AAJ One - Challenge Index

Altered Art Journal Number One

This is the story of our first foray into altering an old book and using it as an art journal. We've done weekly Skype Craft sessions for a few years now and this first AAJ was started just before Red Bear moved away.  We did the first challenge together, she moved and then in the background of our weekly Skype Crafts was our monthly AAJ challenge.

Ugly Paper Competition - The Story

AAJ1-01 Challenge: Coffee Filter Flowers, Backyard.

AAJ1-02 Challenge: A Postcard

AAJ1-03 Challenge: A Quilt Design

AAJ1-04 Challenge: Dried Leaves and Angled Pockets

AAJ1-05 Challenge: An Ugly Paper Competition

AAJ1-06 Challenge: Fredward, Glitter, Ribbon.

AAJ1-07 Challenge: Blue Paint, "January"

AAJ1-08 Challenge: Purple, Felt, Hearts.

AAJ1-09 Challenge: Red, Ric Rac, A Bead Dangle, Stitching.

AAJ1-10 & 11 Challenge: Orange, Yellow, A Window, Fabric, A Border.

AAJ1-12 Challenge: Green, Gratitude Grid

AAJ1 The Covers

Zoo's AAJ1 on Flickr

Zoo's Flickr Albums

Transferring images using packing tape and stencils.

Happy Snow day!

We had a lovely day off work to get outside and shovel out three driveways and then hibernate indoors with our hobbies. Myself, I ventured into my craft room and experimented with packing tape, stencils and magazine pages. Zoo's fault, yet again, due to her sending me another link to put in the 'do' or 'not do' pile. Originally I didn't think I wanted to try this, as the result is shiny and I wondered if I could do anything else on top of the packing tape layer. This morning, however, it tickled my fancy and I gave it a try.

In the video, the lovely lady uses magazine pages, stencils and packing tape, all of which I have on hand, so away I went.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtAGnlU3s8U&feature=em-share_video_user

 This stencil is one of my oldest and is from Simply Stencils By Plaid, 28530 Hearts, Checks and Gingerbread

The following three are from a cheap kids set I found somewhere years ago.

 These two are from Stampin'Up, Dots and Stripes decorative masks. The stripes was hard to get the tape off of.

This stencil didn't work the best. In the video, she warns that we need to rub hard or use a brayer to get the tape to stick through the stencil in finer design areas. I used a brayer over thick foam but this one didn't work. Later I used my embossing stylus to rub in the smaller dots and details of the other stencils, but I guess I forgot this one. Good life lesson.

My neighbour, who sews, gave this one to me. It says 28760Bulk on it and may have come from a fabric store.

 I decided before I started that I would place the finished tapes onto pages I had already painted or sumi smooshed. This way I felt I was adding another layer to pages to make cards, or into altered art books for further development.

This last page with the green, I cut up and made cards out of. The gloss from the tape adds a nice dimension to the cards and I also used up some of the stamped paper Zoo had sent me months ago. Some of the stamped images are just photo copies she had sent, but I used them to finish the cards and I like how they turned out. The pictures don't do them justice.

So that has been my fun day with packing tape transfers. I hope the weather adds more fun so I can escape to my craft room more often.  Cheers everyone.   Red Bear : )

Metal Blog page for real

After practicing with the metal tape, Zoo and I were to do a page in our AAJ2 using this technique. I once again pulled out a variety of things from my collection and went to town. I wanted to use drywall tape, fun foam embossed to look like waves on the water, my tree punch and left over twig punches from Zoo’s punch. These things all reminded me of nature and the great outdoors so I figured I would do a camping theme. Growing up we did a lot of camping and fishing in remote areas and to this day, I love exploring in the woods, hiking, scrambling up and over hills and mountains (I dislike bugs a little more now though).

I started with the drywall tape diagonal across both pages, as the walking path. Then I added the road using my 1999 Lyuell Harlow LG611 Stone Wall brass embossing plate. This I experimented with in my Big Shot. I put the metal tape on strips of card stock, ran it through the Big Shot, and then applied it to the page using more metal tape. Being a very thin brass plate it and then layers of tape on top, it didn’t show a deep embossed effect but doable for this. I thought I needed a defining line between the path and the road so I used the beaded string to make the road edges. 

                  Next, I started on the lake. I used the fun foam with waves embossed in it (purchased at the Dollarama). I cut it to fit up in the corner and wanted to find something in my stash to act as a rocky shore. I had purchased, from the fabric store, a set of two 80’s patches with antique brass half domes sewn on them. They were 99 cents and so I bought one for myself and one for Zoo. They reminded me of the shoulder patches in the Michael Jackson era and made my day at the time. Zoo, of course, didn’t have a clue why I had bought them or what the heck to do with them when she received hers : )        They did work perfect for a rocky beach, though, so this page was making me smile all the way during the process so far!

