Favorite Background Techniques: New Challenge for You at Lost Coast Designs

Hi friends! There's a new art challenge/contest up over at the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity--enter your art using rubber stamps (any company) featuring your favorite background technique for a chance to win badges for your blog and gift certificates for free rubber from Lost Coast Designs!

As a member of the LCD design team, I hereby present you with a project to inspire you to enter. This ATC, "Lesson 175," uses one of my very favorite background techniques: stamping and stenciling on a gelli print. I love the complexity and depth and dimension this gives to the finished piece! And of course, the delightfully weird bird-bug from LCD is just da bomb.

I'll be back later with a more in-depth look on how I made this card, but for the moment, I leave you with these pix. Hope you'll get creative and enter your art in the challenge!

And a second shot, tilted, to show the shimmer of the wings and the dimension:

As always, I look forward to your comments below letting me know that you've visited. Thanks for stopping by!

How Were Those Made? Orient Enchantment Projects for Lost Coast Designs

Hello again, my stampy and mixed-media friends! Today's post will tell you how I made each of the projects that were posted to the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity as part of my design team role to inspire participation in this month's Orient Enchantment event.

Using stamps from Lost Coast Designs's India Set, I made three ATCs. The first, "Do More Than Exist," has the simplest directions...

I started with a gelli print (there's tons of information about how to make these on the Interwebz, so for space reasons let me refer you to Google if you don't already know what gelli prints are). I stamped the god from the India set directly onto it, then colored him with creamy colored pencils (leaving some of the background showing through) and with white and shimmery copper gel pens. Then I affixed stick-on copper gems to the card and outlined the pattern with more white and copper gel pen. Oh, and added a text label, of course!

For "Talk To The Hand," I scraped some white gesso onto heavy cardstock with a palette knife and let it dry. This gave a bit of texture and a nice base for the next layer. I got out some Distress Crayons, scribbled some color here and there, and blended it with my fingertip (the gesso helps the Crayons smear more evenly than they do on plain paper).

Using permanent black ink, I stamped the Calligraphy Square from Carmen's Veranda for a little background interest. Next I stamped the mehndi hand from the India Set, colored it with gel pens in fluorescent and glitter greens as well as metallic golds and white, and cut it out and collaged it to the card along with the computer-generated sentiment.

To finish the card, I scraped some black glitter paste through a stencil to get the little ball effects on the sides...added 3D dots made of shiny white Enamel Accents and metallic gold Pearl Pen...and edged the whole piece in more black glitter paste. This added dimension and texture to the finished ATC.

For "I Is For Indian Peafowl," I first stamped the peacock from the India Set onto white cardstock and masked him off, then stamped the Taj Mahal behind him and masked that off. Next I applied Distress Inks with a mini blending tool around the masked images, then used the spritz-and-flick method to forcefully apply water droplets to give a mottled effect to the ink background.

Next I stamped the Clover Scroll Border along the bottom of the ATC and embossed the image with silver powder. I colored the clover scrolls with colored pencils, and added a border of dots made with metallic blue, gold, and white gel pens.

I painted the peacock with various colors of Twinkling H2Os--the shimmer on him was amazing in real life! Since the famous mausoleum is white, I left the Taj Mahal uncolored, revealing the plain white cardstock underneath the mask.

Lastly, I stamped and embossed the capital I from the Old Typewriter Alphabet, collaged the genus label onto the card, and edged it all in black chalk ink.

And there you have three very different ATCs, but all with a touch of exotic India. As always, I welcome any questions or comments below...I love chatting with you!

Two Looks, One Stamp: The Stampsmith's Ophelia

My friends! You might know from already having read this post how sad I am that the great Stampsmith is closing its doors and liquidating all stock in its Etsy store. The Stampsmith is known for incredibly detailed photostamps (many of which are difficult to tell apart from actual photographs) and very intelligent and quirky images, most of which are vintage or historical. If you care about such things at all (and of course you do!), you might want to visit their Etsy shop ASAP to grab a few of whatever images are left before they are gone forever.

[blows nose loudly into lace-trimmed hanky]

Despite my grief, I thought it might be fun to feature one of The Stampsmith's all-time best-selling stamps in a couple of different projects, not only to whet your appetite for this lovely image (which is still available as of this writing), but because it's cool any old time to see the various looks you can get out of the same stamp. At least, I always dig that kind of thing.

