Red Bear & Zoo

1988
at a "Winter in Summer" check-out party

Zoo on the left, Red Bear on the right

2018
in the craft room

Red Bear on the left, Zoo on the right

Then This Happened

 Red Bear and I have been doing annual Mixed Media projects since 2017.

I don't know where the phrase "Then This Happened" came from, I only know that I came up with it.

Common elements we had to use were:

• wooden letters
• chunk of burlap
• tissue paper with a stamp [it's the butterfly/pocket watch/text stamp that I have] 
• one half of a styrofoam ping pong ball that was bouncing around my craft room
• a tea-dyed tag
• bits of an old calendar page by Marjolein Bastin

Possibly some other things.

Zoo

Red Bear

Make-up Organizers in the Craft Room

 

Acrylic Lipstick Holder
Stacked on top of a 3-drawer unit

Magicals, Tim Holtz Blenders, Adhesives, Water Droplet Thingys, Perfect Pens, Needless Syringes for squirting colour, and bandaids just 'cause I can be careless!

Note: The Magicals jars are ever-so-slightly too tall to fit in the drawers.

18 Mini Distress Inks
keeps my most used colours close at hand

Pens & Scrapers

Perfect Pearls, Memento Ink

Note: Perfect Pearls jars fit into the drawers, Magicals DO NOT, they are ever-so-slightly too tall.

File Folder Holder
small watercolour set, WIP [work in progress] items

File Folder Holder

Glitter Balls

 Super Simple

1. Use empty glass or plastic ornament balls, we used plastic.
2. Pour a liquid adhesive that dries clear into the ball.
3. Swirl it around until the entire inner surface is coated.
4. Pour out excess.
5. Using a paper funnel, drop in some glitter.
6. Cover the opening and give it a good shake until the entire inner surface is coated.
7. Dump out excess glitter.
8. Set aside to dry.

Piñatas for Kids

Howdy! It is a blustering, rainy day in the middle of January and I am hiding away, pretending it is the season I love... winter. Admittedly, it is hard to do when the rain is pouring down. Sigh. However, I am bound and determined to enjoy my plus 5 winter day, so let's talk about something fun.

In the past, I developed the tradition of making piñatas for each of the kid's birthdays, Christmas', year end class parties and moving away parties. Recently I have revived this tradition for my husband's three little nieces. I am enjoying the process of making a shape of their choosing, filling it with chocolate and getting everyone at the party to decorate loot bags for the fun things I bought and the chocolate from the pinata. It has been fun watching the older ones get into it and the youngest one trying to understand why she gets a toothbrush from her unicorn instead of riding it like she was doing after she unwrapped it. For the kids who have everything, this is a blast on both ends of the giving and receiving.

I used to make the piñatas using wallpaper paste powder that I could buy in bulk and use when needed. In this new day and age (lol.. makes me sound very old) I have been unable to find wall paper paste except in an already made paste that is too small of an amount and much too expensive. So... I have started using flour and water which works wonders to hold the shape together but not so wonderful at being strong enough to be whacked with a stick more than a few times. I have been playing with the amount of water and white glue ratios and will hopefully come across a mix that is strong enough to withstand the strength of the girls as they get older and stronger.

In any case, here are the ones I have made in the last year and a half except for the clown. I can't find pictures of it : (

 
 
 

Part of the fun for me is getting the kids to pick their shape. Yes, the oldest of the three wanted a pineapple. I made up the grab bags for this one, as I was not going to be in the province to attend the party and do crafts with the kids.

As you can see, the youngest one's unicorn was big enough to ride and I had fun braiding the tail and painting it her requested purple. I am amazed at how I can go from hating it (it never looks good at the wet paper or dried paper shape stage) to OK... it'll do, after the painting and decorating stage.

I will have to wait until fall for the next request. We shall see what they want this year. It should be interesting though, as what the youngest wanted for Christmas was a pickle and to be a pickle and her middle sister wanted a real live donkey. I can't wait!

Build Your Stash and Craft on $5.00 a week

ˇ˙˙ˇ˙˚˙ˇ˙˙ˇ˙˚˙ˇ˙˙ˇ˙˚˙ˇ˙˙ˇ˙˚˙ˇ˙˙ˇ˙˚˙ˇ˙˙
˚˙°·•·°˙˚˙°·•·°˙˚˙°·•·°˙˚˙°·•·°˙˚˙°·•·°˙˚
Amy Build Your Stash and Craft on $5.00 a week

You Tube series, week 1
https://youtu.be/X3lQvKzxG2w

Full Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxYgyrSBjon18TvLSD4ZKgpIGmV6ULgJC
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
This post is a placeholder for an index list of subjects/projects.

Zoo

Colour Block Backgrounds

Happy Spring Morning.

Today the sun has decided to make a rare appearance, giving me hope that the spring rainy season will come to a close in the near future. This is the perfect time to be doing a post showing some bright beautiful fun cards.

