Altered By Me

I haven't had a chance to do any artwork in a couple of weeks. I did make a set of atc about three weeks ago. Best Kept Secrets ATC This is the atc that inspired me to do this series of Wing artist trading cards. " "All aberrations come home to roost" "The hat I wore to the pageant" "She was voluptuous" This one cracks me up! "Do not change" I can't decide which is my favorite. Have you checked out the link to the Altered By Me Community? I would love it if you hopped over and joined in on some of the conversations! Thanks for stopping by!!

I had a chance the other day to make a couple of Artist Trading Cards. I had the urge to create something so bad. I didn't want to mess around with finding the perfect supplies or images so I rummaged through the stuff laying around on my work table and made these two atc's with what I had on hand. The second one is my favorite! I really love the way this one turned out. Yesterday I dyed some fabric, lace and trim with some lemon balm leaves and stems that I needed to trim. I didn't want it to go to waste. Last year I dyed some other fabric and was really happy with the way it turned out. Sorry no pictures of the dyed fabric right now. If I get a chance I will take a few and then compare the two batches of fabrics. Last year I used the new growth on the plant and I really think that fabric dyed a darker color. I forgot how much I enjoy dying fabric with natural dyes. I think I may try to use some leaves off an orange tree to see if that will impart a decent dye. Than...

The deadline for the mixed media charm swap I am hosting is getting close. So far I have received charms from 8 of the 18 artists that signed up for my swap. The charms are all beautiful and there is such a wide assortment of styles that these charms are going to make an awesome charm bracelet. I'll post pictures after the charms are swapped out. This weeks challenge on the PID yahoo group is metal. The above atc is what I made for the weekly challenge. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture but in the upper left hand corner is a purple metallic rose. The roses are available from Paper Imagery Designs and come in a five different colors. The rose worked very well with the theme. Oh and yes I seem to be on a purple kick this month. I think this is the 3 piece of art I have done where the color is predominately purple. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

Sorry if there was a little confusion yesterday about my art give away. Here is an update. Leave a comment for a chance to win my nest ATC ( on the previous post ) and then check out the Paper Imagery Designs blog for info on a bigger give away! This week I was chatting with Angie about how I have a hard time adding text to my art. So I made the atc below as a way to practice adding text to a piece of art. I think as with everything else in life the more you do it the easier it gets. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

  This weeks weekly challenge is Winter Beauty on the Paper Imagery Designs yahoo group . This is the atc I came up with for the challenge. It is a little bare on the top right hand corner but the element I planned on using has mysteriously disappeared. Did those pesky little art fairies, that love to steal my supplies visit me lately? They must have because this is just one of many things I have put away and can not find.   My family thinks it's funny because I am forever losing something. Mind you whatever it is is not really lost. I am sure I put it away and can't remember where I put it. I bet your head is nodding and you know exactly what I am talking about...........   If you haven't visited the Paper Imagery Designs website lately you should. Lots of new stuff added in the last week.   Have you seen the blog lately? This months Design Team challenges pieces are awesome.   Thanks for stopping by! Arlene Technorati Tags: ATC , W...

I've had a very busy art weekend! You would have thought with all the holiday happenings I wouldn't have been able to find any time for art but the exact opposite occurred. Or maybe I just wanted to get some of these art book pages done and I made it happen. The above pic is an atc I made on Friday. I got a new set of clear stamps and wanted to try out the butterfly stamp. The image is from Paper Imagery Designs. All of the art on this post has images from PID. These image sheets are awesome and I am having a hard time using anything but PID images lately. My stash of images pale in comparison the these great sheets! This first page still needs a little something. It looks a little empty along the top and along the left edge. But I have to keep in mind when I bind it into my book it will look different. These pages are going to be bound into a little 5 x 7 art book that I started on a few months ago. I've still got a few pages to get done before I can start binding them tog...

This past week I have been in a funk, artistically. Why does this happen I wonder? There has been talk of this very subject on a couple of my groups this past week. Has that talk weaved it's way into my subconsciousness and affected my mind set? I'm not sure if that chat is the culprit or not. But i do believe the negative or positive energy around you can affect you. One of the ways I tried to lift myself out of one of these funks is to work on some backgrounds. Sometimes I work on a full 140 lb 9 x 12 sheet of water color paper. That is what I use for most all of my backgrounds. As I work on this large piece I know when I cut it down into atc or 4 x 4 size I will be surprised where my random elements will end up in this smaller background size. Lately I have found myself working on individual atc backgrounds instead of the full sheet of wc paper. This is a fun way to create a background also. The above atc backgrounds were made yesterday. I picked up a new set of clear stam...

Meet Isabella, isn't she a little darling? She is another image available from Paper Imagery Designs . The great thing about these new image sheets is that each sheet has different sizes of each image. I enjoy working in any number of sizes from inchies up to 5 x 7 so this works out well for me. And if inchies are your thing well there are also inchie images sheets. Isabella is a 2 x 2 piece I did today. I'm thinking about turning her into a soldered charm. If you haven't already checked out the new Paper Imagery Designs site your missing out. And if you have already been there you should go back and look again. New image sheets have been added. New embellishments have been added. A new Forum is up and soon there will be contests and challenges posted to the forum. So go join so you can get in on the goodies. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

Here is an atc that I recently made. I just love the eyes of this little girl. On this atc I placed a butterfly for her to stare at. I've got a few other ideas where I plan to use her. The image is from Paper Imagery Designs check them out. During the month of May they are running a grand opening sale.

Free Vintage Images! I bet that got your attention. Like most crafters and artists that work in mixed media art I am always on the look out for free images to use in my art work. Yesterday I was surfing around looking to see if I could find anything interesting and came across a relatively new website MissMary.com . There are gobs of free things to download along with her extensive collection of vintage clip art for sale. Be sure to check out her link for free downloadable collage sheets. This past Saturday I went to another ATC swap at Betty's Stamp Pad. I am so glad my mother in-law decided to drag me to that first swap. I have met some very nice people there. I think it is great to chat with like minded people, don't you? This is a picture my first attempt at a 9 by 9 ATC layout. I am not sure what the correct " name " is for one of these. So if you know please leave a comment. I would love to see how other people do these to get an idea. One of the ladies at th...

I've had a great two days this week scoring supplies and just had to share with you. Thursday I ran into my local Joann's to see if I could find the latest issue of Somerset Studio. I had a 40% off coupon I wanted to use before it expired. For a couple of months I had a project in mind that required some cheesecloth. The last time I bought some to use for cooking it cost an unbelievable $4.99 for two little squares. So on a whim I go back to the fabric department and ask if they have any cheesecloth not really expecting them to have it. So the very nice lady working the cutting table says, sure it over here and I follow her to the area where thread and notions are sold. She points down to this huge box and says here it is. The box is about 38 inches long. Knowing how much I paid for that tiny little pack I bought a few years ago I just knew I couldn't afford it. I tell the lady thank you and pick up a box and open the lid to see what it's like. Well it's cheesec...

I finally finished up my ATC's for the Fabric & Bead Swap on the arttechniquesatcs@yahoo.com group ( see side bar for a link to the group ). For some reason I had a hard time coming up with something to do for this swap. The small size of the atc's is what causes my mind to go blank. I have made all kinds of quilts over the years. I have also done different crafts using fabrics but these tiny little pieces of art always seem to stump me. Thanks for stopping by!

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...

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...