We were expecting a category 1 hurricane but lucked out this time. The storm was nothing but rain and wind. Not much wind where we are. There is another storm out there brewing in the Atlantic and Fay may not be done with Florida yet. The news is saying it is going to turn around and come back through Florida in the next couple of days. Where it will come ashore is anyones gues...

I've had a very boring un-arty weekend so last night around 1 am I decided to check out some of the challenge blogs to see if I could find anything that might interest me. For awhile now inchies have been big. Then came along twochies and now trinchies. I enjoy working in alot of different sizes so when I saw that trinchie was the theme this week at the Mixed Media Monday site I grabbed up a piece of background scrap and cut it down into the proper size. This piece came together pretty fast. Sometimes I struggle over a piece and other times a piece seems to go together surprisingly quickly. I loved it when I was done so that was a bonus as far as I am concerned. All images and the clock transparencies are from Paper Imagery Designs . Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

Technorati Tags: Altered Art , Mixed Media , Collage , Paper Imagery Designs , Challenge , Gothic Arch I had so much fun making the Gothic Arch for the weekly challenge at the Paper Imagery Designs Yahoo group I decided to make another one. The image is from Paper Imagery Designs . I also decided to share the before and after of my background piece. I loved the background piece before I added my elements and why I decided to cover it up with cheesecloth I don't know. But while I was in my artistic zone I thought wouldn't that look cool with some dyed cheesecloth on it. So I pulled out a baggy of dyed cheesecloth and cut up some strips. Then I took my little mini misters full of dye reinkers and pearlx and hit the cheesecloth with a couple of squirts. At first I was only going to add the cheesecloth to the left hand side. But when I was trying to lay it on the side of the arch to see what it looked like I didn't care for the way it looked. Finally...

The weekly challenge over at the Paper Imagery Designs yahoo group for this week is Gothic Arch. The image used on my arch is Mia 112 Check out the Paper Imagery Designs Blog to see more art work done using the beautiful Paper Imagery Designs images. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

There have been lots of fun happenings over at the Paper Imagery Designs yahoo group . During the month of July there will be over $300 in prizes given away to the members of the group. You can only win if you join so hurry over there so you can get in on the goodies! First I wanted to say thank you to my readers that joined the group and used my name as a reference for the membership drive. I came in second place. I had so much fun shopping and picking out my free image sheets. Stayed tuned for a special surprise I will have in the next couple of weeks to show my appreciation! The month of July is the Grand Opening sale of Paper Imagery Designs ! Stop by and check out the incredible image sheets that are on sale for $2 a sheet. This is an unbelievably low price for such a high quality product. I have never work with such great image sheets before. This weeks challenge was Black & White. My atc above was made using Louisa from one of the PID image sheets. Do you want to join int...

Well for the past week I have been missing in action. Internet problems that were very weird. For some reason my computer just wouldn't connect to the internet. There is more to the story but it is pretty boring so........ Any who I wanted to let you all know that the membership drive for Paper Imagery Designs yahoo group only has a few days left. See my previous post for the details. Currently I am in second place for the membership drive. I need a few more people to join the group and put my name in the comment section when they join. Just add something like I saw Arlene's blog post and would like to join the group. That way I'll get credit. You can't join the group and then post that you saw my blog and joined. I won't get credit that way. If you'd like an idea of the awesome art work that the members have been doing using PID images please check out the blog where some of the members have been chosen to showcase their art for last weeks Polka Dot Challenge. ...

Hi all I've been having a lot of fun with the Paper Imagery Designs image sheets. This weekend I added an element that I don't have much experience with. Transparencies. Take a peek at this atc I did using one of the Paper Imagery Designs ATC House Transparency sheets over a PID image. I love this image of Isabella she is from sheet # 148. I have used her on a few pieces of art. Check back a few posts to see her used on a 2 x 2 background. The house transparencies are available in either plain black, like I used above or colored. Check them out. There are a few other transparency sheets available. I am so loving my new bottle of Ranger color wash. Here is another atc I made using the color wash on the background. I also used my new Adirondack Pigment Ink pad and embossing powder in eggplant. The image is Tessa from Paper Imagery Designs.

Inchie are some the the cutest little pieces of art I have ever seen. I am amazed at how those tiny little images can make a little 1 x 1 background come alive. Here are some of the inchies I have made using the new Inchie image sheet from Paper Imagery Designs. Check out the image sheet and while your there hop over to the blog where you can see some great art work made with PID images. Arlene

Usually each of my blog posts is accompanied with a picture of a piece of art that I have made. Well today there is no picture. Sorry to disappoint. It's not that I have nothing new to share but at the moment I have no scanner and can not find my digital card reader. Read below. For the past week I have been staying at my oldest daughters house. We live out in the country and have to depend on a well to furnish the water to our home. Well the well is dead. Not a good thing since it costs roughly 8 to 10 thousand dollars to drill a new one. My husband who can pretty much fix anything has not had much luck with fixing this problem. At the moment we don't know if the well has dried up or there is something wrong with the pump. Since my husband is self employed and does most of his jobs 25 to 30 miles away from our home he does not get home before dark most nights. It is impossible to work on this problem in the dark so here I sit for another few days until he can get out to the ho...