For One Moment - Little Snippets of my Life and Art...

 Took some time to play with inks and stamps with no particular end in sight tonight.  I took a tag that I had used to mop up inks when I was making a mess the other night and finished it out with more color and some stamping.  Dug out my alchohol inks and inked up some trinkets to match.  The Grapevine stamps are from Stampin' Up from 1996. Somerset Studios sent them to me to be do as part of their "With One Stamp" feature several years ago. They would send out the same set of stamps to a few artists and we would create different projects and send them back to be featured in the magazine. At that time I was submitting a lot of rubberstamp projects and collage art to the magazine and had several pieces published in Somerset Studios and Legacy. I finally had to give up doing that as I got busy with work and three young children...etc, etc. but I've missed all my inks and papers and my creative time each night and I'm making more of an effort to just D

Day 8 Finally got a chance to dabble in my inks again tonight, so I decided to work on Day 8. Please forgive the grainy photo, as I used my iPhone.  My good camera is in the bedroom and hubby is asleep and I didn't want to go rumaging around in my camera bag in the dark. I'm limited in Distress Stain colors, so had to go with what I had.  The local JoAnn's only carries a total of 6 colors, most of which are pretty dark.  I'll have to go shopping on line if I want anything lighter. For the first one with the Paint Dabber Resist technique I didn't have any sticky back canvas or Paint Dabbers, so I used white acrylic paint and worked directly on the tag.  I think it really loses something in the translation.  I really need to try this one over again.  Maybe this weekend I'll dig out my USArtQuest canvas and give it a try on that...although it is not sticky backed, it should work better than the paper tag!  This one is my least favorite of the three I did.

If you remember about three weeks ago I posted this little sneak peek to a project I was working on: Well...I FINALLY finished it and sent it on its way as a little surprise gift to Dwayne's wonderful Aunt Nancy.  She has received it, so now I can post the rest of the pictures. It got so thick I had to make it a little belly band to help keep it closed.  I wraps around the album and closes with velcro.  Here are some pictures of the inside, where it is filled with pockets and tags and old family photographs.

Last night I was very tired and my body was aching, so I called it a night early even though I would have loved to have stayed up and played in my inks for a while. Tonight I was determined to get at least one day of Tim Holtz's Chemistry 101 lessons completed.  I decided to work on Day 5 so I could get a bit inky with inks and water.  BOY did I  get inky...but it was an easy clean-up when I was all done and I really had fun digging out stains and inks and rubber stamps.  I didn't have any  Kraft Resist cardstock or Picket Fence Distress Stain so as usual I improvised. For the first tag I stamped and embossed the tag before distressing to give it a faux Kraft Resist type of look.  Then I played with different Distress Stains and water and kept layering it up until I was happy with it. I skipped the bottom layer of Distress Stain as it was supposed to be Picket Fence and that I didn't have.  The rubber stamp image is actually a self portrait that I carved many years

Tim Holtz posted his April Tag http://timholtz.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/03/12-tags-of-2012-april.html today, and I couldn't wait to dig out my inks and play! Everything about it screamed Spring!!! My selection of embossing folders is limited, and I don't have any reflections stamps, but I took the inspiration and ran with it. I didn't have the little bird and twig die that he used, but I did have a small grunge board bird in one of the grunge board packs that I have and I used the branch from the Holly and Berries die. I also chose a little dragonfly from the grunge board pack and dug in my chest of trinkets for the little metal dragonflies. I'm really liking how this one turned out!