Monday, January 29, 2018

My Other Creations: Rubber Cement Resist with Watercolors

This week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is "Resist It."  I decided to try my hand at a resist technique using Rubber Cement and watercolors to make the background of my notebook cover.


I started with a piece of Strathmore Mixed Media paper which I drizzled Rubber Cement on in a random pattern.

I let that dry (though it remained tacky even after a whole day of drying) and watercolored in between each of the sections-- kind of like stained glass.

Using just your finger or an eraser, you can rub the Rubber Cement off once the watercolor dries.  The picture will remain white wherever the Rubber Cement was.  Once I rubbed off the Rubber Cement, I added some drips of watercolor and also added some Brusho crystals which I spritzed with water.  I threw on some ink smudges and this is the end result:

With my background done, I cut out the girl image (from Jane Davenport's collage images) and adhered her to a square of text paper.  I made a crown for her and colored her in with inks and Sharpies and stamped some splatters here and there.  I added the sentiment to the bottom of her (which I LOVE- from Impression Obsession) and then I sewed the collage to a notebook cover.  I painted around the edges with black and blue paint and distressed it a bit further with some brown Distress Ink.

Here are the supplies I used, which you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

What are you going to do to "resist it" this week?  Be sure to upload your creations to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $50 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store.

Monday, January 15, 2018

My Cards and Tags: City Cards using Jane Davenport's Aqua Pastels

This week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge theme is "Birds of a Feather."  After a not-so-fun week at work, the first thing that came to mind was the desire to fly beyond the confines of the cubicle farm!  I tried to capture that feeling with this trio of cards.


I started by cutting out some card shapes with the Reverse Confetti Kindness Cards die set.  Then I smeared white paint through some Tim Holtz stencils: Dot Fade and Bubble.

I was anxious to try out the new Jane Davenport Aqua Pastel crayons.  Once my white paint dried, I colored over the card surfaces with the crayons.  Then I dipped my finger in some water and just sort of smeared all the colors together.  Some colored pencils and crayons that are supposed to be "blendable" with water don't work very well, but these crayons did not disappoint.  The colors were bright and mixed beautifully when I added water.  Here are the cards after the Aqua Pastel crayon treatment:

While those dried, I cut out some buildings with the Tim Holtz Cityscape Skyline die and colored them with Hero Arts Neon inks and Distress Inks.  The Hero Arts Neon inks were new to me and I already adore them.  I stamped some months on the buildings with a Paper Artsy stamp.

I covered my card backgrounds with some stamping and brushos, but most of this step got covered up by the end.

I glued the buildings to the background and then toned everything down with some white acrylic paint over the top.

You can see on the finished product that I also added black paint around the edges and outlined parts of the buildings with a black Sharpie.

For the sentiments, I cut off little pieces of notebook paper with a perforated edge and stamped onto them with Hero Arts alphabet stamps.  I also added some numbers to the buildings using Tim Holtz's Label Letters.

Here are the supplies I used, which you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

I can't wait to see how you interpret our challenge this week.  Upload your projects to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win $50 to the Simon Says Stamp store.