My (graphics) fairy godmother

An absolutely wonderful blogging lady (who I have not yet had the pleasure of virtual meeting, but hope to soon with this link) named Karen has started a blog called The Graphics Fairy and from what I can tell, the sole purpose of this blog seems to be to share her arty goodness in the form of graphics that we can download.

Now I have seen other people who are willing to share their goodies at times, but it’s far more common to find people who are trying to sell their goodies instead. But from the “about the site” post, it seems that her motives are entirely pure. Not only is she willing to let you use the graphics in personal art and pieces for trade, she’s even an Angel company, which means she’s letting you use them in pieces you plan to sell, as long as you use no more than four of her graphics in any one piece. I think this is so nice of her, and I so wish I had an award to give her. Unfortunately, I have not yet (here’s hoping!) been blessed with a “Nice Matters” award or she’d definitely be a person to pass it on to. At my company when someone does something above and beyond the call of duty (so to speak–we’re not exactly in the business of saving lives or anything) their coworkers have the ability to present them with a star. It doesn’t come with any formal recognition, or any monetary value or anything. It is just a way to recognize your peers and let them know you appreciate them. So in lieu of any actual award to give Karen, I am hereby awarding her a virtual star for going above and beyond. Thanks, Karen, for sharing with all of us!

I’ve been tagged…

Karyn over at Fat Orange Cat tagged me to list six weird or interesting things about myself. I promptly told her that she was very mean for making me do something so difficult (and I think I may have scared her off a bit) but then I thanked her profusely for being my first tagger. So, I have to now list the six things and then go tell the people I tag to come check here…Here are the official rules: list six weird/interesting things about yourself and then tag a further six bloggers (by going to their blogs and telling them to check out your blog post related to this) to keep the momentum going. List your six tagged bloggers at the bottom of your post.

Hmmm…I’m not a very interesting person, maybe I should focus on weird or unusual.

1. I’m 30 and still not married. Not all that weird, but neither have I ever been engaged, nor even come close to trying. In fact, I’ve only had two “boyfriends” and neither of them were all that serious. Maybe I’m just flighty.

2. I’m 30 and I don’t want to be married. If you had grown up where I grew up, you’d realize just how weird/unusual this really is.

3. I don’t like pie. And if you could see me, you’d think this was weird, too…I’m quite poofy, but certainly didn’t get this way from pie, cause even if it’s the only dessert available, I’m perfectly happy to leave it sitting there.

4. I don’t eat pork. And no I’m not allergic, nor was I raised this way. I just gave up pork a little over a year ago for strange personal reasons that I’m not going to get into here (it’s way too long and not all that interesting) and have only had it twice since then. And both of those times were accidents.

5. I sure miss pork (not the weird part), but still don’t eat it (the weird part, since there is nothing holding me back from doing so other than my own stubbornness and the fact that I’m so proud of having gone without it for over a year–well except those two times that I couldn’t help)

6. I got tagged the artist of the week over at Altered Belly the very same week that I was momentarily thinking about giving up my art. But of course I can’t do that now. I mean, come on! I’m an [important voice] Artist Of The Week. It’s my duty to stick with art now. So all I have to do now is pull myself out of this arty funk I’ve gotten into and I’ll be all set

Ok, so the people I’m tagging are Tami at Artistic Visions, Kim at Cabbage Head, Amy at Londonphilia, Arlene at Altered State of Mind, and Scarlett at Scarlett’s Web. Sorry I didn’t have six people to list. (If I tagged you it’s because I read your blog and already know you; I didn’t want to tag people I didn’t know through a group or from a past life).

Arlene sweetly created an “I’ve Been Tagged” graphic when I tagged her, and said that any tag-ees can use it, so I added it to my post. I just love it; thanks for sharing Arlene! If you get tagged and would like to use the graphic, please visit Arlene’s blog to download it.