The image under discussion is one of a series of illustrations of Shakespeare's heroines taken out of a 19th-century edition of the Bard's work.

--But soft! What beholdest thou below with thine eye agleam? 'Tis she, Ophelia, languid, nubile, not having gotten herself to a nunnery...

This image above is how the full stamp looks. (Yes, it comes with the text, which you can choose to ink up or not, or even to snip off the unmounted rubber to save for a separate stamp, which is what I did.)

The first project I have for you featuring Ophelia experiments with only partially inking the stamp. You can see that I inked only her face, so that she appears to float in the surrounding textures (which were made with dye inks, matte chalk inks, and metallic inks, which impart quite a bit more liveliness  to the background than the photo shows). The soft edges to the partial inking were meant to evoke a sort of ghostly or apparition-like effect.

The second piece is an ATC whose specifications were that it be made in a Gothic arch shape and in black and white. Here a bit more of Ophelia is showing than in the project above, but I still didn't want to use all her dark hair and garment, so she was again partially inked, and then cut out and covered in layers of B&W collage.

Unlike in the first ATC, where Ophelia is the darkest thing in the composition, in the B&W ATC she is the palest thing. (Unless you count the stars...but aren't stars uncountable anyway?)

The materials on this one were dye and chalk inks, enamel paint, glitter, transfers, and collage, including a black faceted rhinestone in the "firmament" of glitter at the top of the card (which I also thought could suggest a rose window in a cathedral). Because this piece was all black and white, I tried to maximize its dimensional and textural qualities, attempting to include matte and shiny, velvety and rough, hard and soft. Not sure how much of that translates via photograph!--but at least you know what I was thinking.

Anyway, back to the Ophelia stamp. You can see that this is a very romantic and versatile image. FURTHERMORE, The Stampsmith still has it available in a couple of sizes! If you end up getting this stamp, I would absolutely LOVE to see what you make with it. It's very gorgeous. 

But you KNOW I am a sucker for anything Elizabethan (even when reinterpreted with a Romantic-era Roman nose).

Talk to me below! xo

Vintage Perfume ATC, or, Photostamp Sale at The Stampsmith's Etsy Shop! :(

Greetings Stampy Ones!

I have recently learned that the zesty, talented, creative, beautiful-inside-and-out Estelle of The (famed) Stampsmith has shut down her website and is liquidating her stock of remarkable rubber stamps on Etsy!!!!!

[gently weeps]

Yeah, it's the end of a stamping era.

In tribute to the legacy of the great Stampsmith, renowned for its "photostamp" images--stamps so finely made that the stamped prints can be indistinguishable from photographs--I wanted to share with you some art that I have made, to hopefully inspire you to

run don't walk!!!

...over to The Stampsmith's Etsy store to snap up some of these iconic images before they are gone forever.  :(

Here is an ATC inspired by vintage perfume ads, featuring The Stampsmith's Classic Couple stamp (currently still available as of this writing!):

Yeah, that's a rubber stamp. #NotAPhoto

Cool, huh?

I made this card in tones of gray and silver, using shades of metallic purple watercolor for extra shimmery oomph on the flowers and brand name. I collaged on a bit of silver foil-lace and added a border of liquid silver embossing powder for more texture and shine.

The metallic effects don't always photograph well, so here's another shot of the card in different lighting. Here you can even see the shimmer in the purple:

Anyway, if you love vintage images...and/or rubber stamps...and/or cool stuff in general, do visit The Stampsmith in its final weeks. I don't know of anyplace else you can get stamps quite like these. ;-(

P.S. As always, I welcome your comments below. Have you used photostamps before?

Words and Music: Deciding How to Work with Someone Else's Captions

One of my favorite kinds of projects to do are collaborative artist trading cards--or ATC jams (where typically one person makes a background, sends it on to a second person who adds a focal point, who in turn sends the card on to a third person for final touches). These collaborations can move to some really unexpected (and quite wonderful) places as each artist brings her own individuality and eye to bear on the composition.

