Wendy Vecchi, Art Anthology, Challenges ... a Tutorial

This is gonna be a long one.  This all began last weekend at the Stamp Scrap Art Tour in Edison, NJ.  This was probably their best show yet here in NJ (in my humble opinion).  We actually had Ted Cutts from Stamper's Anonymous there!  Yay!

I was so excited to finally meet him!  I've always heard from Wendy Vecchi & Tim Holtz how wonderful, funny & generous he is, and they were right!

We went down Friday night for the Make 'n Take Dessert event, and our friend, Grace, came down, as well as "the Kathys" (two sisters we met at the Scrapbook Expo in Somerset, NJ back in September).

Two sweet, fun new stamping/scrapbooking buddies.  Here's Catherine on the left, and Kathyria on the right.

So, many, many dollars later, my bestie, Andrea, and I were on our way out (loaded down with full shopping bags), and we sought out the Kathys to say goodbye.  We found them at the Technique Junkies booth waiting patiently for their turn at the make 'n take table.  I noticed what they were making, and almost fell over!

I took so many pics that day, but I believe this was the sample of the make 'n take with the talented Pat Huntoon herself teaching it!

It took a while, but we finally got our turn, and I was introduced to the wonderful world of Art Anthology Dimensional Paints & Colorations Sprays!

Fast forward to our tutorial today.  I'm entering this is four (yes!  FOUR) challenges:  Make Art with Wendy Vecchi--celebrate fall; Simon Says Stamp Challenge--letter N (nature); Jennifer McGuire--share handmade kindness with someone who works in my community (I'm going to give this to Karla, who's a hairdresser down in town here); and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge--Thinking of You.

Let's begin ...

I really wanted to play with my new paints, so I decided to make three cards.  I began by stamping the large flower from the Wendy Vecchi True Art set.  I stamped it 3X on each card with Black StazOn ink.

I made 3 masks using Tim Holtz's Mask Sheets.  After stamping on the sheet with Black StazOn, I peeled the mask off the backing sheet and placed them on plain copy paper before cutting.  I did this for 3 reasons:  It's easier to see where I'm cutting with the white paper behind; the paper cuts down the stickiness of the mask so as not to damage my card; and it's easier to store on the backing sheet now.

The mask after cutting out.

The mask on the larger backing sheet.

All 3 of my masks on their backing sheets.

I needed a stamp to fill in the background, so I tried this old Pretty Petals background stamp from Stampin' Up! ... not bad, but it's not exactly what I had in mind.

After going through all the stamps in my vast collection, I found this set.  Sorry, but I don't know what company it's from.  I used the floral wreath with the bee in the center.

Perfect!  Just what I wanted.

I got to work painting.  I used the Art Anthology Dimensional Paints, and started using Vegas Gold, Red Velvet, and Imperial (respectively).

I added some Pumpkin Spice to the Vegas Gold flowers, and then painted all the leaves & stems with Basil.  Only one card ended up with bees, and I painted the bodies with Vegas Gold, and the wings with Gold Digger.

Now, I was ready for the Colorations Sprays!

I started spraying with Siesta Key ...

... and went crazy from there, adding Patience, Glorious, Rustic, and Plush.

On our make 'n take, we used the Stone Effects Dimensional Medium in Lava to stencil a word.  I wanted to use Wendy's Classic Words stencil.  It was a little watery then I remembered, but I did it anyway (just noticed SHAKE WELL on the bottle now while looking for the color name, duh!).  Messed up a little, but I can live with it.

At the time, I thought it was because the stencil was too small, so I used the Art Anthology Soliloquy stencil I bought when I purchased the paints at the Techniques Junkies booth.

This came out much better, and I was happy, but I decided to use my black Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste on the last card.

It looked a little lost, so I added 3 more words, with a little drying time in between each so as not to smudge.

Cool.  Now, a little Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink around the edges ... 

... and cardstock bases using Stampin' Up! Elegant Eggplant on two, and Early Espresso for one.

I really enjoyed playing with these new paints.  I may just head over to the Techniques Junkies website now to order some more!

Thanks for visiting!

October Tim Tag

Well, if you read my last post, I got my table all cleaned off, and I was ready for my play date with Grace & Mercedes.  We decided to work on the October tag by Tim Holtz.  This is his version ...

As you can see, we strayed quite a bit from Tim's tag.  lol

You can see Tim's process of creation here, complete with full instructions and step out photos.  I didn't have the zombie die, and I usually don't like to make holiday themed tags anyway.  I've had the Bird Crazy stamp sets, and the bird dies for a while now, and I was excited to finally get to play with them!  What a ball we had!

We decided to create our own backgrounds on watercolor paper instead of using scrapbook paper.  We wanted to have our birds stand out on their own without the distraction of a patterned paper.  Since Grace hasn't been able to play in a while, and Mercedes is new to stamping and creating tags, we went to Richele Christensen's blog for some inspiration.  She has a post for some cards she created for Tim using the Bird Crazy and Accessories stamps, and the dies.  You can see the post here.  You gotta go check them out!

I decided to use this saying from Tim's Small Talk, and I cut it apart and added some bling.

I also added some Stampendous Silver Crushed Glass Glitter behind the little guy.  Couldn't help myself!

I added some Clear Wink of Stella on the ties, along with a little bling on the bowtie (thanks for the idea Mercedes!)

I finally got to use some of this gorgeous ribbon I scored at the last Create event we had here in New Jersey.  So sad they're not doing it anymore.  :-(

Here's Grace & Mercedes with their tags.  Grace went with a birthday theme, and Mercedes did Halloween.

Here's a better look at Grace's tag.  Love the background!