 For the grass, I used a million twig punches. Zoo needed a twig punch for some Christmas cards we were working on a year or two ago and I found one at Walmart here and sent it out to her. Before I send it, however, I killed my hands by punching out a million of them for my use. Well, I used up almost my entire stash in this project. The grass is made up of many, many layers of the twig punches glued on and then taped over. I found that my double-ended embossing tool worked the best to bring out the desired texture. I love the grass. I guess I am a little bit of a tactile person and running my hands over the grass and other areas on this page feels cool.

The tree in the upper left corner is made with my Fiskars tree punch. It was too small so I cut out more of them and trimmed the branches off and added them to expand the branch system. It turned out cute. The page needed a little something so I added a van cut out of card stock and taped over. I attached it using foam dimensionals on the top and glue and the two metal brads (bought from Dollarama years ago – yes… I love the dollar store!!!). 

 

I painted it with the black paint a couple of times until it had the effect I wanted.

I must say, that I do love this page. I had my book standing up on my table with this page open for weeks. Playing with metal tape is fun and inexpensive. Zoo and I will have to do more with it in the future.

 Enjoy! Red Bear : )

DIY Texture Paste by Red Bear

Hello. I figured my first blog post would have to be similar to tearing off a band aid …. just take a breath and rip. So here goes. As Zoo says, I dislike being on the computer and surfing is not my thing. I am constantly amazed at the personal data and information people put on-line and for me to venture forth into the world of Blogging feels  a little hypocritical but hey…what you do in the name of friendship is beyond hilarious : )     Having said that, I have to admit to enjoying  the activities and inspiration that comes with the things Zoo has found for us to do during her travels on the world wide web. So, if someone reads our blog and gets something from it then we will be paying back for the fun things Zoo has found. I cannot say I will be as informative as Zoo or as longwinded  : )  but I may grow into this method of communication, you never know. I can see my youngest daughter rolling her eyes at me when I say things like that for others to read. I am completely outdated and lame but that’s cool with me.

So…. Adventures with Texture Paste is our first topic. As Zoo mentioned, I am cheap and never throw anything away. As it turns out it was a good thing for this experiment. I save most of the things I cut out with my Big Shot and below are the first things I tried when we played with the texture paste. These stencils, left from cutting out dies on the Big Shot, are just basic card stock and I had to be careful when spreading the texture paste on as the paper tends to curl when wet and the texture paste bled under the paper more than a plastic stencil. The snowflake shapes I ended up cutting out and using on Christmas cards (sorry no photos from that long ago. Zoo can add one, as I mailed one of the cards to her). The swirly one on green is the leftovers of a die cut using vellum paper. It curled so much it was very hard to work with and was not of any use to redo again when I pulled it off the paper after the texture paste was applied. (the card stock template I dried flat sandwiched between wax paper, making sure the curling bits laid flat again. They dried well to be used again and are now a bit thicker with the added paste that did not wipe off). The dress on green is a stamp I have that I stamped then cut out with a sharp knife to use in this experiment. It turned out cute except for one part that bled through a little but it was a good use of rubber stamps to make a template.

The remainder of the samples I tried were used with plastic templates found either in the sewing/fabric store or cheap kiddy ones I had on hand.

 This particular template is made of a thicker plastic; therefore the texture paste is much thicker, as well. If you are using thicker paste for cards it will cost more to mail and I worry about the card bending and breaking up the paste in transit. This box that I painted with plain dollar store acrylic paint then texture pasted on the hearts using the cheap stencil was fun to do and adds my favourite colour into a corner of my craft room that was missing some red.

To add to Zoo’s info on texture paste, I would like to say that I prefer the baby powder paste. It has a nice feel when dry and has more give when bending the paper. I made my Christmas cards last year using the tree stencil Zoo posted and I wanted to have some glitter in the paste. Can I just say that it did not turn out and I wasted a lot of glitter in the attempt. I tried using glitter in the actual paste hoping it would shine when dry. I can sort of see it in a couple of places on maybe two of the 40+ cards I had made. My suggestion is to sprinkle on some glitter after you have used the stencil to paste it on. Good luck : )

The above picture is of the first page of the mixed media book Zoo and I started together. Page one was to have texture paste of the stencil I cut in half and brought to her and stamps. I put paint in the texture paste to see how it would work and I really liked the effect. The clear stamps I used were representing what Zoo means to me and it was fun using her word stamps and bending them to fit into the circles.