One of the challenges that I particularly enjoy is how to work WITH the elements left for me by the artists who have gone before me in the piece. For me, a successful collaboration means honoring what the other artists have done by attempting to preserve its integrity while adding to the whole with my own vision. I don't consider it a success when one artist negates what another has done by, for example, covering up previous contributions ("covering up" in the sense of obliterating or rendering invisible, not layering upon). How to both show and build upon what the others have already contributed? This is the challenge, and for me, the delight: art as a puzzle to solve.

"a successful collaboration
means honoring
 what the other artists have done"

A recent ATC jam that I worked on presented a fun challenge: it came to me already captioned with not only words but bits of sheet music. (Some of you may know that I am a musician as well as a visual artist. Fragments of music as used in collage thus always carry an extra layer of meaning for me, as I can hear in my head the tune that is shown as well as usually discern the type of music it is and the time period it comes from--such as a Romantic-era piano piece, or a fragment from a church hymnal, or a bit of a jazz lead sheet. Consciously or unconsciously, these musical bits color my perceptions of the rest of the piece. Ideally, they harmonize! LOL)

But back to the jam at hand. The first layer as created by Marie was a richly colored gel print in a geometric honeycomb pattern overlaid with deep amber swirls:

It had nice texture and depth to work with--two qualities that always make the finished product more interesting!

Layer Two was added by Charlotte. She distressed some sheet music fragments and added some little raised tiles with text on them, both of which introduced the color black into the palette. She left plenty of room for the third artist--me--to interpret her and Marie's contributions and finish the set of cards.

What was interesting to me about what Charlotte did was that all three of her sheet music fragments and all three of her captions were different from card to card. 

On the first card, she specifically seemed to link the music and the text, with the words "Life is" from the first and "independence" to the latter. This strengthened my natural inclination to "hear" the music fragment as melody to the accompanying texts. (Since the key signature is visible, I felt pretty sure the next note would have been an F# for the syllable "in-"...and wondered how the rest of the word "independence" might be set to the music!) With D major being a pretty upbeat, happy, and even brash key, and with Marie's color scheme suggesting Independence Day, I started to think along patriotic lines in contemplating what I might add.

But did I want to pursue the line of combining music plus text? When I looked at the other two cards, I tried to think of a contribution from me that would be fairly unified across the set and that would also honor the work of Charlotte and Marie.

"This is the challenge, 

and for me, the delight: 

art as a puzzle to solve."

The card reading "explore, dream, discover" to me seemed to have a softer sentiment than the other two cards, owing to the word "dream" (thus making me think that perhaps the music fragment from the last card, in A-flat and with its rhythmic swaying between two notes, might have gone better with this particular text...and that the 4/4 G-major frag, which could conceivably be a march, might have gone better with "so the adventure begins"...). But if I disregarded the word "dream," the sentiments of "explore" and "discover" were still pretty bold... How did these words fit with the patriotic feel I was getting from the first card? And what could I do? Maybe find vintage illustrations, perhaps from the Colonial period, that might reflect these ideas?

I rather quickly discarded that idea as being too literal. Furthermore, I felt that Charlotte's contribution, differing as it did from card to card, introduced enough variation to the set; I started to think that I wanted my contribution to be approximately the same across the three cards, and to let the variety in Charlotte's words set the frame of how the viewer would see my contribution, with Marie's background playing the foundational role.

I also realized about this time that the great majority of viewers of these cards might not read music at all, or if they did, might not think to try to link what the music was actually saying to what the texts also said. So I decided to treat the music as largely a merely visually decorative element at this point as I further pondered my contribution.

I did like the vintage illustration idea, but I decided I wanted something quirky and perhaps downright odd. I struck upon this illustration of a maiden leading a moose by a ring through its nose as being wonderfully weird:

AND...when I tried this picture on with each of Charlotte's captions, some new meanings seemed to emerge in regards to what the illustration now seemed to say under each of the sentiments. "Independence" now seemed ironic, since the creature was literally being led by the nose by the maiden. "Explore, dream, discover"--perhaps the maiden was about to be in for the exploration and discovery of her life! (Just how genteel could this besuited moose really be?) "And so the adventure begins" also seemed ironic and perhaps dire; was this to be an adventure for the moose, or for the maiden? Where is she leading him? To the slaughter?

"These slightly uncomfortable
and ambiguous juxtapositions
pleased me greatly." 

YES. These slightly uncomfortable and ambiguous juxtapositions pleased me greatly. I found them thought-provoking and darkly humorous and a little bit weird, which are pretty much my three favorite qualities in a piece of art. I knew in a flash that I had found my contribution. Now to finish the cards!

