I Brake for Leaf Flourishes!

hello all! 

my post will be quick as I have a date with my pantry - it is in desperate need of an emptying out and re-orginization!  fun and exciting life that i lead....

i have an art journal page to share with you today and it is in my brand spankin' new Stillman & Birn Beta Series journal - wowza!!!  BEST journal i have come across yet for handling loads of wetness - JUST what i needed!  the best part - they are releasing a Zeta Series which will be even better later this month!  i have done several pages in this journal over the last couple days and i am just stunned how different it is than any of the other ones i have.  grnated all my other ones came from Michaels but they SAID mixed media on them.  these pages don't bulk or warp or seep.  LOVE IT!

that being said - here is my first page:

I took a bit of a different approach with my background and began with black gesso instead of white.  Starting with a black base will give your paints and anything you put on it a very different look.

I sponged across the black with Luminarte Silks in pink and coral.  Next I stamped the Leaf Flourish LG image onto a white gesso page using the same pink Luminarte Silk paint.  I cut it into 1.5" squares.

Next I stamped the Leaf Flourish LG and the Leaf Flourish XLG using white chalk ink.  I finished the page off with a saying.  then i added a stenciled key using viva decor crystal gel and some viva decor gel pen dots. 

The detail and fanciful look of these two flourishes are just fantastic!  What would YOU create with them???  Grab them both and get 10% off with my code SAVE10MARTI!

a peek of shimmer...

hi everyone!

we have had a fun weekend with our highs barely reaching 20 degrees YIKES!  my dad has been here on a surprise visit and i have been enjoying that.  he lives in utah and we rarely get an opportunity to see each other.  I got a call from my stepmom saying my dad was in miami and had just found out he had to be on the Hill next week for meetings so he was considering coming out here early straight from miami to see us for the weekend.  next thing i know UPS dropped off a giant box containing a suitcase full of suits so we figured the visit was on!  sure enough he's here!  he hung out for the day yesterday and then took us all out to dinner for Trev's birthday last night.  i officially have two children in their twenties - seems unreal to me!  how on earth did my babies get so big?  and how did i get so OLD?!??!?  having grown kids is turning out to be harder than i thought it would be.  a real struggle for me - having the benefit of past mistakes, hindsight, whatever you want to call it i have ideas of what they SHOULD do and of course they don't listen!  i am also second guessing my parenting - i should have done this differently or i could have done that differently - none of which is productive!  i am usually pretty good about leaving the past alone but this been a struggle.  like many other moments of parenthood! 

with that thought in mind i made the following journal page:

i began by covering my page in shimmering Luminarte mists - watermelon mist, lime squeeze and golden jade to be exact.  i made my own using water, Luminarte Primary Elements and Luminarte Bind & Resist powder in a mini mister of water.  however you can buy them pre-mixed as well - they are called Radiant Rain and they are luscious!

Once the page was dry I wanted to tone it down a bit so I sponged on some cream and light pink acrylic paints across the page - do this very lightly - you don't want to completely cover your shimmering base!  Next I used the same Primary Elements colors and this time I mixed them with a different medium - Clear Acrylic Glaze Medium - to make a glaze paint.  You can also buy this type of Luminarte paint pre-mixed as well - Luminarte Silks Glaze - to DIE for!  I applied my glazes with crumpled Saran Wrap across the entire page - again LIGHTLY! Once dry I stamped over the layers using brilliance ink - see all the lovely glimmers of shimmer peeking through?  notice also that the glaze resists the stamped ink and shimmers through - LOVE that!

My punched borders are a combination of glaze and mists and I misted my quote pieces as well.  By using the same three primary elements but mixing them with different mediums I created variety in the project while still maintaining some coherence.

My image is a Sherri Baldy image - i just love these little girls!  I colored her with colored pencils - learn how in my colored pencil classes on Color Me Creative!

I brake for collage

Hello all!

is everyone surviving the crazy weather?  we had school cancelled because of ice, the next day we were in shorts and the following day we had buckets of rain and gale force winds and a tornado watch - the gale force winds being on trash day OF COURSE! good gravy!

hubby and i celebrated 8 years of marriage this week - craziness!  i can't decide if it seems like 8 years or not!  i have always been a bit of a gypsy - growing up we moved alot on top of me being shuffled around a bit and i continued that as an adult.  i have this insatiable need for adventure and tend to like to fly by the seat of my pants.  hubby - just the opposite - very solid and stable.  and while adventure is fun i can honestly say safety and stability is not bad!  and i have learned how to do things like clean an oven instead of just move :P  SO grateful hubby has the patience to put up with my kind of ridiculousness.  and little daughter is looking to be equally ridiculous just like her momma!

