Alien Art

I post all my projects. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Next one doesn’t fall into the first category, but to document and show my learning process/curve, I post this anyway.

The background  was made the same time as the background in the previous post, and added bits of chipboard to it too.

I use the ufo stamp from made by boefje,  The Three Leaves set from Designs by Ryn, the smaller leaf is also from Designs by Ryn, gloss/paper pens, wooden butterflies, distress paint, Crafters Companion text stamp.

Let’s not start at the beginning this time, but halfway through when I didn’t now how to go on from there. It was (is) a bit of an experimental card, trying to incorporate left overs, bits of chipboard. So this is what I had. I didn’t think I could ever turn this into an acceptable card, some sloppy stamping, strange square chipboard pieces, no masking (the U.F.O’s and the leaves are overlapping a lot without masking).

And now. What to do with the chipboard pieces? They look a bit too much like glued on chipboard pieces still. After some pondering I remembered the little butterflies I had, they were perfect! Like mounted butterflies, trophies on the wall only now strangely soaring through the sky. Hence the text.  The previous card reminded me of wind, arcane spells in the air behind the fairy. The items on this card also seem to be tossed around in the wind.

The text stamp – well, there was not enough contrast between the textand backgrounds, so I went around the letters with a gell pen, where the letters were stamped on an ufo. You can see that I slid a bit with the leaf stamp on the paint, it was a bit slick. I don’t mind, as the stamps got some extra shading and appear to be tossed. (Ok, I only just made that up). All along making the card the focus was on experimenting and mindlessly having fun with the gloss pens from Viva Decor.

 

Now I still don’t think I’d ever send it, but I think I kind of like the card.
It’s a strange card, but not too bad for some experimenting.

Alien Art.

Making of a Whispered Autumn Song

Some pictures I forgot to add. I had some trouble determining what or whom the fairy was singing too.

Decisions decisions…

Here is the card as it was then. I cut off the left side later, to balance the card more. I had wanted to make some more shade there, but it was distracting. Around the fairy are some stamps that might fit in there. Maybe the unicorns, coming in from the left of the card? All grey stamps are Chocolate Baroque, the red rubber is from Designs by Ryn, the white ones are from the set Pixie Glade by ?? (I’ve got them for quite a while). The pinkish stamp (high heels) is VivaLasVegas, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out gnome. The roughly stamped butterfly and castle are Chocolate Baroque too, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out mushroom barely seen on the left.

I stamped several images roughly and cut them out, to see how it looked.

This one looked like the sitting fairy is said, and the fairy behind her is watching her reaction while the big fairy sings.

This is the mushroom that was a left over from a failed card, and which I had wanted to use in the Psychedelic Party card but which was too big. It could be nice here, with the bird sitting on top of it.

Or would she be singing to a butterfly about the passing of days, the end of summer?

 

This one was a favourite of mine for a long time – like the gnome had been bad and got a speech. Or maybe the opposite, he was quite heroic and was praised? The gnome was stamped and cut for another card but I didn’t use it for that card. It’s a Viva las VegaStamp, and tiny, but cute.

His height didn’t match her LOS, so what if I raised him onto a mushoom? Gnomes do go well with mushrooms.

Or maybe she’s singing to a little elf castle, hoping to sing the elfs out? And that cheeky gnome just standing there, ready to do something naughty?

I think now I had too much mushroom tea and got a bit silly. What if she was having lunch with a cup of tea, and used the mushroom as a table?

Or this one, where the fairy is leaning toward her to listen. (Gnome is still hanging around.) I liked this one best, but I wanted some colour on the fairy.

Yup that is my table, and the workspace remaining in the end. I coloured some paper with the ranger airbrushtool and distress markers, then stamped and clearembossed the fairy and cut her out.

 

Here us the result. That note on the left, with “Fever” on it – I was trying some words for the Psychedelic party, and tried “disco fever”.

  And a closeup of the result. (and behind her you can see a big tip of mine: on all sides of your inkpad, glue down a strip, coloured with that ink and write the name on it. I started doing that on only 1 side, but then you have to stack the boxes neatly each time. So then I did 2 sides. But still too much searching. So now it’s 4 sides, just white paper and plain tape – if I would just glue down the paper it would be smudged in no time I bet, so cover it with something ink-resistant.)

(Don’t take any advice from me about cutting your stamps, as I sometimes cut the stamps first and then put them on the mounting foam, then cut them out. It doesn’t always match well, and if I stamp edges, then I cut those away after. I realize now that I should probably do it the other way around, and remove more from the cushion then from the stamp. Or would the stamp bend to the paper then?

If you remember the card, you might think: huh, but there was a fairy and a flower on it, not another fairy!