I manipulated the original illustration in Photoshop to adjust the color cast so that it would be more harmonious with Marie's color scheme. Once it was affixed to each card, I made the colors even more brilliant by adding some creamy colored pencil to embolden the figures and keep them from being dominated by the rich and busy background.

My figures needed a bit of a ground to appear against, which would also help reduce the impact of the background, so I chose some translucent washi tape in a vintage music print that would echo Charlotte's music fragments. (All this music seemed to lend a fairy-tale or pastoral quality to the whole as well, like some sort of Sondheim-esque "Hello Little Girl" vignette.) This washi also repeated the black that she had introduced to the palette; to play up the black and frame the composition, I edged the cards in soft chalk ink, then added an enamel-like border of melted embossing powder.

And voila! My work here was done.

Mini Gallery: Ladies of the French Revolution

Here's a series of three ATCs I did that all feature eighteenth-century ladies in elaborate hats and embossing powder "seals" that I thought seemed reminiscent of how letters used to be sealed with wax.

Another thing that ties this series together is the use of a particular shade of Twinkling H20s, a shimmery watercolor paint. The shade is called "Scarab Beetle" and it is an "interference" color, meaning that it looks like one color when light hits it a certain way, and a different color when viewed from a different angle--in this case, the two metallic colors are a kind of pinkish copper and an olive color. Really gorgeous in person...reminiscent of soie changeante, a French silk that looks different in different lights.  :)

I. "Un Chapeau Magnifique"

II. "Au Bal III"

III. "Secrets of the Fan"

Two Kinds of Resist: Creating a Background AFTERWARDS

Hi guys! I thought I'd bring you a quick tutorial on not one but TWO ways to use a resist when crafting your artist trading cards, journal pages, or any project really.

Today's project is an ATC I made for an Animals of the Alphabet series of swaps that I am doing. (Click the link to see my progress through the alphabet so far!)

The idea here was to create the background after placing the main elements on the card, using two methods to resist the inks and paints I was applying over the images.

To represent the letter G, I chose this fabulous (pathetic?) image of a giraffe from Lost Coast Designs. I stamped the giraffe in black Stazon ink on a piece of white cardstock. You don't have to use Stazon for this technique, but do be sure that the ink you use is waterproof.

Then I took a marker with embossing ink and a chisel-edged nib and calligraphed a flourished italic capital G. I sprinkled it with white embossing powder and heated it until the powder melted. The melted powder is waterproof and will resist any water-based media you apply on top of it.  :)

Tip: Use a pounce pillow before writing or stamping your image and sprinkling your EP to reduce/eliminate stray globules of embossing powder.

Next I applied a clear dimensional gloss medium (I used Ranger Glossy Accents) all over the giraffe, striving to achieve an even coat without air bubbles. This takes a while to dry--I left my project overnight, although it doesn't necessarily take that  long.

Here's what it looked like after applying the gloss medium--I used the flash to take the pic so you could see the gloss:

This gloss medium is really cool. Even if you're not using it as resist, it gives a raised pillowlike effect on whatever image or part of an image you apply it to...sort of like those gel-pillow stickers you can get--although it dries firm and not squishy like those stickers. It has a lot of creative uses other than this one!

So! After your gloss medium is fully dry, the fun begins in creating your background. You can use a watercolor wash, stamp over it, etc. Any water-based media will work, and your embossing powder and your gloss medium will offer stout resistance!

Tip: Before your water-based media dry, it's helpful to take a bit of paper towel or baby wipe and lightly rub over the resist areas to remove any film of color that might dull your images.

For this card, I used a mini ink tool and Distress inks to rub color into my background. I rubbed the ink right over the G and over the giraffe without a care in the world, secure in the realization that resistance was not futile.  :)  After I had the basic colors down, I flicked a bit of water on the ink to create some spots, and suggested a hint of giraffe patterning with chalk ink through a stencil; then I spattered gold and copper metallic powdered pigment all over the card with a dry brush, and misted lightly with water to help bind the dry pigment spatters to the card. I edged it in sooty black chalk ink, and that's it.