I have a mixed media art journal page to share with you today featuring loads of shimmer courtesy of Luminarte Primary Elements:

the wonderful magical amazing thing about primary elements - on top of the amazing shimmer - is the versatility.  I chose 3 colors - green tea, lime squeeze and just peachy.  Then I mixed them into water with gum arabic to make shimmering mists for the background.  next i mixed them with fluid glazing medium to make a paint for the stamping.  this gives the project great color coherence!  and lordy look at that GLOW!

After creating my background I created my focal piece and wording piece with some awesome I Brake For Stamps images!

I inked up one of the images from the Collage Elements #1 image sheet with Coffee Archival Ink (so it would be waterproof) and then misted it with the same Primary Elements shimmering mists I used on my background to give it some subtle color.  I edged it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

I typed up and printed my wording.  Then I added some stamping in the background using the pocket watch and clock face from the same image sheet collection.   I also misted this piece with the shimmering mists - you can just catch a bit of the lime green sparkle in the bottom corner in this picture.  Working with the sheets of images is a really great way to do a project!  Which image sheet is YOUR favorite???  why not grab a few from IBFS and get it all for 10% off?  use my code SAVE10MARTI when you check out!

i brake for carnations

Hello friends!

i am spending most of my spare time with my adorable teeny little foster kittens.  Pezza held the bottle for one today and was so thrilled with herself.

I have a quick card for you using one of the amazing detailed collage stamps from I Brake For Stamps again!

This time I have chosen the Vintage Carnation Label Collage stamp - breathtaking details!  I stamped the image in brown ink.

 

To spotlight a bit of the detail  I stamped it again using pearlescent pink ink and then cut out a circle area where I wanted to highlight.  I inked the edges and then placed it over the first brown image.  Very effective don't you think?!  remember you can use my code and grab some of these for yourself - SAVE10MARTI!

sunrise flowers...

hello!

we are in a deep freeze here in northern va!  i think our high today was 22 - add in the wind and WOWZERS!  with this kinda cold i need me some SNOW!  supposedly we will be getting some on friday - woohoo! 

we have spent most of our spare time feeding kittens. hubby has been phenom!  he has all three of them using the bottle instead of the little plunger thing which is awesome as the bottle is a MUCH easier and more efficient way for them to get some nutrition!  of course with no mommy to bath them constantly they get a little stinky so we will be doing more kitten bath time this evening.  i still can't convince one of my older cats to do it HAHAHA!  my 2 old girl cats are completely disinterested.  bubba is very curious though - he doesn't know if he wants to be friendly or is scared to death!  which is funny since they are the size of one of his ears.

i have another piece to share using the luminarte skins me and pezza have been making.  i have a butterfly garden on the side of the house with some gorgeous echinacea bushes in colors that remind me of a sunrise and that is what I wanted to capture here:

 

i can't get enough of them!  the background also has some subtle color and shimmer from Luminarte Silks.  the stencil design is from Splash of Color (Creative Imaginations).  they have a number of great stencils!

my flowers are handcut.  it is hard to tell in the picture but the brown centers have a bit of ceramic stucco medium in the mix which gives them an interesting unique texture.  you can also see the texture in the pink and yellow petals.  i added some yellow dots using a viva decor pearl pen - awesome little things!

i have more ideas but with kitten duty they may have to wait!  what have you been working on?  will you be trying your hand at some jaw dropping luminarte skins?  even a papercrafter/cardmaker can benefit from these - you will have the best embellies ever!