So.... months have gone by and, like taking off a band aid, I have fretted for nothing. This wasn't as hard as expected and my teacher, Zoo, has been very patient with me. I hope anyone who ventures our way enjoys crafting with us. Take care and have fun! 

Red Bear : )

Edit to add a link to Zoo's Texture Paste Post

A Door Opening - AAJ#2 - Oct. 2013 page

The Challenge:  Use the leaves Zoo collected.  I also found this tutorial:

Sizzix Tutorial | Mixed Media Canvas by Vivian Keh and her associated Blog Post.

Tutorial starts at 5:54, up to then she itemizes the dies she used and cuts the shapes.

The OP [original poster] used a stretched canvas for this mixed media page so I got it stuck in my head that I needed to use a piece of canvas. You can buy pads of canvas for painting on just like pads of watercolor paper or mixed media paper.

I also decided, for the first time, that I needed to rotate my book to the vertical for this project.  Red Bear did hers differently so I'll be excited to see her take on this challenge!

 Here is my layout sketch.

Layout - sideways

I did my sketch in watercolor pencils, knowing that they would melt into the paint as I applied it.  

I had decided I wanted my door to open, thus the border on the door part of the sketch.  I had to plan for the door to be on one side, or the other, of the center of the book.  I didn't think the door would stand up well to being folded in half and bending as the book opened or closed.

On the canvas, it looked very bottom heavy, then I remembered that the canvas was smaller than the book itself, so it worked out fine in the end.

I also laid out the paint colors I thought I would be using.  My color plan was to start with pale blue in the upper right of the project [bottom right in the photo above], to pinks to purple to red all along the bottom [left in photo].

You'll also notice that the bottles of "Dr. Ph. Martin's" colors are concentrated WATERcolor paint.  Yes, I mix acrylic paint and watercolor paint all the time.  I have also used Matte Medium for acrylic paint with just watercolor paint or stamp pad re-inkers to color it! That is one of the perks of being self-taught, I don't know the rules I may be breaking as we play!

I'm also enamoured, lately, with the interference paints of various colors, so that's where some of the shimmer comes from as well as from Iridescent Medium.

For the snowflakes, I got the bright idea to use my texture plates [and embossing folders as texture plates] with coffee filters to make the "paper" to cut the snowflakes from.

Texture plate and Embossing Folders

I always cut a slit in my coffee filters before coloring them, so they lay flat.  Looks cool with the watercolor pencil on the coffee filter.  I just put the coffee filter over the texture plate/bump up side of embossing folder and rubbed over it with a watercolor pencil.

I used a combination of Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil and Inktense watercolor pencil.

use the embossing folder "bumped up" side and do like a "bark rubbing"

Then I used a spray bottle to wet the coffee filter.  Oh My!  These colors turned out a lot darker than I was anticipating!  Except the pink one doesn't look like anything at all!  I wonder what they'll look like after they're dried?

Whoa!  Those teals are not so subtle!

Here are some of the flakes cut out and the beginning of a layout plan with the door, leaves, and snowflakes.  I thought my die cut flakes were all on the big side so I used a border and corner punch to make some smaller flakes.  I also used some of the wax paper flakes that are a by-product of using wax paper to cut intricate die cut shapes.

Plan A - what goes where?

Wait a minute!  There was no orange in the color plan! Shit happens!  When the creativity of the moment calls for a change in plan, plans change!  I don't remember why I put orange in there, maybe Red Bear remembers?

The darker than anticipated color of the coffee filters wasn't so overwhelming once the snowflakes were cut out of them.  There were a few drip marks in the paint that I didn't care for, so I used snowflakes and/or leaves to cover them!

Strategic Snowflake Placement

OK, I think this is it!  Time to start gluing everything down!

Yes, this is where I want everything!

Unless I change my mind!

As you can see, I changed my mind when it came time to put glue to paper to canvas!  I decided to include an intricate die-cut that Red Bear sent me a while ago and to not use a couple of the larger, darker snowflakes.

I also "cheated" a bit on our challenge in that I didn't limit myself just to the leaves I collected for this particular project.  I found some big oak leaves from our yard that I felt were big enough to anchor the project in the bottom left.

The sentiment "The Seasons of Life are Ever Changing" came from Red Bear.

I dropped a red pen shadow on the leaves.

If you open the last picture in a new tab or window to view it as large as it will go, you may notice and wonder about the horizontal bubble-lines in the red at the bottom.  If you zoom in and go to the very bottom right corner.  In between the two leaves, you'll notice a mostly orange blob with what looks like little horns coming out of it.  hmmm, .... very strange.