Here is the finished result again. (You'll have to just imagine the shine from the metallic spatters, since they didn't photograph anywhere near as shiny and glinty as they are IRL. Also, the giraffe is raised off the card from the gloss medium for a slight 3D effect.)

BONUS ;)
Here's a pic of a tag I did with the same gloss medium resist technique. I highlighted the figure with the gloss. You can see how the original manila color of the tag shows through so nicely against the bright colors I applied to the rest of the tag. All I had to do was give the figure a quick wipe when I was done going nuts on the background, and voila!

What do you think? As always, I look forward to your comments or questions below!

Step-By-Step: A Glasslike ATC

Greetings, fellow Musers! Today I wanted to share with you a fun technique that you can use for making your ATCs a little special. When you cover your card in a couple of coats of melted extra-thick embossing enamel, it is almost like the whole ATC is encased in glass. The effect is hard to photograph, so here I am showing it at a slight angle:

To make this card, I used a simple background of two colors of acrylic paint (I used Distress Paint in Tumbled Glass and Crushed Olive).

I dry-brushed the blue color in one direction across the card...

...and then came back with the yellow-green color in the other direction. You want to keep the brush on the dry side, so that the undercolor and even a bit of the paper show through. This is just a simple background technique that creates a bit of texture and interest while keeping the focus on the foreground.

After the paint dried (you can speed this up with a heat tool if you like), I was ready to stamp my main image. This cool tree reminds me of Yggdrasil for some reason...it is available from Lost Coast Designs here (Misc. Set 3) already sized perfectly for your ATCs.  :)

I blended three colors of ink right on the stamp for an interesting look--a green and a gray, with suggestions of black. (And in case you are wondering what those black stripes are on my acrylic block...well, I am old, and those are Velcro, because at one time this was the coolest way to handle a large unmounted rubber collection. This stamp comes cling-foam-mounted though--I just used the back side of the block without the Velcro.)

Here's how the image came out on top of the painted background. The edges that escaped the stamped design will be covered up during the edging phase.  :)

Next, I needed a sentiment, so I dug out a lettering stamp set and found that the font I wanted to use happened to exactly fit the word that I wanted to make and the space I wanted to put it in. Cha-ching! Here is the word "growth" laid out in reverse from how the word will print. If you lay the word out from left to right, you will get a surprise when you stamp. Also, it is easy to mix up your b's and d's, so mind your p's and q's.

I stamped the word in black and edged the card in chalk ink.

Now for funsies I wanted to add some sparkle and dimension to be encased under the "glass." On went some glitter-glue dots in gold and green.

TIP: Next, I recommend you mount your image on a stiff piece of chipboard--the sturdier the better, because your card will want to warp after the magical glassy goodness of the next step starts happening, and a heavy piece of board will resist this. If you proceed to the next step with nothing but flimsiness in your project and recklessness in your heart, your "glass" may crack when you try to flatten it out again. Perhaps not the end of the world, but I am here to look out for your best interests and so just thought I'd mention it.

And now the fun part! (I regret exceedingly not having taken any photos of this stage. I think I was too excited. Forgive me.) You take your ATC and press it into the top of an embossing ink pad until the surface of the design is entirely covered with embossing ink. Then you coat the whole front of the card with extra-thick clear embossing enamel, and melt with a heat tool, as one does. But then you repeat the process until you have two or three thick coats of clear resin melted on, and the surface of your card becomes thick, smooth, and glassy.

The result looks like this...although again, that shine and dimension are hard to capture, so here are a couple of angles for you. This first one shows how the glitter-berries catch the light under the "glass"...

The "glass" does add a certain layer of luminosity to the whole card.

Cool, right? And pretty easy. Any questions, please just leave them in the comments below. :) Do let me know if you try this technique and how it turned out for you. 'Cause remember, ATCs are for sharing!

Love,

ATC (Artist Trading Card) Contest Challenge!

Hello you artsy people!

I've got some artist trading cards featured today over at the Lost Coast Designs Portal to Creativity, where there is a challenge running to win some gift certificates to spend at the LCD stamp store.

Artist trading cards...juicy little pieces of art to trade or give away...I'm amassing a rather nice collection of interesting work by other artists myself this way. Try your hand at it and see what all the fun is about.  :)

Challenge rules & eye candy inspiration!

