Lots of NEW stuff!!!
My next bit of news is that I’ve been working on the Circle Journals that I mentioned briefly in a post on the 3rd of April. Just to refresh your memory if you hadn’t read that post, it’s through a digital scrapbooking website, called Devine Digital. If you’d like to see the pages that I’ve done so far you can go to my gallery on their site. You can go there by clicking on this link. MY DIVINE GALLERY!! So far, you’ll find my cover page for my journal, a page for a journal about “Favorite Places” a couple of pages about ”The Year I was Born,” and the last 2 pages about “My Favorite Scripture.” You’ll also find the ATC’s that I’ve made for each persons sign in page. We’re working on one person’s journal each week. Our next theme is going to be posted later this week, so I dunno what it is yet…and well I also don’t know who’s journal we’ll be working in next. It should be fun to see!!
Soooooo…. that brings me to May’s assignment for the ZNE Design Team!! This month we’re all making ATC’s (artist trading cards). Each person on the team has two letters from the alphabet to work with. We then have to make one ATC for each letter. My two letters are “K” and “E.” After picking our letters we were given backgrounds to use on the ATC’s. To get a preview of what these look like you can click here. Of course mine didn’t have the copyright symbol on it, but I thought you’d like to see an example. So, we printed out the backgrounds, and picked two of the four that we wanted to use. I used the ones on the upper right and the one on the bottom left. Then we had to pick a word that we wanted to illustrate on the card that started with the letters we picked. For the letter “K” I used “Kitty” and for the letter “E” I used “Eclectic.” We then had to go to this website and type in our letter and our word to make labels to use on the ATC’s, with the settings Chel assigned to us. And here is what the cards looked like when I was done.
“K is for Kitty”
“E is for Eclectic”
If you’d like to see the other cards that other members of Design Team made you can go to the DT gallery to see them by clicking on this LINK. I’m not sure everyone has their cards done yet, but when we’re all done you should be able to see the whole alphabet!!
My next big project that I’ve been working on for the last week is stuff for the ZNE Book Club. I also mentioned this briefly on my post on the 3rd of April. Right now we’re reading the book, Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin. At the beginning of May we were trying out watercolor techniques that are covered on pages 12-16 in the book. The technique I wanted to try out was the one where you put watercolors onto baby wipes and then use those for backgrounds on ATC’s. I tried just putting the colors on randomly first. Then I tried folding one in half and then added color. On the next one I folded it into quarters and then added color. Then I was thinking that I’d try to get a tie-dye affect and did that with great results by folding it into a triangle shape. Then last, but not least…I cut up a wipe into fourth and made little tie-dyed looking backgrounds. I mainly did that because I liked the way the big tie-dyed one turned out and didn’t have the heart to cut it up to put onto ATC’s. So…here are some of the examples of what I made.
The above images are of the wipes I just put random color onto. If you’d like to see more detail you can click on the thumbnails.
This is the one I folded in half.
This is the one I folded in quarters.
This is the one I tried the tie-dye effect on. I really like how this one turned out. I think I’m going to use this one on the cover of a journal I’m going to be using for an altered journal round robin for AAO.
This is the one that I cut up into quarters and then did the tie-dye effect on. These are the ones that I actually turned into ATC’s.
This is the ATC that I made with the background that is in the lower right corner of the image above. I call it “Hugs and Kisses.”
For this one, I thought the little magenta shape in the middle of the background already looked like a heart (refer to the image above, of the baby wipe I cut up). So I used a brush pen to outline it and then added the quote to it. I don’t like how the brush pen bled a bit, but I guess it was just because a baby wipes texture is a lot like fabric. so that’s why it turned out like that.
The ATC’s pictured below are what the cut up baby wipes from above looked like after I adhered them to ATC’s. I like the red/orange/yellow one, but the one that’s directly below this writing doesn’t look as nice as it did before I trimmed it to fit on the ATC. Most of the blue and green coloring from the corners was lost when I trimmed it. Oh well…. live and learn.
The last thing I have to share today is what we were working on for Book Club last week. It is techniques using magazine clippings on our ATC’s. You can find the techniques for magazines on pages 24 - 33 in the Artist Trading Card Workshop book. I decided to try the method on pages 32 & 33. For this method you pick a magazine image. (I picked a neat looking ad for lipstick.) You cut it up to fit on an ATC back measuring 2.5 x 3.5 inches. After adhering it to the background of the card you add Elmer’s Glue-All to the image where ever you’d like. I added it along a lot of the lines in the image. Then you use this stuff called “Nevr Dull“, which is a metal polish. When you rub it on the magazine image it rubs off the ink on the page. Where the glue is on the image it leaves behind the ink, so the glue acts as a resist. After I took the ink away I went back in with my water-soluble pastels and added color back in. Here are the examples of what I got….
The reason why Chel decided to skip ahead in the book from the section on watercolors to the section on magazine techniques is because it’s Magazine Collage Style Try month for ZNE. Each month ZNE try’s a new style. For the current months style, there is an artist featured, a tutorial for ZNE artists to try, a live chat and a drawing of some kind to win some fun goodies!!! So…by having the book club try these techniques in the book, we’re also trying the STYLE of month as well. If you’d like to learn more about this month’s style, or more about styles coming up, please click on the little image below!!!
And if you’re interest in seeing other magazine collage done by ZNE artists you can go here:
Thanks for coming by to hear the latest about my art and me!! I hope all of you Mother’s out there had a GREAT MOTHER’S DAY!!! I know I did, because my DH made me one of my favorite meals and the kids and him gave me a $50 gift certificate for ART CHIX STUDIO!!! WOO HOO!!!
