JAM 13 compliments

With this prompt came the challenge to use gelatos so I flicked through my gel sticks technique book.(which are apparently the same)

I decided to use a resist technique by clear heat embossing a butterfly stamp. I used a pale blue and yellow gel stick

which I blended with a babywipe

Next I added some stamping using the gel sticks as ink, just by rubbing a stick on a stamp.

The third technique I used was some dripping.

That was the background done 
which I further turned into this:

JAM 1 - name

This year I will also be taking part in the JAM (Journal about me) challenge hosted by Tiaresmith (all details can be found on her blog).

We will be creating a round page each week with a given prompt and challenge.

Week 1: prompt is your name and the challenge is to use a babywipe.

Here is a step by step how I created this page

Colored my circle 
with an ochre and brown 
gel stick.

used a babywipe 

to create 

a more watercolor effect.

tried a new technique, image transfer with matte medium.
glued my laserprint image down with matte medium, left it for an hour, after an hour wetted it with water and rubbed the paper away with my fingers and tada my image of Queen Victoria has been transferred.

I stamped a border all around

and cut the letters of my name 

with my cameo 

out of a scrap piece of paper.

The flowers are actually made out of babywipes, I have a stash of them dried in my drawer (never throw anything away), cut circles out of them, hit them with a heatgun so they crumble up, glue them together and add a center. 
This also fits in perfectly with this month's lets play theme so I will also be linking there.

ancient city

Carolyn Dube is hosting a rediscover how to play challenge this year, yeah awesome!

I think it’s kind of a continuation of her permission to play class, if you haven’t taken this class yet I can highly recommend to do so (and pstt it’s even free)

Every month there will be a challenge which you may or may not follow, you can link up to 3 times a week and each month there will be an awesome price to win, like a 50 dollar gift certificate to Dickblick this month.

So on to this month’s challenge which is to use something that would have been thrown away.

I must say I need to interpret that as something that someone else would throw away, as I am a total hoarder and see a use in pretty much everything. (much to the dislike of the DH)

Here is the evidence to show for it, a bin full of “junk”

So I dived in and pulled out these, some teabags and a crown from a cake decoration (it’s a tradition here in Belgium on January 6^th to eat a “three kings” cake which has a crown on top and a treasure hidden inside, whoever has the treasure is king for a day).

I started by glueing the crown on my page as a border

Applied a layer of gesso

Suddenly an ancient city appeared to me (probably due to the fact that we are currently searching for our next summer family holiday and I’m looking at Italy in particularly), as it is on both sides of the page it looks mirrored.

I used a blue gel stick and a babywipe to color the sky blue.

Added some script stamping and colored the holes in different colors of the rainbow.

Don’t know for sure whether it is complete (I know I didn’t use the teabags, these will go back in the box and appear somewhere else no doubt), but for now I call it done. And didn’t Carolyn say that it is not about finishing, but about the play.

I must say I’m still not in complete play mode as I overthink way too much each step, and worry about the outcome…

But heay I’ve got a whole year to join in the fun and find the inner kid in me again.

owl canvas

Wednesday I promised to reveal the owl canvas.
And if you promise something...
So without further ado, here it is

I was inspired by an owl I saw here.
I started by printing out an owl, tracing it on a piece of carboard and cutting him out.

Next I punched a bunch of circles out of gelli prints and glued them in layers on the owl.
Some trimming and then my husband pointed out the fact that the feathers were going from bottom to top instead of the other way around. 

So I started over, not only because of that but also because I wanted to use other colors, more brown tones. 

This is more realistic and fitted better with the background I was creating with my gelatos. 
I handcarved a leaf stamp for this project

And cut leafs with my cameo silhouette.
I also cut a flower with the cameo.

And the sentiment

I so love my cameo, the possibilities are really endless I believe.

This was a present for a colleague who went on pension, that's why I wasn't able to show it earlier.

Carloyne Dube hosts a weekly let's play party, find all details here
I will be linking this project as this is also a perfect illustration of what she says about inspiring each other.

to owl or not?

I really liked the process of creating the background on the blossom page and remember I had a few options to go with that page, I eventually choose the flowers, but the owl was also a possibility. So I thought I would redo it, but this time on a canvas. I actually took 3 canvases and used 3 different colors and different media: gel sticks, inktense pencils and Dylusions paint.

Next I grabbed a dozen of my self made stencils and started stenciling away.

I got so caught up in the moment I forgot to take a picture of the green-yellow one but I think you get the picture.

Then I started fiddling with the focal images for each canvas, and guess what the owl didn't make it again. 

Once I've figured out how the set up an online store, these will be up for sale.

I think the princess and mermaid would be perfect for a girl's room.

ice queen

I had a day off today to cheer on my son who had his first fieldrun today, the rest of the day I had some me time in the studio, which is something rare. So I sat down and created this

When I read this week 's instructions for the Craft Barn challenge here I immediately knew I wanted to use my Julie Nutting princess stamp. She would become an ice queen or perhaps the wife of Santa Claus. I stamped her twice, once on a piece of scap paper with skin tones and once on patterned paper  (with snowflakes) which would become her dress. I used posca paintmarkers to color her hair, crown and gloves. 