I had decided to add an element to the page before this in the book, that needed holes put in the paper.  But I had already started this one, ... what to do?

Instead of making a glob of a big knot,  I let the threads just be loose, split them, colored them with markers to match the background,  and used a  blob of GAC to hold them in place.  [GAC is Glossy Accent, Clear by Inkadinkado].  After the GAC dried, it looked ridiculous.  so I just added dashes of GAC all over the page below where the canvas ended.  Then added some paint on top to make them "blend in".

Did I succeed?  Did you notice the blobs on your own or did you have to go back and look after I pointed them out?  I'm curious to know, leave a comment!

Oh, and, duh, here's a pic with the door open.  Seeing as how I went to the effort to make the door open, I should include a pic!

A Door Opened

Done!

~Zoo~


General info/chit-chat about this altered art journal page.

So far, I've deemed every October page to be "leaves" oriented.  I don't know how many more times Red Bear will let me get away with this but ... this time, I had collected some leaves from my sister's house.  We were meeting there to plan our mother's funeral and I was  outside on a smoke break when I noticed some pretty leaves.  I divided my haul and sent half of them to Red Bear.

During one of my adventures out surfing the interwebs, I discovered the tutorial and blog post.  This is the email I sent Red Bear:

"This is different and totally not what I was expecting to do with our leaves!

We will have to improvise, but I think we'll be able to create our own door with our paper cutter and score boards. 

Of course we have a plethora of snowflakes and butterflies to choose from. 

Really different "painting" technique!  We don't have the type of paints she uses but I already have in mind some of my supplies that I want to use with this.  I'm drawing a blank, I can't remember what you have for paint but I'm sure you'll be able to come up with a couple of colors to use. 

I'm excited to try this one!​ 

​ Start the video at 5:34.  Up to that point she is just listing the dies she uses and cutting the shapes.​"

I'm pretty sure Red Bear suggested we use snowflakes instead of butterflies to symbolize the transition from fall to winter to better match the time of our journal page.

Normally, I would have revelled in creating some hand-bombed lettering but this time I used an alpha stamp set for the large sentiment and just plain-printed my parents names and dates.  Maybe my emotions got the better of me, but I just wasn't up to my usual enthusiasm for lettering.  I originally printed their names in purple and dates in red, then decided I didn't like it, so traced over them with black.  That's where I stopped because things were getting messier rather than better!

Introducing Red Bear and a Blog Theme

I started this blog in September of 2006 and really haven't had much to say over the years.  Except for the odd commentary on the news or other stuff I tripped over while reading the internets.

I did find that I had a lot to say about the photos I was uploading to my flickr account, and it occasionally occurred to me that I could be doing all of that typing on this blog, rather than in the remarks section of my flickr photos.  It was only when I started participating in a blog my daughter started about me playing a computer game, that I realized blog writing isn't so scary and that I could do it.

Finally, a focus and a co-author for this blog!  Time to turn this into an Arts 'n Crafts blog.  Mainly paper crafts.  Cards, Altered Art Journals, Mixed Media, some Scrapbooking, Ugly Paper Competitions, Monthly Challenges, Zentangle and Z.I.A., Painting, Colouring, Lettering and Calligraphy, Stamping, D.I.Y. Craft Supplies and Tools, ... but mostly it's all about the cutting and the pasting of the paper.

Another thing I learned co-writing My Mom Plays WoW, is that everything is better with a friend.  It's easier and a lot more fun, to blog with someone than to go it alone. Enter Red Bear, I'll let her tell you where her moniker comes from.  This Stampin' Up stamp pretty much says it all about Red Bear and me.

We've worked together, had kids together, and been posted all across Canada together, and apart, over the past twenty five years.  Red Bear is a far more experienced crafter than I, she's been making her own cards as long as I've known her.  We've both crafted with the kids over the years.  Starting about five years ago we started branching out from stamping cards to other forms of artistic expression.  Having said that, I recently caught the card-making-bug.

We absolutely do not take our artistic endeavours seriously.  We are self-taught [I failed grade eleven art class], and we do this just for fun.

These posts will be about some of the things we've done that we'd like to share with you.  You, anonymous internet reader-crafter, whoever you are! [leave a comment and introduce yourself]  Or, are about giving credit where credit is due, and linking you up with other artists on the 'net that have inspired us and taught us.

Red Bear is a bit of a computer-phobe.  She loathes being online and is extremely data-sharing-paranoid.  I tried to convince her to start a flickr account, to no avail.

My continual requests to take photos of her work, fell on deaf ears.  I thought.  One day I received quite the package in the mail.  Red Bear is so against sharing on the internet, she had physically printed pictures of her work, put them in photo album sleeves and mailed them to me!