Click on the badge to have a look at some artist trading cards by me and other members of the Lost Coast Design team and read the contest rules...then get stamping, and PLAY! You know you want to.  ;)

Your comrade in arms,


P.S. Don't miss a tutorial or notice of a chance to win a prize...follow the blog via e-mail or add me to your feed.  ;)

Quick & Simple ATC: Distressed Background Technique

Fun with ATC Jams

What's an ATC ("Artist Trading Card") jam?

Well, first, what's an Artist Trading Card? An ATC is a baseball-card-sized piece of art meant to be shared or traded with other artists (never sold). It must conform to the standard 2.5" x 3.5" format, but otherwise can be any media and any theme.

So! An ATC jam is a collaborative effort between (usually) three artists. The first artist makes a background layer on each of three cards, then sends the cards to the second artist, who adds a focal point to each card and in turn sends the cards to the last artist, who finishes them up and returns one card to each of the first two artists.

Recently I participated in a really fun jam with Gillman and Bohochick on Swap-bot. I thought I'd share a bit with you about how I approached my role in the collaboration to give you a bit of insight into my creative process. I love that I'm working within the constraints "imposed" by the artists whose work came before mine while trying to honor and build upon their contributions to the finished product. It's a fascinating and satisfying thing to do.  :)

Gillman started the backgrounds, putting layers of paint over collaged paper, some of which had text printed on it. (I wish I had photos of how the cards appeared at this stage, but alas.)

Bohochick added some dimensional drizzles and splatters of thick acrylic paint that gave the card more personality, yet left it without a focal point...leaving ME with all the power! Mwah ha ha...

What would I do with these (hardly) blank canvases, with not much direction indicated? Hmmm...

When I got the cards from Bohochick, they were very free-form, and looked like this:

With so much color already on the cards, I tried to think of an interesting focal point for each that would harmonize with the background while still being strong enough to stand up to all that was already going on there.

I settled on three bizarre stamp images from Lost Coast Designs that I absolutely love. (Are they adorable? Creepy? Pathetic? Hilarious? I wish I knew more about them--the time period and the illustrator. One of the guys looks like a monk to me. But back to the story...)

I decided to ink the images in two colors on glossy photo paper (inspired by the gloss of Bohochick's bold white blops of paint). I felt black ink alone would be too stark and not tie in enough with the colors on the cards, so I chose a deep plum already found on the cards to combine with the black, and blended the inks right on the stamps. I love the richness and quality of color of these StazOn solvent inks.

My figures needed a bit of ground to appear against to give the composition interest and depth. So I inked up a clear acrylic checkerboard stamp and rolled it a little haphazardly on part of the cards.

I then fussy-cut out the bizarre little guys and decoupaged them to the cards with glossy Mod Podge (I was definitely into the gloss thing courtesy of Bohochick and that thick white paint!)

It struck me that the cards now looked, thanks to my bizarre figures, as though they might have come out of a very odd tarot deck, so I decided to assign them numbers. I have an ancient (I mean ANCIENT--like 25 years old!) set of stamps in the "Africa" typeface, which worked well here because the characters have a thin line of white inside the chunky number- and letterforms. Since I was leaving my figures white (plus the blended stamp colors), I liked how this white/color duality linked the numbers to the figures.

To finish the cards, I sealed them with more glossy Mod Podge and put a border of dimensional (and GLOSSY!--are you sensing a theme?) black and white enamel paint along the edges. The border started out as alternating dots of color, but the paint wasn't entirely dry when I put the cards in the scanner to take these pictures, so the dots flattened out.  :(  I decided this was serendipitous, since it sort of added to the checkerboard theme going on.

Here's how the finished cards turned out:

It struck me that only the card numbered 7 was really obviously right side up--the other two could be turned upside down and still make sense visually, with the 6 becoming a 9 (and the monk-lizard looking like he was standing on his head, while the bird-bug might have been like some weird bat hanging upside down, with the 8 still reading as an 8).

I decided to keep the 7 for myself and send the 8 and the 6/9 back to Gillman and Bohochick in case they liked the upside-down duality aspect of the cards.

Here's a closeup of my (glossy!) no. 7:

I leave you with a comparison photo of how the cards looked after Phase II (top row) and after they were finished (bottom). Any questions? Or comments? I'd love to hear what you think of this ATC jam. Have you ever done one? Would you like to?

Post a comment!