I didn't get a close up pic of Mercedes' tag, so I enlarged the one from above.  She did a fabulous job!  This was only her 2nd Tim Tag!  I think she's a natural at watercoloring!  And, it was her idea to add some bling to the bowtie and her witches hat.  So cute!  Can't wait for our next get together!

Mercedes read this post and was nice enough to take a pic of her tag and send it to me so I could add it to this post.  Her background is awesome, and her birds came out so cute!  You'd never know it was her first time!

Clutter Clean-up Challenge

Is this what your studio looks like?  Are you so overwhelmed you don't know where to start?  It was only 4 short years ago that my sweet hubby created this beautiful studio for me where I swore everything would have it's place, and it would never look cluttered.  Ha!  I mean, I always knew I was a stamp/scrapbooking hoarder, but I think I finally have to admit, I'm out of control and a bit overwhelmed.

These are more pics of my workshop table where I used to (*sigh) teach classes.  I've been telling myself lately that I'm not teaching because I want to give myself a break, but alas, it's probably just because I can't get my table cleared off!

I try putting things into smaller piles so I could put things away more efficiently, but then I get a new package of goodies delivered, or I unpack a bag from a recent crop, expo, or class I've taken, and I'm back at square one!

This is my tall table, where I originally dubbed it my "creation station".  I think once, when my studio was first finished, I was able to create here.  Usually, when I have to clean off my table quickly, things just get dumped onto here.

I just have piles upon piles on this table.  When I have to finish off a birthday card or something, I usually balance a box or binder of stamps on top to find what I'm looking for.

This is the floor along the base of my Stampin' Up! stamp shelves.  I've got boxes lined up there from tools I've bought, and I feel I need to hang onto the boxes "just in case".  Time to get them into the attic.

These alone are two big shopping bags of rubber stamps from my friend who finally cleaned out her stamp room.  I can't decide what to do with them ... hold an event where people can choose a bunch of stamps for a small fee?  ...  sell them on EBay (well, I'd have to learn how!) ... donate them and be done with it?

This is the other end of the room.  Yup, more bags.  These are piles of organization items I don't use anymore, like five(!) Tim Holtz stamp binders.  Baskets, boxes & bags of scrapbooking embellishments.  I've got a sewing machine cabinet buried in there!

This wall is my favorite part of the room.  The shelves to the right of the drawers hold all my Ranger and Tim Holtz stuff ... stamps, inks, paints, pastes, Idea-ology, etc.  All the piles at the base are supplies that need to find homes.  And all those drawers hold punches ... yes!  ALL punches!  I don't need all those punches anymore, do I?

This basket alone must have close to several hundreds of dollars worth of new stamps, dies, embossing folders & stencils, all waiting to get logged in, labelled, and found homes.

And, what about this corner?  I've got Wendy Vecchi's Ranger suitcase (it came home with me from the trip to England with Wendy Vecchi--she emptied it from class supplies, and I filled it with stamps & supplies from a stamp store in London), and a huge rolling bag with supplies from an event that was probably a year ago!

OK, so this pictorial confession is a challenge for myself.  I'm having a friend or two over Wednesday night to have a creative play date.  My goal is to at least get my table cleaned off, and things PUT AWAY, not just piled onto the other table!  I'm going to post before and after pics over the next few weeks of all this clutter disappearing and to keep myself accountable.  Maybe I'll do some giveaways while cleaning stuff out.

If you want to see more classes once again in Mrs. Rodgers' Neighborhood, please, keep me on task!  Now, I'm off to get started!

World Cardmaking Day

I went to a crop last Saturday, but I wasn't really in the mood to scrap, so along with all my scrapbooking supplies, I also brought my latest die acquisitions and label maker and wanted to organize them.  When I got to this Simon Says Stamp Mod Circle die, I just had to play.  I saw this technique done on a blog months ago (I thought it was Jennifer McGuire, but maybe Kristina Werner?--couldn't find the post) and fell in love.  I'm sooooo not a glitter girl, but this looked like so much fun.  The die has been out of stock ever since.  I guess a lot of people felt that way!  I had packed my Martha Stewart glitters and Stick It paper, just in case, and I'm glad I did.  This actually, was the 2nd card I made.

I wanted this first card to be golds, silvers & browns, and I was so disappointed with the Stick It paper.  You can see the line across where the seam was between pieces of release papers.  I didn't notice this until all the glitters were done.  The adhesive is a fine film, so when I lifted the 2nd piece of release paper off, the film stayed with the release paper, and not on my card.  I can fix that like above, but what a bummer!

I was playing with the leftover pieces, and this is what I came up with.  They still need to be finished.

This was another die I bought.  I liked it because you could do an entire background, or just cut out individual words.  I'm not sure of who makes it, and it's still packed away with all my gear which is still in my car.

I cut out three of these because the first one had a few spots where it didn't cut all the way through.  I tried it again using just a metal shim from Memory Box, and then again with the Metal Precision Base Plate by Sizzix.  I think for this die, the metal shim worked the best.

I didn't want to waste all those beautiful letters, so I started running them through my Xyron machine and layering them.  After just two words, I was so done.  haha!  I only had black & white cardstock with me, so I decided to try this.

I still couldn't bring myself to throw out that big pile of letters, so after spending about 15 minutes sorting them out, I started playing with simple designs on black.  Love them!  They'd make great "over the hill" cards.  I could also just use the word happy on the inside.  Plain & simple.

Tried one with the word happy on the front, but I think I prefer the one word cards in this design.

For an all day crop, I only completed one layout spread, but I had so much fun playing with these dies, and also getting my new dies organized.  When I got home and checked my emails, I noticed it was World Cardmaking Day.  Well, what do you know?!  haha!  Guess it was meant to be.

I'm going to submit the top card in this post in the Simon Says Stamp World Cardmaking Day blog post.  Today's the last day to post, and it's the only one that's completely finished!