That’s right. I found the colours didn’t match, and the coloured silhouette didn’t work with the stamped and non-silhouette big fairy.

So I searched for a right sized image of something that would fit, and found this flower from Chocolate Baroque.

The flower is stamped directly on the card, anything glued on would not match with this scene, it would take away the focus of the fairy too much. There’s red glitter on the flower, the harp is shimmering gold, as is the “fur” on her wings.

A picture says more then 1000 words they say, so let me just take a picture of it now.

And now you can also see how the fairy doesn’t fit:

It’s not just her glossyness, the colours were not for this card.

 

I stored her in a box with more pretty cards / backgrounds, and put her on top of some sheets I had made with bister. She fits on those better!

Not a great picture, the detail is missing from the backgrounds, but the colours sure are great 🙂 Now I just need to make some cards out of them.

A whispered autumn song

Beautiful flower with your fragrance of Autumn
How you stand there, filled with the sun.
Do you not know, do you not feel
The change of the season, the turning of the wheel?

Around you leaves fall,
It’s Fall, they fall.
Let down your petals,
Let down, let go
Show us your seedsShow them, then sow,
For theirs is the Spring,
and for them, you grow.

Beautiful flower, so strong in this wind,
How you stand there, defying the time.
Do you now know, do you now hear
King Winter approaching, saying your end is near?

Around you leaves fall,
Like feathers, they fall
Your crown made of petals,
Goes down, goes off
Spread out your seeds,
with joy, with love,
For  you’ll live forever
It’s you, they’re made off.

Beautiful flower with your roots deep in the ground
Alone you stand there, calm in the present,
You always did knew, as you can sense
your return in springtime, winter is not the end.

The fairy was stamped, coloured with distress ink / markers and then I applied decoupage glue to her. I next stamped the rest.
She does have some bruises on her leg, that is where I didn’t apply the decoupage glue well enough and rubbed in the ink of the tree/ rubbed off the paper a bit when I cleaned her with a damp cloth. I thought about covering it with something, but I like it, it suits a Fall fairy to have some signs of withering and crumbling.  The sponging is done with a new foam sponge, I am still learning how to use it and wondering if I like them, they don’t really soak up the ink well so you get this more coarse sponging. For this card it fits, and I like it here. I’m slowly learning how to use the foam pods without getting this effect as I do like to make smoother backgrounds too.

• Fairy is a Designs by Ryn stamp,
• Flower is from Chocolate baroque,
• Feather is Crafters Companion (something magical series)
• Tree is from nonsequitur stamps / de stempelwinkel.

This card is my first entry for the Designs by Ryn October challenge.

The psychedelic mushrooms-fairy

Well she isn’t that psychedelic at all herself. Then again, usually the dealers aren’t addicted…

Here she is:

She’s got her own vices. Sitting on a mushroom, smelling the flowers.

The fair+ mushrooms + branch behind her are all one stamp, the flower is another. I also used a nature fragments stamp for the treetrunks around her. Here is another use of my home made marbled pearls.

This is my second entry for the Chocolate Baroque Colour challenge #3

One card left for this challenge! So we’ve explored our own psychedelic imagination, visited the fairies, then what else could be next then the mysterious orient?

 

Magic happens all around

I started this card not as a card, but just playing around with a new stencil (stars), distress paint budled sage, distress stain bronze and rusty hinge on green cardstock. Then I also tried out my new Sheena Douglas embossing folder – it started to look quite ok, maybe I could use it? It had an autumn feel to it, with the leaves and brown and glimmering colours. So I searched for some challenges to help me by adding some boundaries within which I would make something.

The themes of the challenges I chose were: Autumn/Fall, inspirational image,  make your own leaves, Anything but CAS, Frame it, use stamping on tissue paper and decoupage technique and use Design by Ryn stamps.. Some might have closed allready as I dind’t like the finished card untill today, when the room was brightyl lit and I stood a bit further away – the card was as intended. Very autumn like, a bit of an ancient feel to it because of the mosaique, the pillars and colours, and the fairy not that well visible. I wanted her to be transparent – only visible to those who look.

An autumn scenery in an interesting frame. Here it is:

How I made it

I continued with the background by colouring in the leaves with barn door distress marker. I was wondering what to put on it – then I rememered the arch from a French Kissed card which I had laying around for ages, this looked like a card where I could use it. Imagine walking around in a forest, and stumbling on an ancient ruin where you witness this magical scene. I wanted it to be behind the embossing, so I put the card and arch on it’s place in the embossing folder, and then pressed with my hands only on the one pillar, rubbing that spot untill it was embossed as well. Then I knew where and how to cut it.

