Sometimes I Need to be Reminded

The other day a friend and I were talking about how different siblings can be. She, apparently, is quite a bit different that her sister. In an effort to explain this to her daughter, my friends mother said, "Lauren, not everyone wants to see the world."

Now Lauren and I can't imagine a life like that, but that phrase has been resonating in my mind all week. We have the grown (well mostly) kid at home, and yep, you guessed it, they don't all want to see the world. And it's okay. So I took some time today to make a journal page to remind me....

The entire time I was making this spread I kept thinking of Alison Bomber's work, of which I am a big fan. She works a lot in browns and blues, which is not my usual color scheme but I thought I would give it a try. She is also a QUEEN of layers. I managed to get 10 on my background. 

I started by putting a lot of water down in my Dylusions Journal, followed by Distress Paints in Weathered Wood, Iced Spruce, and Stormy Sky. After that dried I went in with a bit of Wild Honey mixed with Picket Fences and Antique Linen. The Antique Linen is the first color I've had to replace in that palette...it goes with everything!!

Next up was some soft gel through a stencil...I had the soft gel for a while, but haven't used it...perfect for translucent stencils. I applied some Distress Ink on top of the stencils to make the shapes pop a bit, and put on some Washi tape for color and texture.  I used the world stamp from a Tim Holtz collection for some added interest in the background as well.

My eye kept catching a container of white reinforcers on the floor (goodness knows where they came from?!) so I popped them onto the background and applied some more paint over top them in the same background colors. They looked a little plain tho, so out came the embossing powders which worked pretty darn well...I rather like the mixture of them on the spread now. The final background layer was some text stamped in white ink. 

I started with a size 12 tag - might as well have started with a 10 since I had to cut it down, but ah, the things we learn along the way. I'm not very good yet with the individual Hero Arts stamps, so the stamping took me a bit. I auditioned several backgrounds and finally just went back to a manilla tag, coffee archival ink, and some Antique Linen Distress Stain. 

I covered the tag with some scrap paper which I quieted down with some watery Antique Linen Distress Paint to bring them all together. Next I added some Tattered Angels mists and a mixture of Dirty Martini and Black Dylusions spray splattered about. Washi tape helped join the tag to the background. 

Final embellishments included my favorite film strip 2 ways, some Chinese tokens, and a faux rusted compass. Looking back I see it really isn't blue and brown, more blue and yellow-ish orange...but hey, at least I gave it a go. 

Old, Cool, Patina-ed, Pasadena Stuff

On my last little adventure I took a mobile workshop through Old Pasadena, a part of Los Angeles, California. In the Planning World (my day job) convention mobile workshops take you to parts of the host city, with tour guides no less, to tell you all the innovative and good work they are doing. Mobile workshops are the bomb, and quite a bit different than staffing public meetings.

Old Pasadena is a 22 block National Historic District run by a non-profit organization that manages the District. It was beautiful. Lots of bricks, beautiful alleys, re-furbished buildings, etc. I ended up with a couple really cool pictures that I want to put in an album, so I thought Linda Ledbetter's Compendium of Curiosities 2 Challenge featuring Mr. Holtz's Faux Patina method (succinctly described on page 58) was the perfect match up. I've done this before, but for some reason liked the result better this time. More layers this time I think.

(Quick edit the next day: something kept nagging at me last night, and it was the fact it looked too sterile. This morning I added some Black Soot Distress ink to the ticket edges and the bricks and am much happier).

I want to mention two bloggers who were quite inspirational this week. Candy Colwell, over at Simon Says Stamp made the coolest frame for their word challenge this week. She made filmstrip reels out of of gears and dowels, which just blew me away. So I know that's why I started thinking filmstrip for this piece. And Margie Kempler's piece for this week's CCC2 is fabulous...the colors, and the little ticket she included. Do go check out her blog, because it will take you some pretty fun, interesting, and beautiful places.

To get back to my piece, I used Distress paper and embossed it with the brick embossing folder, sanded it and then applied a bit of Aged Mahogany Distress Ink here and there. From more distress paper, I die cut the film strip, sanded that and added some Pumice Stone Distress Ink to take away all the "whiteness". I had printed some pictures the other day in the contact sheet mode of my Power Point program, so I just trimmed those down and adhered them, very carefully to the back of the filmstrip.

Originally I had thought to run the film strip horizontally and make a representation of the brick clock tower in Pasadena. I started with a piece of grunge board, painted two coats of Juniper dabber on it, sanded it, and then used Walnut Stain, Aged Mahogany, Broken China, Gathered Twigs, and Pine Needles Distress Stain. What can I say? It took a while to get the right color. At first it was way to yellow-green. Yikes. Anyway. Tim used a really similar process in last year's tag 12 of the 12 Tags of Christmas...I just didn't need any snow.

In the end, I thought my original idea looked kinda silly, so I fitzed and fudged and ended up with a title bar. Who knew? Out came the trusty dynamo and I even had a title.

For the clock and hands, I used Stream, Juniper, Bottle alcohol inks with the snow-cap mixitive. I finally got tired of shaking the snow-cap; never did hear the silly little ball bounce around, but it worked none the less so guess that's okay.

I used the same colors of distress inks on the back of an adage tag I had covered with picket fence stain, and then stamped it with one of may favorite sayings....it's all about the journey...not quite the cool ticket that Marjie came up with, but by then I was kinda tired. And one last thing (it's always one last thing with me) the memo tag with TIME covered in black paint, and wiped clean. Time, history, preservation. All good things.

Enjoy.

Spring (oh how I wish) Configuration Box

This is the project I've been living with the last several days. Each month I teach a project class at Stamp Cache, my local stamp store. Linda, the lovely proprietor is SO encouraging to everyone and is  a joy to work with. Any time we do a Tim Holtz project the response has been positive so we decided to take on a configurations box. We combined the box with Memory Box's " What's in the Box" Spring papers and die cuts. Linda orders it, sight unseen, and is never disappointed. This time the line was full of PURPLE....be still my heart.

It was a challenge because almost everything came from the store which manges to pack a whole bunch of goodies into a very small space, but still....

I used the Branch tree and trimmed off the bottom of it to make it into, well, just a branch. Tissue paper and tissue tape covered the outside of the configurations box and held all the little boxes together. I absolutely LOVE the rosettes, so I knew that was going in.

I used the butterfly, snow globe, and posies die cuts from Memory Box. Tim's influence is all over the piece with corners, trimmings flowers, film strips, clock faces, game spinners, foliage, elegant flourish die cuts...geez, i love those flourishes...and the feet. On this piece the feet made all the difference. It was pretty 'light' and the feet really grounded it. I even made a tissue paper flower that is atop the box, with a trimmings flower spritzed with Tattered Angels purple....(I might need a better camera...oh well).

The good news is folks seem to like it and we've added an extra class. Now if I could just remember how I did things in a couple of weeks for the class!  Peace.