Scrapping by Design

Sometimes you just feel like being whimsical or silly. I felt that way when I made this altered paintbrush.

Not all altered art has to be serious, does it?

The swap at Art for the Creative Mind was to make an altered paintbrush, with the theme Frosty the Snowman.

I made Frosti, Bride of Frosty.

First I painted Frosti white, using craft paint, and added some Snow Writer with glitter sprinkled on top.

I painted two large, green button earrings white, and then added glitter. They became the headdress holding the veil in place.

The veil is tulle. The bridal gown is made from white sheer fabric.

I made “branch” arms using brown card stock and decorated with Snow Writer and glitter.

Frosti’s bridal bouquet is an old Christmas brooch.

I added eyes out of beads and a mouth made from red card stock.

I finished by giving Frosti a string of pearls around the neck and a band of pearls around the dropped waistline of her dress.

Frosti winged her way to the USA where she joined her new family and is anxiously seeking her groom, the inimitable Frosty.

Frosti is entered in the Just for Fun Challenge at Playing in Paradise.

And a very Merry Christmas or Seasons Greetings, if that is more appropriate, to all my site visitors!

This postcard represents a “Kindness Swap” at Art for the Creative Mind Swap Group. The list owner declared that December is kindness month and invited us to send a postcard to another member, of our choosing.

I choose two people and sent two post cards.

I cut the post card out of light card board, making it regulation size.

I used  Hero Arts Jingle Bells stamp to do the background. I colored the stamp with Marvy Markers.

The ornament and angel is a die cut made with the Cricut. I used the Joys of the Season Cartridge and filled in the cut space with red glitter.

I marked around the edges with the same red and green markers that I used for the stamping.

For this month, the AFTCM swap group is creating six altered rolodex cards with the theme of persimmon.

What a fun type of altered art!

In my stash, I found some persimmon colored scrapbook paper with flames and fire on it.

This lead to me to think about the late Johnny Cash and his song, “A Ring of Fire.”

I am not big con CW music, but I do love Johnny Cash.

Anyway, I used the scrapbook paper and I enhanced it with three different colors of glitter glue.

I added an edited, computer generated black and white image of John Cash (that is in the public domain), and to the image I wrote “I fell into a burning ring of fire).

I added two alphabet stickers with the initials JC–referring to John Cash.

And the cards are in the mail to the swap host for distribution.

I made this Easter card using crocuses that I had pressed and dried in the microwave oven. I used the Microwave Flower Press or Microfleur to dry the flowers.

For information and instructions for doing this, please refer to this blog post: How to Use the Microwave Flower Press.

The background is embossed with the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder.

I cut the white and purple circles using the Scalloped Circle die cuts from Spellbinder.

The gold pin is a simple hatpin, and the lavender strip is Martha Stewart microbeads on card stock.

I made about a dozen of these cards this year.

This Stained Glass Easter Card was a make and take at Scrap Arts, the scrapbook store in North Vancouver.

The purple shape was cut with a Cricut.

The stained glass background was created in an unusual way. The oval shape was covered with double sided sticky tape, then a beige colored, microfine glitter was sprinkled on. This incorporated the Burnished Velvet technique, which was developed by a couple of local women a few years ago.

If you are interested in learning more about burnished velvet, search for the term on this blog. I have a video demonstrating how it is done.

We added colour to the glitter by applying various colored markers and crayons to the surface of the glitter. I have not heard of doing this before.

It makes a nice little Easter card. I am planning on adding a sentiment of some sort, and then it will get mailed to someone.

I made this cupcake shaped card for a swap in Art for the Creative Mind Yahoo! group.

The base of the card is made from scrapbook paper, which I have pleated. It is meant to simulate a cupcake paper.

The card top is made from an  Easter card, which I cut and covered with white Fun Flock with clear glitter stirred in. I thought the Fun Flock would be opaque, but it is transparent.  It worked okay anyway, at least in my opinion. The card top looks like a picture made with icing.

The cupcake top opens up to display a sentiment — Hi, Cupcake!

I have added a couple of quilled flowers for embellishments.