Little love notes!

hi everyone!

have you all been enjoying your 3 day weekend?  ours has been humming along quite nicely with a well behaved little pezza.  she was off friday as well so we spent the day out and about - i asked her if she wanted to go to the children's museum and she said no she would rather chik-fila - um okaaaaay....  afterwards we spent some time roaming a book store so she could gather up some more chapter books - she has found several series she likes - most of them involving kittens as the main characters of course!    yesterday hubby took her off for a visit with his parents and giving me some uninterrupted peace and quiet (his dad seems to be recovering pretty well so far.)  i got quite alot done/caught up with - half way done with my mom's purse, my page in a circle journal i am participating in and even made my first booklet for my own circle journal i am doing with another group - i have made some folded pages into a book with a coptic binding - easier and funner than i ever would have thought! there is a wonderfully easy to follow two part video tutorial on you tube - Coptic Binding.  most of the girls are in ireland and i know several of them well and can't wait to see what they include on the pages!  so things were humming along smoothly and then it happened.

i got an urgent email from the kitty rescue i work with - 5 kittens, 1 week old, the foster mother found the momma kitty dead in the box with the kittens.  the vet things it was some sort of post pregnancy complication resulting in a stroke.  the foster mom works long hours and could not take care of them so me and 1 other foster have stepped up to see if we can save them.  they are a mess the poor little things.  the hardest part is that they need to eat and eat alot BUT they fight it with everything in their power.  i am a nervous wreck!  luckily i have a fellow foster coming over today who did two orphan litters last summer so she is going to give me a demo.  i did follow some of her tips and it is going better than it was at first but not as smoothly as i would like.  it has NOT been like the adorable videos you see on you tube with a tiny kitten happily sucking on it's bottle.  it is much more like my stubborn as hell breast fed only daughter clamping her lips shut and kicking and punching when we tried to convince her to take a bottle.  she wasn't doing it either!  i may be even more scarce than usual in the next week or so as we get them sorted.

i do have a couple little cards to share with you today.  i was asked to make some samples for Little Scraps of Heaven using a couple digi images they have for valentine's day.  i have always loved their cutting files and these images are super cute too!

both images are colored using colored pencils

however i did them in different styles - the one above is burnished

 

 

and this one is not - i left the rough texture to show through and also left a lot more white highlight area.  the background papers are mixed media papers i made myself - you know how i love to get a lil messy!

these are small scale - card size - but i like the look of them.  i may have to repeat them in my art journal or possibly a board!

and now i am off to try and get a few things done while the babies are sleeping before i need to do their next feeding!  if you are interested in learning how i color with colored pencil or want to learn more mixed media techniques be sure to head over to Color Me Creative and check out my classes!  Colored Pencil - Mixed Media

CMC challenge with the skins!

hello all!

so what did y'all think of the skins?  anyone going to try it out?  as promised i have a little project for ya - my first one.  i am over the top in LOVE with this technique!  i did not think it would be cool at all really - but oh it is!  our challenge for Color Me Creative is to use our fave image and our fave color combo and this fits the bill with my new fave technique to boot!  and the prize up for grabs this time - 1 free class on CMC - winner can choose from either one of Suzanne's copic classes, 1 of my colored pencil classes or one of my mixed media classes!

my CMC challenge DT project is a journal page featuring the skins today:

 

the intense shimmer makes photography a little tough sometimes but LOOK at those flowers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The background is a wash of Luminarte Primary Elements too - i mixed them with a fluid glazing medium and brushed them across my background.  then i used bubble wrap and the same puddle of Primary Elements and glazing medium to stamp some messy circles here and there.  seriously y'all - the versatility of Primary Elements - can't be beat!

next i cut out my shapes - just freehand, low stress.  i adhered them to the background with gel medium.  you can see in the flower centers that when i made the skins for this piece i sprinkled micro beads on to part of it while wet.  as good as these look in the photos in real life they are phenom!  want to start your own collection of PE powders or add to what you already have then visit leslie at Dreaming In Color and tell her i sent you!

my page started with this adorable image from Sherri Baldy - i just LOVE these - i only came across them recently.  i colored her up using prisma colored pencils and gave her some added pizzazz with an orange spica glitter pen.  i am really into turquoise and terra cotta lately so she covers both my fave image and my fave color combo.

i am also entering my page in the following challenges:

• Besties - anything goes
• everybody art - girl
• card mania - girly
• crafty bloggers network - flowers

color combos are an interesting thing - one of the first rules of the color wheel is that complementary colors look good - one of those is blue and orange:

not terribly awesome...but when you sort of "grow them up" and use shades slightly off from the true blue and orange - like turquoise and terra cotta - they can really play off of each other amazingly well and give your piece alot of power and wow!

thanks so much for stopping in and seeing what i am up to - i really appreciate it!  now be sure to join in on the challenge - YOUR fave image in YOUR fave color combo - and see if you are chosen (at random) to win a free class!