vintage birthday card

Hello all,

Hope you're all doing well, we're enjoying a vacantion day here in Belgium. The weather is not with us though, I think summer might be over.

That's not all bad, because then I don't need to feel bad anymore if I'm sitting inside in my art studio.

Here is just a quick post with a birthday card I made for my aunts' birthday, which is today. hope she likes it.

Me time Message #4 - Stress

For message #4 we needed to create a patchwork with a stamp. I didn't immediately know which stamp I would use so I browsed through my stampcollection and found a narrow text stamp which I never used before but thought would fit the bill. When I read on the package what was written on the stamp I couldn't believe my luck. My message to me is about stress and the stamp read: everywhere peace, everywhere tranquility. How perfect was this. To color in my patchwork I used some gel sticks, everybody keeps on saying how great they are and how creamy they are well it's all true. Some washi tape, an image of buddha and the quote You can do anything, just not everything (which is so true) and the circles in dimensional paint finishes of the piece.

It' such a fun project, we get clear instructions but still everybody creates such totally different pieces. If you want to see some of the others just click here.

rainbow shower canvas

Today we, me and my 4,5 year old son, made a canvas to hang in his new playroom.
I had seen this technique a while ago and definitely wanted to try this.
What technique you are wondering, well melting crayons.
Super easy (even my son is able to do it), cheap and so much fun.
All you need is a canvas, a whole bunch of crayons, something to glue them on to the canvas (I used a hot glue gun) and a hairdryer, that's all.

step 1: choose your colors (we choose all the colors of the rainbow)
step 2 (optional): remove the wrappers around the crayons, my son opted for this, but o boy, did this take forever.
step 3: glue the sticks to the canvas

step 4: very important step!!! do not forget to protect the floor and wall because everything gets splattered (even my hairdryer had suddenly turned artisticJ)
step 5: LET THE FUN BEGIN, just heat up the crayons with your hairdryer and see it drip until you're satisfied with the result.

I painted a silhouette of a boy happily stepping in the rainbow shower

mind

When I came cross this quote  Creative minds are rarely tidy I immediately knew what to do: make a messy painty page.

First I started by making a stencil with paint splatters.

Then the fun could begin: 

using a sponge and different colorful colors I stenciled through my new stencil.

Next I dripped some acrylic paint onto my page and to top of the mess I added some splattering.

Now I just needed to add the quote and done.

I like the fact that I finally managed to make a page with still some white space coming through, yeah.

logic and imagination

Hello,
I managed to catch up with challenge # 14

Searching for quotes with the words imagination and logic my eye fell on this one:

Imagination is more important than knowledge from Albert Einstein.

But then I realized I already used this for the word knowledge

Back searching, but not for too long because I found another one from Albert Einstein with both words in it

Logic will take you from A to B, but imagination everywhere.

And immediately I knew what to do.

I started out by collaging some random pieces that were laying on my desk 

and gessoeing the page.

On top I sprayed some Dylusions spray inks and used a stencil and a babywipe to create some pattern.

Then I randomly stamped the letters A and B all over the page and connected them with each other.

Then came the moment of hesitation because I was liking what was already on the page but knew it was not quite there yet, but what next??

So I added the quote and an image of Einstein, but no, still not ok,

The summer challenge from Clare is teaching me how to proceed and keep on layering so that is exactly what I did.

I added some bubble wrap stamping, already better but still not there.

And then it dawned to me, I tossed the image of Einstein and added embossed images from all things imaginative: a fairy, a gnome in his mushroom, a funny bird/chicken and of course some butterflies.

This was exactly what the page needed and now it is done.

And now off to the drawingboards for this forthnigths challenge.

Hope to see you back soon.

Me Time Message #3 - self-esteem

To see the instructions for this message please click here.

I applied some soft chalky inks through a stencil, on the one side I have a butterfly with some roses and on the other side only the roses.

Added a text stamp randomly and gold embossed a chicken wire background stamp, this was the background finished.

On the front I embossed this butterfly image and added some 3D butterflies.

The text “Believe in yourself” was written with an embossingink pen and embossed in black.

On the back I tried to add some glitter butterflies which I stamped with a glue ink pad and added glitters, but you can’t really see the image.

I probably better first stamped the image in black and then on top the glue and glitters.

 I tried to stamp afterwards with black, but this only caused my stamp and ink pad to be loaded with glitters.

The text stamp “know thyself” fitted in with the fact that you need to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, to come to a healthy, positive self esteem.

The irony of it all is that the message is about low self-esteem and I’m in doubt about the finished result, my inner critic is speaking so loudly I don’t seem to hear anything else.

Me Time Message #2 Caring

For all details about Me Time messages please click here.

For this project I started with a red envelop which contains a journaling card about the word caring.

I've been using this characteristic a lot the last couple of days because my son got the chicken pox.

First off I painted yellow stripes with an old credit card, glued pieces of matching papers and added some more stripes but now with orange, as I thought the orange is not clearly visible. I added some stamping and inked the edges. We were also supposed to stamp with paint, I like how that turned out, this is not something I do often but will certainly be doing more in the future.

I found this cute picture of Charlie Brown who is nursing Snoopy which was just perfect, I fussy cut them out and added some straw DI (maybe next time first inking and then cutting because with the small pieces I had to be very carefull not to tear them)

Then I just needed to add my text: loving, caring, sharing, this is family.