I finally convinced her to blog with me by appealing to the one thing that trumps her dislike of all things computer and internet related - saving money.  I doubt I would have succeeded with the cost of printing the photos alone, I believe what sealed the deal is that it costs so darn much to mail the photos across Canada!

Red Bear even went so far as to take a computer course.  Then, my snail-paced life intervened.  It's been a long time since she agreed to blog with me.  When she agreed, she said "As soon as you make the texture paste post, I'll start blogging with you".

Well, I can't make the texture paste post until I make an introductory post ... ... time goes by ... ... and here we are.  Today is the day the introduction to Red Bear, co-blogging, and a Blog Theme happens.

As mentioned, Red Bear and I have known each other for a long time. I was her on-job-instructor at work, then we were co-workers.  Here's a photo of us taken in 1988 at a "winter in July"-themed Air Traffic Controller Check-Out Party.

1988

Gawd, those were the days.  That night was only the second time in my life, to date, that I got sick from drinking too much!

When Red Bear and I were pregnant at the same time, my husband went to pre-natal classes with both of us [which raised a few eyebrows that we took delight in.].  We were pen-pals for the many years our different work postings took us all over Canada and beyond. Serendipity brought us back together in the same geographic vicinity when the kids were finishing high school and getting started in their adult lives.  That's when we started  crafting together almost weekly.  One final transfer took her to the other side of the country and for the past three years we've been having weekly Skype Craft sessions.

Yes, we had to get our kids to learn us how to Skype, but as we were physically separated from our offspring, the motherly motivation was high so we learned quickly.  Then we realized we could use Skype for more than nagging, money requests, dorm room walk-throughs, and being introduced to our child's new friends!

When I began playing on the internet around 2000, I spent most of my time in arthritis and fibromyalgia support forums.  This was long before the days of facebook and we were all advised never to use our real names or reveal personal data.  My online "handle" from then was "Zoo" [that's where the name of this blog came from].  Since then, how much we reveal about ourselves online has come full circle, from being "required" to use our real names on facebook, to discovering the nefarious ways people can use data we reveal about ourselves, back to "don't tell 'em nothin".

We won't be using our real names on our craft posts.  I've always referred to my daughter as "Kidlet" and my husband as "Himself", and will continue to do so.  We'll sign-off our craft posts as Red Bear or Zoo so you'll know who is posting.

Some crafting background.

Red Bear's "go to method for adding colour" is chalk, with stamp ink being a close second.  Mine is watercolour pencils/coloured pencils, with acrylic paint being a close second. Red Bear operates at super-warp-speed, I am painfully slow.  I do have a good excuse, I am cognitively challenged due to some chronic illness, proven with neurological testing where I scored so-low-it-is-off-the-bottom-of-the-chart in cognitive processing ability.

Red Bear is very linear and task oriented, which is great when we just need to get some crap done.  I tend ramble and wander all over the place, getting distracted many times along the way from point A to point B, which is great for new discoveries.

We both love to make our own paper for crafting with.

We are very fond of putting our own spin on ideas and sometimes you can't even recognize the original work.  For example, we often talk about "Sumi Smoosh" as in "we could use some sumi smoosh paper for this ..." or, something Red Bear said very recently "We haven't done Sumi Smoosh in awhile, we'll have to do some soon!" Shortly after Red Bear said that, in preparation for writing a few of these blog posts, I looked up the original Sumi Smoosh by Diana Trout.  While I was re-watching the two videos, I wrote down this question to ask Red Bear at our next Skype Craft, "how in the world did we get from what Diana does to stamp ink pads and wax paper?".  Red Bear's answer, "That's just the way we roll".

I'm eager to blog about our version of Sumi Smoosh and how we turned a sticky lint roller and an empty toilet paper roll into endless, or revolving stamps.  We'll see how long it takes to get that post published!  [hint: don't hold your breath]

My favourite shape is a circle, Red Bear's is the heart.  Red Bear's fave colour is red, mine is green.  We are both fond of glitter and/or shimmer.  Fortunately we've discovered Perfect Pearls, iridescent medium, and fine glitter so we've moved away from what we now consider "kid's glitter glue" LOL

We are also fond of mocking ourselves, cracking wise, being sarcastic, and occasionally, we swear.

Phew!  Done!  One down, one to go.  If you're still reading, you may have gathered I tend to babble on and on and on.  Ya, ... that's not going to change.  I write the way I think and talk.

So, enough about us, and on to the crafting!  As soon as I get the texture paste post up, Red Bear will begin her blogging career.

Ciao for now, Zoo