Underwater World

I remember (was it really just a year ago?) that I thought ATC's were kind of beyond me. Now I have quite the little love affair going on with these miniature pieces of mixed media. The current challenge at Fun with ATC's is underwater. I was working on a piece inspired by Dion Dior last night and it was a big AHA moment. One of the techniques I thought would be great for making seaweed!

Dion works a lot with Twinkling H2O's, a watercolor paint with mica crystals embedded in the paint. They are very sparkly. One of her techniques is to get the paper very wet, lay down some color  and then put stretchable strips of bandage down and let it dry in place. Didn't have that, so I substituted regular first aid gauze.

First I put down a combination of yellows, greens and blue greens on some very wet paper. They I curved strips of the gauze and pushed them down into the paint.; partially dried it with my heat gun and then put a tad bit more water and color on top.

The next step required patience. Darn it. I covered the whole thing with a piece of sran-wrap and put a huge, heavy book down on top it and let it dry overnight. 

I thought it was kind of magical this morning when I peeled it apart before I took off for work. And as an added bonus was I really liked the colored gauze which had become significantly stiffer than when I started the project. 

When I got home, I started playing the waste gauze, some shells and beads and this is the end result. I hope you can see the sparkle. One of the nice things about using so much water in this process is the entire paper isn't sparkly so you get some good contrast. 

Let's pretend they're shells or air bubbles, or whatever you'd like them to be. 

I've been turning a lot of these into magnets and I'm guessing that's what will become of my entry into the underwater challenge at Fun with ATC's. 

Here's hoping you get lots of creative time soon! Enjoy. 

ATC once more, with Texture

One of the fun blogs I've been following of late is Alison's Words and Pictures. She has a wonderful artistic sense and is quite active in a lot of challenges! A couple times now I've seen her designs for the Fun with ATC's  challenges. The current challenge is #87 - Texture. Since it seems I've been doing quite a few of these lately and I am a BIG fan of texture, I decided to see what I could come up with.

I started with Neocolor watercolor crayons in green, a couple of shades of yellow, a blue, and fuscia. In 21 Secrets I am taking a great class with Terri Kahrs and she uses baby wipes to blend the crayons. With several layers you can get some intense color. Since I am still pining away for spring up here in Alaska I decided to take a summery approach to things.

I used the white Wendy Vecci's molding paste with some light green paint mixed into it, and applied it to a Crafter's Workshop bamboo stencil. I am a new convert to the molding paste - it's so much softer and fluffier than anything I've used before... pretty fun.

That was layer number two. The butterfly has been floating around my desk for sometime now - it needed a home - and a body. I used a variety of embossing powders on a Tim Holtz pen nib, with a final coat of Ranger Bridal Tinsel embossing power. I love this stuff! It has some glitter in it and it adds a nice sparkle to whatever you apply it to.

The final layer was this lovely sentiment I came across recently on something from Artchix Studio. And since texture was the name of the came, I layered on a little glossy accents on top just to make it stand out a little more.

ATC's are such a fun size to work with. They make great magnets, you can pop them on cards, or actually use them for trading. If you haven't given them a try - I highly recommend it. They're quick and fun. Enjoy!