Yippie! I’m an “artist of the week”

Belinda over at Altered Belly has started a new thing called Artist of the Week. She sends out a questionnaire to people who have expressed an interest about possibly being an artist of the week at some point. Then you reply to the questionnaire and also send a few samples of your work. At some unspecified point in the future, she may or may not choose you as the artist of the week. So of course I sent my info along hoping to eventually be chosen. This is the second week she’s done it, and guess what! I’m an artist of the week! I can’t believe it. So, please go click here and read all about little (uh, figuratively speaking) old me.

Free Islamic Cross Stitch Patterns

My new blogging friend, Tracy posted a comment on my Eid swap post, below. She sweetly shared a link to a website with free Islamic cross stitch patterns. This is a great find, as I have had a heck of a time finding any Islamic crafts. I’m not sure how many people actually read all the comments, so to give this site its due, I decided to make a post about it. I sure hope you enjoy!

Eid Mubarak: Ramadan cards on swap-bot

I started a swap for Eid al-Fitr cards on Swap-Bot today in honor of Ramadan, which, this year, starts in two weeks and runs through October 11. It’s actually quite annoying to me that none of the main-stream greeting card sites ever include Ramadan in the holiday offerings, even for e-cards. I suppose it’s made more difficult by the fact that Ramadan is a moving holiday (it gets earlier each year by 11 days due to the lunar calendar used by Islam.) However, e-cards for most of holidays are available year round so you can schedule them in advance, but many of these sites do not offer Ramadan cards at all.

Last year I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the USPS offers Eid stamps every October (which is going to make them look foolish in just another year or so; by October this year, Ramadan will nearly be over. Next year, it won’t be in October at all…hopefully they’ll adjust their calendars accordingly.) Since I could not find Eid cards to send to my Muslim friends last year, I sent them generic greeting cards and used an Eid postage stamp, the best I could do. This year however, I decided to take matters into my own hands; I have made a couple Eid greeting cards that I plan to use for my friends. (I had high hopes for selling them, but did not get enough of them finished to act on this hope. If I can make several more in the next week, maybe I can sell them at the local Muslim markets. But the money isn’t even the issue; I just don’t think it’s fair that it’s so difficult to find cards for Eid when cards for Hanukkah, Diwali (a Hindu festival) and even Kwanza abound.)

In honor of expanding the cultural offerings on swap-bot, I decided to go ahead with this swap. I do not know how many (if any) takers I’ll get for the swap, but as long as I get even one other person, I am going to be thrilled. And maybe seeing the name of an Islamic holiday on swap-bot will broaden the horizons of some of the swappers, which in the words of Martha Stewart, is “a good thing.”

Click here  if you’d like to join the swap. Newbies to card making and/or swap-bot are welcome. I’ll update this post with my cards when they are finished, so check back often.

Altered Playing Card swaps

I have participated in 4 altered playing card ATC swaps through swap bot, one for each suite of cards. The last two are clubs and diamonds, which I finished up this weekend. Here are the Clubs cards:

I used  a set of Russian playing cards as my bases so that’s why they look slightly different than your average playing cards. Also they are not the standard ATC size, which this swap required, so I needed to mount them on a coordinating piece of cardstock. I used two colors of acrylic (el cheapo brand) for the swirly painted background. Then for the face cards I used a glaze of the two paints on the text pages and blotted it off with a paper towel. You can’t see in the picture, but you can actually still  read the text and it gives it this nice leather-like texture. For the other 6 cards, I just used the Tim Holtz distress inks (I think it was Tea Dye color) direct to paper. Then I misted them with water and heat set them to get that nice aged look. I don’t speak any French, so they don’t make any sense, but I loved trying to pick out sentences from the French pages. It was SOOOO much fun. Oh, once the paint was dry, I used a spray matte fixative to keep the paint from rubbing off when I painted them with ModPodge. Once that was dry, I modpodged them twice and heat set. They now have a nice smooth finish and the text isn’t trying to peel off.