The background is colored with blue gel sticks, some stamping with purple and pink brilliance ink and some spattering with white acrylic paint. 
I stamped a balloon sled in one corner and in the other heat embossed the words vintage christmas time.
Thank you for taking the time to stop bye.

paper,paint and gelatos

are the only 3 things used for this ICAD
I totally had no idea what to do before I started. 
First I created some drippage with the gelatos, 

grabbed my scrapbox from my desk and found these 2 paper scraps in blues which fitted perfect. 

Gave them an outline with gelatos.

All of a sudden I saw it, the direction the project wanted me to take. Travel around the world. I grabbed a stampset and stamped with acrylic paint. The text stamp is stamped using a black gelato.

friendship

Already the  23rd stage in the Q&L challenge (the end of the year is approaching so unbelievable fast) and the 2 words we can choose from are friendship and/or journey (more details and all the wonderful entries can be found here)

I found this quote:

Friendship is a rainbow between 2 hearts sharing 7 colors.

I used my new measuring embossing folder to emboss a piece of cardstock, I cut it into pieces  and glued them randomly on the page.

I created 7 areas by glueing down some string and added a layer of gesso.

Colored each area with a different color of gel stick and smudged it with a babywipe.

Used this stamp which looks like a chain that connects, like friendship does.

Wrote the quote on a kraft tag and added the 7 words in the 7 areas.

I will be linking this page to the Craft Barn’s Q&L Challenge and to SundaySentiments.

nowhere

Unbelievable, again only just in time with my entry for this forthnigth's Q&L challenge. And yet this time I started on time. On sunday I did a quick search for quotes with nowhere (as my previous entry already had hug in it) and found this one interesting: Nowhere on your birthcertificate did it say that life would be easy.
So the theme was set: baby.

I used soft colours for the background:
yellow and blue gelsticks
with a white embossed resist of cute owls

This was finished on monday, ok still on track. Next I carved a footstamp, I used an image of a footprint of my son when he was only 6 weeks old (where has the time gone??) and used a clear carvingblock, this has the advantage that you do not need to trace your image, but it's pretty hard to carve and is rather slick to apply ink to.

I made a birthcertificate of my alter ego aka butterfliecrafter.

I used a tag from a pasta package, recycling at its best. The journaling lines are also a homemade stamp out of cardboard and string. A doodled border which came out just perfect and I am also pretty pleased with my handwriting (probably for the first time), so all in all I can say I love the tag.

I handwrote the quote, except for the word nowhere which are letterstickers. Then came the finishing touches: the washing line with babyclothes, the stars and the cute owls again but this time in color.


I will be linking this to my junk journaling fb group and because I'm so late with this entry I can also use this for tomorrow's Sunday Sentiments :-)

canvas hearts

While sitting with my son helping him sorting the colors of iron beads for his project he suddenly gave me an assignement. I needed to make something for him with hearts and glitter.
So I made this for him

I started out by prepping the canvas with some gesso and scribbling some yellow and green gelsticks on it

which I smooshed out with a wet babywipe. Love the magic of seeing the dry crayon-marks turn into paint. I sprinkled some salt on to the canvas while it was still wet and let it dry, but I didn't achieve the desired effect. O well, so be it, it did however add a glimpse of glitter so that was good as that was part of my briefing. 

I cut some hearts out of bookpages which I also colored with the gelsticks and added a black border with a babywipe which I rubbed over the black gel stick. Some washitape and text stamping and I was pleased with how the background turned out.

I knew the focal point would be the hearts my son had made with the iron beads but it needed something more, while browsing my box with collage material I found these cute birds thorn from a kids book and another bird from a magazine add.

I like how it appears that they are looking at each other or even how  it seems that the bird is serenading the 2 birds up in the tree.

marbled

The background for this page is made using red and orange gel sticks. Through my new homemade brick wall stencil I removed some of the color with a baby wipe.

I stamped an angel statue and some columns on the marbled papers (which immediately popped into my head when I saw the word marbled,these papers were made in a crafting session with my son using shaving cream). After cutting the images out I was a bit disappointed because the nice marbled effect was hardly visible.

For that reason I used the stencil as a template to cut out some bricks and glued them randomly on the page and added a marbled plaque with my quote on it: write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble.

gellistickexperimentsbooklet

If I would lay that word at Scrabble I surely win :-)

I made this cute little book using the crossed-structure binding I found in the book "Making handmade books" from Alisa Golden. The cover is made out of a piece of those large sheets of paper I have laying on my desk to clean of stencils, stamps,...

When I read the instructions, I found them complicated, but while making the book it all became clear. The book has over 100 bindings, so I have a few more books to go if I want to give them all a try :-)
I will use this booklet to keep track of all my experiments, like the ones I did with the gel sticks.