Next I stamped the fairy and squirrel with on tissue paper. It is one stamp, and I inked the body of the fairy with versafine grey and the squirrel, wings and nuts with stazon black. I coloured it (the fairy very lightly as she needed to be hardly visible) and glued it on. Unfortunately, my plan to make the fairy transparent succeeded. (uh what?) Yup. No fairy visible.

See the plant? It used to be full of flowers, just lovely. My children liked the plant too…

The prettiest side to the house. I’ve got little vases on the table, for when the children pick flowers (usually with a very short stem) – they are filled with these now.

The emptiest side to the garden. In my kids defense, the stems break very easily.

So I restamped onto tissue paper, cut out only the body of the fairy and decoupaged it. If you look closely (don’t do it!) you can see that decoupaging tissue paper on the exact same spot is impossible. (As some parts of the fairy were a bit more visible). I higlighted the squirrel by drawing black lines and white lines in some places, also outlined the nbuts and wings a bit more so the contrast between them and the fairy would be bigger. I stamped and embossed the text, adding the white higlight there as well, and also highlighed some parts of the Arch and the big leaf.

The leaves: The two big leaves in the upper rightcorner are from my stash, (sizzix die, and one leaf has moddeling paste through a leaves stencil) only coloured it a bit more red so it matched the card / autumn theme more. The 4 smaller leaves (Marianne Design die) were also from my stash, they are as old as the arch, which might be 3 years? ANyway, they were diecut from green cardstock on which I had stamped randomly in green and had aged it a bit with forest moss ink. It was too green for this card. I took some decopuage glue and followed the nerves of the leaf, let it dry and then ink it and add some perfect pearls copper on it. (The decoupage glue acted as a sort of rsist for the ink). The leaves were a bit lost in the corner, it needed something extra. That happened to be that piece of string that I found on the table (or ground)… no idea where it came from, maybe one of the kids found it outside, but it was great for this card 🙂

In the lower left I pt mod melts figures, the middle leaf is Martha Stewart clay and the outer two are made with hot glue. Several layers of yellow, green and red acryllic paint (too yellow – add some red. Hmm too red, add some green. Too green, the yellow is gone! add some yellow etc’. Finished with perfect pearls copper.

I forgot an important part, the frame! Ofcourse I made that before glueing the leaves in place. Cut from pink cardstock, then added some metallic colour (I honestly can’t remember if it is acryllic paint or the new copper distress stain – I got so many things in copper colour as I love it!) I put a Crafter’s Workhsop stencil on it, used modelling paste, let it dry. When dry I replaced the stencil and painted it with distress paint. Let dry, adhere to the card, and on to the leaves.

Last I wanted some more autumny things, and got out my paper pens. I don’t have the bright red, but the orange suited very well too to be little berries. I was trying some things out, like marbling with the paper pens, so they turend out to be more like mushrooms then berries, it’s up to the viewer to decide what they are 😉

Have a look at my second post to see the miniature marbled pearls which I made with my paper/gloss/perlen pens! (I have yet to write it, will be out late tonight at the latest).

I was worried that the card didn’t have enough contrast, the colours are very close to eachother. The frame was very light, so I dabbed an Black Sooth sponge on it which wasn’t inked, so just a tiny bit of black sooth. Not sure it is even very visible, I can’t really point it out now but at the time it seemed better.

It’s not really a card-card, it’s more like a small wallhanging. It’s A5 size so not too small.

Challenges

I’d like to enter this card in the following challenges:

• Stampingback – Anything NOT CAS (mijn 2e inzending, geen stampinback stempels gebruikt)
• Our Creative Corner – Autumnal image (berries, autumn, leaves, texture, the beauty that is seen when you take a second look, or Look at the world around you,)
• Simply Create Too – Autumn (oops, allready entered 3 times, which is max!)
• Panpasteluk – Frame it (sorry don’t have pan pastels yet!) -oops too late for that one, but…
• PanPastelUK – Embossing (The new challenge, my card fits that one as well, and I made the frame mainly for you! Following via RSS feed)
• Ducth Card Lovers – Autumn and make your own leaves
• Craftstamper – Take it Make it September: Stamping on tissue paper ( a day too late for it)
• Designs by Ryn – Always Anything goes, use Designs by Ryn products.
• Vandicrafts Artistry Challenge – #9: Autumn
• The Artistic Stamper – Autumn colours;
• Fantasy Stampers – autumn colours;

edit 28th of September: I found the pictures of the disappearing fairy.

before

stamped with too oily and light versafine grey

coloured with distress inks

is that my mini acryllic block that I can’t find now?

decoupaged – and oops, didn’t apply (glue or the image) well enough – air pockets beneath it.

Almost completely dry – you can see the fairy has faded a lot.