And here are the diamonds:

For these, I used the same set of playing cards, just a different suite. Don’t the face cards look so exotic? I got them from Sky Blue Pink. They’re great for playing cards; they have all different kinds! Anyway, since these playing cards are naturally glossy (as are most that I’ve come across), I used alcohol inks on them. The first cards use a combination of the ginger, latte, and caramel colors. The second ones use the stream, and some others from that set. But it was the ink that was left on my blending pad from the last time I used that color combination. I didn’t add any new inks, just some new blending solution, because I wanted it to be a muted purple color. Then after I did those, I added some more greenish blue (I think it’s the stream color) to the pad to make the blue green stand out more. That’s how I did the last three.  The images are just stamps on foreign text pages. Then I cut them out and used water colors to paint them. I didn’t seal these since there isn’t much danger of the alcohol ink coming off later.

I really like how both sets of these turned out. Funny, when I was making them yesterday, I thought I liked the clubs more, but now looking at them today I think I’m more partial to the diamonds. Isn’t it interesting how a nights sleep can change our perceptions?

Skinny Book Pages for Cloth Paper Scissors

I recently signed up for my first big collaborative book project. It’s the Skinny Book Swap that was mentioned in issue 13 of Cloth Paper Scissors (July/August 2007). I signed up through the Altered Abbey which is Chrysti Hydeck’s new online store and general website. We are to make 26 original skinny book pages (as opposed to the ubiquitous fat book pages which are 4×4, these are 8×4, which makes them “skinny”–Thank goodness I didn’t need to be skinny to sign up for the project hehe) and send them to Chrysti who will swap them out and bind them. There was an option for a well-embellished copies project as well, but I’ve never made copies of my art and wasn’t about to start now. So, I bit the bullet and signed up for the all originals project. I must say, right after my name was approved for the book, I started panicking, and haven’t really stopped since then, especially when I started recognizing the names of the other participants as those altered artists that I really admire. I’m not 100% I belong in their company just yet, but I suppose I’ll never get to the point where I AM sure I belong in their company if I never participate in these types of projects. Besides, Chrysti specifically said all levels of artists are welcome, as long as we don’t just slap a sticker on a piece of paper and call it done.

 Well, I have had all 26 backgrounds finished for a while now (I did started with patterned cardstock for some of them, but I went crazy from there; I added lots of gesso, acrylic paints, Ranger color wash sprays, used Punchinella as a stencil, etc. At this point no two of the pages look anything alike, even before I started embellishing them)

 This weekend, I wrapped up the first lot of 5 pages, which you can see here:

 

[Nothing spectacular about these. Well, except for the first slightly weird dreamscape (see below for the other one). ]

and here:

 

[I think the Autumn Leaves one might be my favorite so far. When I saw the background, that phrase just popped into my mind unbidden. So I just knew I had to use it. And this Dreamscape was just too weird not to be a dream! ]

Now obviously some of the same elements are repeated throughout (the mission embellishments I made from an Urdu newspaper and a rubber stamp, for instance) but no two pages are the same. I have had a lot of fun making these, and am still looking forward to the other 21 (ask me in a few weeks whether I’m still enjoying it after I’ve made a few more sets.)  I’ll upload the rest of the pages here as I complete them.

Here are two more from today:

[The man is a bit serious. His text says "He wished...for more peacful times" I cut him out of an Urdu paper and used some Urdu text for his "torso" a la Claudine Hellmuth . Then I gave him a quick spritz of a Ranger color wash spray. (remind me to tell you later about those; I'm sorry if I'm committing sacrilige but I'm not overly pleased with them so far...). I don't speak Urdu either (you're right if you sense a pattern here; see the French playing cards above...) but he just seemed to fit this piece so well; I sure hope I didn't end up taking him from an obituary or something...sheesh that would be morbid. The other one says "Flowers are good for the soul" and has two flower transfers; they didn't transfer completely, which I really liked, cause they look all distressed and vintagey.]

In other news, I also signed up for a holiday recipe journal project, which I haven’t yet started. For this one, I need to make 22 half sized pages with a vintage picture of a winter holiday on the front and a recipe on the back. Luckily for me the creators are counting Thanksgiving as a winter holiday so I have every intention of making all of my recipes Thanksgiving themed, although I may do a few Christmas ones since I also love vintage Christmas imagery. None of these are finished yet, but I will start a new post when they are ready.

