Altered By Me

I want to show you an atc I made last week. Usually when I make a piece of art I use my own background. When I say my own background I mean I have started with a piece of blank watercolor paper and painted, inked, stamped or distressed it myself. It is one of my most favorite parts of the creative process. Matter of fact sometimes I like my background so much that I have a hard time covering it up to make a piece of art. For this atc below I used a pre-made atc background sheet from Paper Imagery Designs . The title of the sheet is For the Birds. PID offers a large selection of images with birds and butterflies. These sheets are my favorites and you will find the images in a lot of my art. The butterfly came from the Butterflies, Dragonflies and Insects sheet . This was one of the easiest atc's I've ever made and it is one of my favorites. There is still time to enter my atc giveaway here . The giveaway ends on July 3rd. You'll find info on the contest blog post ...

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...

You may notice I've changed the way my blog looks. For months I have been trying to change the code so I can have a three column layout instead of the two. Well I finally got the three columns but a few things are looking a little funny. Such as the pictures in one of the columns. I've been promised some help later today so please bare with me until then. Now in one of my earlier posts I mention how I was lucky enough to win a monthly challenge from Ranger. I promised to let you know what I won when my box came. Well it came in on Tuesday. I love Ranger products did I mention that yet LOL . My prize pack contained An Adirondack Paint Dabber, a bottle of Embossing Powder, a Adirondack Pigment Ink Pad, a spray bottle of Color Wash, and a bottle of Dimensional Pearls. All in the color of Eggplant. Didn't I tell you they were very generous in their prize packs? I immediately sprayed some of the Color Wash onto a paper towel just to check it out. WOW is all I can say. I am goi...

Linda from Italy said... ""I like it. and the flowers are made by hand with black pen? Your work is collage or has transfered images in it? thanks and compliments."" By the way I loved your Alice in Wonderland collage. Here is the link for anyone interested in checking it out. http://clochart.blogspot.com/ Hi Linda thanks for reading my blog and asking a question. The flowers were made by stamping black stazon ink with a flower stamp on top of a background I made and cutting them out. For the background I used Ranger distress inks on a sheet of music. I smeared the ink pads around and then spritzed with a water bottle and let dry. All of the images are collaged on to each page of my journal. Added Feature . I'm not sure how many none english speaking people visit my blog but I have decided to add a translator to my blog for those that do visit. I know I apprecitate the feature when I run across an artists blog in another language that gives me the option....

I've come to the conclusion that I love making backgrounds! Making the background is my favorite part of a project. All of the things I have been working on lately have been swaps that I have joined on my various Yahoo groups. The above picture is of my backgrounds for the 3 x 3 swap that Belinda is hosting on her CollageComposition group. I am happy with the backgrounds. I LOVE the backgrounds........... but now I don't know how to finish them off. It's after I have a background made that the problems set in for me when I am working on a swap. Am I having a " PROBLEM?" Or could it be FEAR ? I've noticed that I only have this PROBLEM when I am making something for a swap . Am I having PROBLEMS because my artwork will be judged by someone else when I am particatipating in a swap? Could it be because I know it will not be just one person that will be judging me? It could be a dozen or more people judging my artistic ability in each swap. ARTISTIC........... Ther...

Updated 9/1/07 I've had a few people ask me if I allowed each of my layers to dry in between. I did use my heat gun to dry each layer before I moved on to the next one. Thanks for all the great comments! Over the weekend I tried out a background technique I saw in last months issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. I'm very happy with the way it turned out but this took hours to do and I'm not sure if I will do it again. I started out with a sheet of tissue paper that I placed on top of a sheet of freezer wrap on my kitchen counter. Taping the freezer wrap to the counter stopped the wrap from curling and it then laid flat on my counter. I did not cut down the first sheet of tissue paper so my large background piece was as big as a standard sheet of tissue paper. I then glued dictionary and book pages down onto the tissue paper with waterd down elmers glue as my first layer. I then added another layer of tissue paper torn into pieces over the book pages.Then I painted a layer of wa...