My phone has been suggesting more and more YouTube videos to me lately and admittedly I have watched a few. The Jennifer McGuire series have popped up a lot and I have been enjoying those immensely. So today I will be showing off what I made after watching her Color Blocking Techniques video (I'll put the link at the end of this post). I had a ton of fun and made some wonderful cards.

The supplies I picked to try out this technique, I had either not used in a long time or had never used before. I pulled out the 6 Vivid stamp pads that I have had since the beginning of my card making, back about 22 years ago. The tree stamp I have had for about 15 years and the cute girls under the umbrella and on the bike I bought a few years ago second hand and have never used. This was a great opportunity to bring them out and play.

This technique was fun and playful and the cards turned out nice and bright. I will try it again using some of the deeper colours in my collection to compare the finished results. The white embossing stands out beautifully against the vivid colours and it will be interesting to see how it looks on other colours.

Here's the link   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPRqVbCZ6OY&list=LLrPw3KR7TMCTKUPVvRy-_3g&index=7&t=0s

Hope you are having a lovely spring!

RedBear

Experimenting with Mandala Stamps

I recently purchased some mandala stamps by Kelly Creates and decided to experiment with them before putting them in my drawer.

I grabbed an Island Indigo Stampin'Up stamp pad and stamped a page of 8 1/2" x 11" piece of white cardstock using all three of the images. I cut the page up into four after the original stamping was complete and then did a few more touch up stamping with any blank areas edges to the pieces. Kind of a backward way of going about it but it made for four different random pieces of background paper.

I am not a fan of colouring, as it hurts my hand, so this time I experimented using my Stampin'Up sponge daubers and my oldest ink pad, ColorBox Pigment Ink Option Pad in various blues and a dusty rose. I like the effect and it was super quick and painless, so win-win!

Here are the cards I made from this background. The other two look pretty much the same, so I only included two snaps.

Dsitress Ink Monoprinting

Zoo sent me a link to a video from Jennifer McGuire Ink, on how to do a background using distress ink and heat embossing. It made two backgrounds for each inking, so of course I had to try it out.

Jennifer McGuire Ink

Distress Ink Monoprint (and 25+ Cards)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsySZEPT8HI&feature=youtu.be

Zoo had given me three of her old Tim Holtz distress ink pads, and as they are the only ones I have it was an easy colour choice to begin experimenting. The colours are: peacock feathers; vintage photo; and tea dye.

In the top two and the bottom left you may notice a faded area where I taped the two pieces of card stock together. I used some masking tape I had sitting beside me and it turned out too thick and affected the way the ink transferred. In the other three I removed the tape before spritzing with water and just made sure I held the pieces together without moving them.

I lost track of the video theme for a few minutes when I used copper embossing powder on some of the backgrounds. I like the effect but I think I would have liked it as a more mono colour style, as well.

I look forward to making new cards with these backgrounds. I will wait awhile though, as I have all but two of my cards for 2019 already made : )

More Washi Tape Cards

I attended a Stampin’Up party a week ago and the demonstrator showed us how to do a card using washi tape.

It was fun and easy and so in my usual fashion I came home and experimented with supplies I had on hand to make a bunch more. I made rather a lot, as I have a whole box of washi tape (all from dollar stores) and wanted to see the results with a variety of tapes. The hardest part was finding a die cut or punch that would fit the space without covering up too much of the washi tape and still looked good.

Here are my results.

Washi Tape Easter Cards

Awaking one day with an idea for an Easter card turned into inspiration for 15 cards : )

I am trying to use things I have on hand and washi tape is one thing I haven’t used a whole lot. The following card is super easy and turned out adorable.

I ran each card through the Big Shot with the Stampin’Up dot embossing folder, inked on a goofy chicken poking his head into the space and the sentiment from the same stamp set (Stampin’Up ‘Hey, Chick’). I cut egg shape out of plain printer paper, covered it with Easter themed washi tape, and attached it to the front of the card. Some of the same tape was used to decorate the inside with a big Hero Arts Happy Easter stamp.

An easy, quick card that turned out pretty cute.

 - on the pink card I goofed by pushing too hard when stamping the sentiment and decided it would be OK if I coloured and highlighted it. I am sure my niece won't care one way or the other. There are no mistakes in crafting, right?

Happy Easter everyone!

Using Left Over Paint From a Pour

Morn'n. One more post about the paint from rock painting.

As you may have learned from past posts, I do not like wasting things. Along this vein, when we were doing rock pours last year, I was in a state with the amount of paint pooling under the rocks after a pour. So I ran into Zoo's craft room and pulled out a bunch of circle punched paper and 8 1/2' x 11' white card stock. I went ahead and dipped the circle punches in the pooled mixed paint and then used a plastic spoon to pick some up and smear or drip onto the various card stock.

The resulting paper ranged from cool to baby poo. Zoo's sister thought I was insane and I told her she would be receiving a baby poo card from me in the future. Below are the cards I made with the various punches and paper.