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.

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.

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.

     

Dot Mandala Painting

Good morning. I am back for more computer torture and will attempt to shrink my pictures again today with a quick post on some dot mandala painting I attempted. As I said yesterday, I am very much a beginner at this painting technique but have enjoyed the process and the finished product.

When out at Zoo's last year, we had purchased dowels of every size from her local hardware store. I cut a piece about 3-4 inches in length from each of them for both of us. When doing my first attempts at home a couple months ago, I could not find my dowels and ended up using small corks from the Dollar Store and pen ends to do my wing-it trial pieces. So the pictures from yesterdays post were done with found objects in my craft room (except the last photo, which was done last month at Zoo's with freshly cut dowels and things).

Having cut new dowels and following a beginner YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rub1aoqnuFY&index=19&list=LLrPw3KR7TMCTKUPVvRy-_3g&t=0s) away I went. It took me a bit of time to figure out what size dowel would work for the sizes of dots in this woman's videos but after a piece or two I was getting the hang of it.

                 

When I returned home from out West, I made a few cards with the small squares of dot painting I had done. They were quick and easy to make and turned out cute.

Practicing on the small black pieces of paper prepared me for the next day's rock painting with Zoo and her sister.

I know I will do more dot mandala painting in the future and will watch additional Shwetart03's videos to inspire and teach me how to do better.

Have a great weekend!

Ugly Paper Contest - September 2016

The Challenge: Red Bear and I were each to make two cards.  One to mail to each other, and one to mail to Kidlet. We were allowed to choose our own base paper.

These are the papers we chose.

Papers

These are the results.

Zoo's Cards

Red Bear's on the Left; Zoo's on the right

Backstory
A long time ago, in another life, circa 2011, the Ugly Paper Contest was born.  Kidlet had purchased a big pad of truly ugly paper.  Red Bear and I were teasing her about it and wanted to know what on earth would she ever use such ugly paper for.  The Ugly Paper contest of course!

Of Course! How silly of us.

The first time, all three of us crafters made our attempts and The Farmer aka Himself aka Hubby, chose the winner. Quite often that is how the contests progressed and I still don't know if he ever knew who did what.  Kidlet and Red Bear most often won, I don't think I ever did.

He did have a farm to run however and wasn't always available.  One of us would choose the paper, make the "rules", and be the final judge.  Kidlet often chose the Worst colour combinations and came up with challenging rules.  Like the time "must use at least one alpha stamp but it must be part of the design, not part of a word".

Left: Red Bear
Center: Kidlet
Right: Zoo

Sometimes the background or base paper was part of the challenge, sometimes we could choose whatever we liked, or from within a colour family.  Sometimes the rules would change part-way through the challenge.

The best part was always seeing how different the results were from the same starting point. We also got to learn about each other.  Red Bear gravitates towards heart shapes and the colour red.  Zoo likes circles and either green and pink or green and peach. Kidlet was never pinned down except for the yellow/purple colour combo.

These are always a lot of fun, inspire creativity, and really take the pressure off.  We're starting with "ugly" so it's not our fault if the result is ugly!

Before Red Bear moved across the country, we took the ugly paper pad, divided it into approximately three equal piles, wrote identifying numbers on the back, and each of the three of us had our own stash in a 9 x 12 envelope.  Also included were some embellishments, stickers, "add-ons". That is how years later we can still have Ugly Paper Contests with the same papers.

Zoo

p.s. As I write this post, it is exactly two years later, Red Bear is airborne on her way here to visit.  Recently some WoW Friends, purring and Bearminimum, asked to see some of my artwork.  I was sad to realize that I have been a very bad craft blogger.  This is the beginning of an attempt to make up for that.  Thanks, Guys! You two are wonderful friends of Kidlet, babysitting Mom.

Using Non-traditional items to make cards and mixed media

 Good morning. Happy 2018!!

Today I wanted to talk about using random things from around the house to make cards and in mixed media pieces. I am not quite as bad as my Grandmother was for not throwing anything away. Her house was full of colour coded styrofoam egg carton stacks, boxes of old nylons fabric tiny pieces, etc. I do like to use and reuse anything and everything I can think of a repurpose for and so this post will be about some of the things I have done.

Firstly, I don't have a subscription to any magazines but the odd one comes in the mail or is given to me. The following is what I did with a Vesey Seed catalogue. I bought a new bird die to share with Zoo and before I mailed it out to her to use I did up almost the entire seed catalogue with them. As it was a very thin paper it was printed on I glued each page onto printer paper before cutting out the bird. They turned out so sweet!

Secondly... In recent years some of the companies that send out junk mail have incorpoated cute little animals and things to catch your eye and make you remember their brand. Instead of throwing them into the recycle bin I have used some of them. [My favourite one I cannot find a picture of. I am hoping Zoo will add a picture of it when she sees this. It is of a cute little red monster with lime green teeth and I made some cute kids cards out of him. He came in two sizes and was too adorable for words.]  Here are some of the ones I do have pictures of...

This next one is from packs of cards I bought on clearance from Michael's. Each card pack had 6 cards and envelopes and cost 25 cents... yes cents!!! Scrouge me could not pass that up. Each set had a pair of shoes and a monogram letter. I have made mixed media journals for each of my daughters and I did a 'Soul Mates' page for one of them. It turned out great! I layered the buckle or bow again to give it some depth. 

 

More magazines...

I love stamps and keep ones from mail I receive and have also bought some cute ones specifically for use in my crafting. 

I saved the label of a friend's favourite wine and made it into a birthday card for him. A reminder to me of what wine to buy him and also a cute card to give him on his next birthday.

These last ones are from a couple of colouring books that the nieces and nephews finished off. I couldn't part with the covers so made cards from some of the bits cut out of them . They are bright and cheerful and the kids will love them (and remember colouring the pages from inside the book??)

Well, I hope you all have an awesome 2018 and have a blast crafting away all year. I am off to visit Zo soon and if I remember I will find the picture I sent her of my little red monster card and I will add it in here. Being frugal in your crafting doesn't mean that things have to look cheap or tacky. It is fun to reuse things and make them live again in something someone will love. Enjoy!!

Red Bear : )