Blogging without obligation

I have seen so many posts from people who haven’t posted to their blog recently where the bloggers are worried that their readers are upset with them. They thus start their posts with “sorry I haven’t posted in a while”. Those seven little words are what almost stopped me from starting a blog in the first place, because as any of my friends know, I tend to do things sporadically (i.e. at full speed or not at all). So you can imagine my absolute pleasure when I learned about “blogging without obligation” on the Tartx blog. I absolutely love the idea behind it, since I don’t want to turn into someone who starts looking at my blog as an obligation (because I know from past experience that my posts are way more entertaining when I actually want to write them.)

I encourage everyone who is worried about their blog getting, er, bogged down (haha. a bogged down blog. I kill me!) to visit her site by clicking on the button to the right. If you like what you see, maybe you will join those who are blogging without obligation.

Autumn-themed pay it forward giveaway

Yes, I realize that it is still summer and is in fact around 100 degrees outside at the moment. However, fall is my favorite season, and (luckily!) isn’t all that far away. I have seen several “pay it forward” posts on blogs recently. I have not yet been one of the lucky recipients, but I thought it would be nice to start one of my own. (Thanks to Simply Mein for the inspiration, since hers was the one that made me decide to start my own). The idea is that if you’re one of the first three people who comment on this post, I will send you a small autumn-themed gift (possibly stickers, ribbon, fibers in fall colors, etc.). In return, you’ll post a pay it forward post on your own blog to keep up the arty goodness.

Arty bloggers the world round

As a new art blogger, I am a wee bit behind in lots of things (i.e. getting started with my blog in the first place, duh!) so I did not find out about the Artful Blogger virtual “party” until it was well underway. I consider myself fortunate that I did find it while it was still going on, because what a wealth of great information is available through all of the arty blogs out there!

My contribution to this party is my very first altered CD, which can be seen here:

Isn’t he adorable?!? The materials I used to make this CD were:

• A glue stick
• A magazine image (the pink doggie–he’s from a perfume ad, but seems like he’d be more appropriate for some sort of really strong alcoholic drink *grin*)
• A stamped and embossed image (the Peace word)
• A scrap of patterned paper
• Rub on transfers (the butterflies)
• Chalk ink (NOT, as I later found out, chalks; the first time I tried making one of these, I totally couldn’t figure out why my color wouldn’t work. I later realized I was using artist chalks instead of chalk inks)

The assembly of the CD was pretty straight forward:

1. I tore a strip of patterned papers and inked the edges (here I used the same color as my CD because it was the only color I had, but perhaps it would have looked nicer if I had used a contrasting color).
2. I glued the paper to the CD (I use a glue stick for nearly everything but any other paper-appropriate adhesive would probably have worked fine).
3. I glued the magazine image, overlapping the patterned paper (I left his ear sticking off because I liked the 3D look it gave to the CD).
4. I stamped and embossed the word, and cut it out, trimming closely. Ok, this step is fudged a bit. Actually, I tried embossing the word directly onto the piece, overlapping the doggie and the CD. However, it kept getting all splotchy, which is when I decided to go for a separate image on cardstock. Hey, there are no mistakes in altered art, remember?
5. I applied the stamped image over the previously stamped and ruined word. *grin*
6. I applied the rub ons in a pleasing manner, making the last one look like it was landing on his ear. (A nice touch, don’t you think?)
7. I inked up the whole piece with my chalk ink. Any sort of ink for non-porous surfaces would have worked. However, this was all I had on hand at the time.
8. I heat set the whole thing for a few minutes.
9. I had torn my paper so that the hole was open. However, had I chosen to cover the hole, I may have either cut or torn out the opening as I saw fit. In this instance, I’m using it as a wall hanging in cubicle world, so I use a thumb tack through the hole as it’s hanger. Pretty efficient if I do say so myself.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my contribution to the arty blog party.