I made this holiday card using a circular image of a pine cone that I found in my stash. I think it came from a swap some years ago.

I covered the circular pine cone with transparent glitter, using the Burnished Velvet Technique ®, a lovely way of using glitter that was developed locally by Be Creative in Pitt Meadows.

The card didn’t scan well, but the circle that appears to be black is actually a metallic silver paper, very shiny and bright.

I cut and embossed the circles using the <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00161UAE8?ie=UTF8&tag=businesswriti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00161UAE8″>Spellbinders S4-124 Nestabilities 6-Piece Concentric Die Template, Classic Scalloped Circles, Large</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=businesswriti-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00161UAE8″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

This is quite an attractive card in real life. Some cards just lose a lot in the scanning process and this is one of those times.

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I can barely describe this amazing Christmas card that arrived, courtesy of Jean Bircham, yet another gal in our CST Holiday Card Exchange.

This card combines so many lovely techniques — stamping, coloring with possibly Copic markers, paper cutting, paper folding, stickers, dry embossing, glitter, some kind of sparkle mist, some satiny white glue to emphasize the fur trim on the coat and collar and a large snowflake with a rhinestone in the center.

The card features an accordion fold in the inside, with a window cut out of one side.  A stamped and colored girl is placed on the inner corner of this window. When the card is closed, the stamped girl stands sedately on the front of the card. When the card is open, the girl pops out through the window, and we see a stamped and colored snowman, a large snowflake embellishment and a stamped sentiment.  Small stamped snowflakes enhance the white background.

Even the back of this card has a cute sticker.

I am amazed at the amount of work that went into this card. The precision cutting alone would have had me mumbling in my eggnog.

Many thanks, and well done!  I will be attempting to duplicate this cut before too many weeks have passed.

The most recent Christmas card to arrive from the CST card exchange is this delightful and fanciful card featuring stamped, colored and glittered reindeer.

The card is matted with brown card stock. The inside matting is a pale green that is stamped with tiny snowflakes and the sentiment “Merry Christmas.”

The stamped reindeer are matted on brown and white, and colored brown except for the red saddles and Rudolph’s red nose. A line of glitter emphasizes the snow underfoot, and a silver cord is tied on the small Rudolph tag.

This is a lovely, cheerful, whimsical card. Many thanks to Judy Preston.

My Christmas gift giving this Holiday season includes these two hand-made garden journals.

Both of these garden journals are wire bound, using the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL PINK VER 2 SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL

If you are not familiar, I have a video demo of the Bind-it-All at this link.

I made the two journals using essentially the same design — but with a different style and layout orientation.

The first one has a light floral design, and has a portrait orientation. This book features coordinated scrapbook papers with matching beads, flowers and stickers that I purchased especially for the project. Therefore, the colors and images work together well.

The second has a rustic, grunge look which I hope will be reminiscent of a garden. It has a landscape layout.  I made this one completely from my stash, so I did not achieve the amount of coordination that the floral one has. Although the picture above does not show this embellishment, the rustic journal is closed with another Zutter product, a very nice little clasp, called the Bind-It-All Closure-Frame. You can see it in the video below. The rustic one also contains collage images with a garden theme, most of which I have covered with glitter using the burnished velvet technique.

Both garden journals contain places for seed packages, pages intended to hold photographs and journaling and decorated envelopes to contain receipts, invoices, newspaper clippings, articles, etc.  There are also several pages of graph paper for sketches, several pages of lined notebook paper for notes, and four miscellaneous pages that can be used for notes, clippings, sketches, dried flowers or whatever.

Thanks to various members of my CST Yahoo group who advised me on content. I am not a gardener and wasn’t sure what to include.

Here is the video showing the pages of the journals.  At one point, I make mention of a product called the Microfleur, which is listed on Amazon as the Large Microwave Flower Press For Drying Flowers. It is a great little tool for drying flowers and leaves in the microwave. Undoubtedly you can dry them without this tool, but the Microfleur does simplify things.

I made three of these garden journals, one right after the other. I truly hope the recipients like them. None are likely to visit my blog so the gifts should be a surprise.