Hello friends, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to keep up with my posts, classes, life, etc., so I feel much better and ready to tackle this blog posting again.
Tomorrow, I will bring you up-to-date on what I’ve created since you last visited me and what has been going on in my life.
Until, tomorrow,
Have an awesome day!
Carmen
Hello my creative friends! I took Creative Chemistry 101 with Tim Holtz about four years ago and I’m getting a refresher this summer. Here are the tags I created for the challenges.
Friends, you just have to take this class. It covered so many things you need to know about Tim Holtz products – it was amazing!
Day 1 – Tim is a wonderful teacher; he discussed the characteristics and properties of the products; dye vs. pigment inks, translucent vs. opaque, solvent, oil, or water based vehicles and porous vs non-porous materials.
Day 2 – This day we learned techniques for blending, stamping, and layering with Distress Ink. Also, the wonderful way they react to water. It was fun going back and create these tags, but with some of the colors from the 2015 releases.
I think I went a little crazy applying all the different colors and got the tag too wet; but it is wrinkle free!!
Day 4 – We learned techniques for coloring backgrounds using re-inkers and how to store our ink creations.
Day 5 – Tim showed us some wonderful techniques for creating background, stamping, and using stains for marbling effects.
Day 6 – The techniques Tim shared with us for coloring and stamping with distress markers were awesome!! He also discussed the features of the markers and why they are different to other markers, but I didn’t have time to make the tags.
After going over days 4, 5 & 6, our challenge was to make tags using the techniques we learned.
We skipped a few days and went on to
This week’s challenge was to make tags using Perfect Pearls and Distress Inks or Stains.
Day 8 – We made some awesome distress crackle objects and paints and learned how they react.
Day 9 – All about Perfect pearls and Pearl mists we made ourselves.
I also made a card for the Unity Stamps Masculine Challenge
That is it for now, my friends, Thanks for sticking with me until now.
Have a wonderful week and don’t forget to make something awesome!!
Happy crafting,
Carmen
Hello my blogging friends! I took a week off after the Gathering of Nations Pow Wow in Albuquerque, NM to catch up with my Life Book 2016 lessons, but now I’m back. First off:
This event is a Federally recognized non-profit organization to promote Native American culture. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was thoroughly in awe of all the beautifully intricately beaded garments and accessories.
For more information about this event you can go here: Gathering of Nations. There were dancers and singers representing more than 500 tribes in North America and Canada. It is a three-day event, but we only went on Saturday and part of Sunday.
Here are some pictures I took of people walking around the stadium. I asked permission to take their picture, of course.
These beauties were from Minnesota
This young girl was on her way to the main floor to dance in the young girls competition.
Look at the beading work on these moccasins. They were completely hand beaded. Just beautiful!
Mexico was represented also. Look at the long feathers!!
I had many more pictures, but somehow they are lost in my file system.
Well, you get the idea. If you want to see more pictures. you can always go the link above.
Thanks for stopping by
Carmen
Hello, my sweet crafty friends! Get a cup of coffee because this turned out to be a loooong post. Last week we attended a family wedding in Phoenix. We were invited to two back to back, but were only able to attend my nephew’s.
My nephew is a DPS officer with a very funny sense of humor. He wanted the wedding to be laid back and very informal. He made all the arrangements for the wedding. He ordered the invitations, which were decorated with a ball and chain; set up the venue, at the Hardley-Davison’s of Scottsdale; engaged the bride’s daughter-in-law to be the photographer; and asked my daughter, Zonia, to officiate at the wedding at the Chapel at the dealership. Seems odd, but it worked out perfectly.
The ceremony involved the immediate family and used Native American customs, as well as Catholic traditions. My daughter used a prayer that her grandma Chefa used to say for the family, Prayer To St. Joseph, as a guide. She thought it would be perfect because according to Catholic tradition, St. Joseph personifies the perfect family head.
She asked my nephew’s dad and his two uncles to take part in the ceremony. Instead of the traditional wedding lasso in the Catholic ceremony; they gave the bride and groom a necklace and his dad used a feather to bless them in the Native American tradition.
She had her aunt give them the Blessing for the Journey, which his grandma used to give all of the children each time they embarked on a new journey.
And here are Mr. and Mrs. David and Cindy Lucero, and granddaughter! It was so cute, she didn’t want to leave her grandma, so she was also part of the ceremony. When they exchanged rings, Cindy gave her a little ring too
That’s my daughter, Zonia, in the background.
Their first dance – so sweet!
This is the whole family enjoying the festivities.
The bride’s son and the awesome photographer!
Making the wedding card was so fun. Since Dave used a ball and chain for the invitation, I used the theme together with his law enforcement background.
I made a tri-fold card with the yellow tape and hand cuffs.
The band comes off to reveal the inside of the card.
I used a couple of Unity Stamps, George and Scarlett the couple and the sentiment from the November Kit Love is a Magical Thing.
Inside the tri-fold.
I drew the ball and chain for each one and a pair of handcuffs for the groom.
Since we weren’t able to attend my cousin’s wedding, I made them a very special card using a Unity Stamp called Cherished Moments and the sentiment from the same kit as above. I’m going to enter this in a future challenge.
The last time I was at Hobby Lobby, I saw some Joleen’s stickers for a wedding, so that was my inspiration for this card.
I colored the couple with watercolors on watercolor paper. I bought some satin fabric and cut out each segment of the dress and pieced it together. I added a piece of tulle and glued some gems on it as well as her hair and dress, then added the bow. I also added stickles to each fold of the dress.
OK, folks, I hope you enjoyed a bit of family fun and pictures.
Until next time!
Thanks for visiting!
Carmen
Shilo Sophia is a beautiful person on the outside as well as the inside. She is part of the Contemporary Symbolist Movement.
She puts her heart and soul into every painting she creates and does it all with deep spirituality. She is also a wonderful poetess.
I am a deeply spiritual person also, but I follow the Bible’s teachings of worshipping only one God. therefore, I followed the way she painted, but not her form of spirituality
I was having problems with the video stopping, and going, and getting no voice, so I just clicked on the progression bar and followed her technique.
I didn’t take more time than I needed because I wanted to finish it up quickly, but I think I will be taking one of her free class just to see what I missed in the Life Book class. I’m sure there will be lots of techniques I can use for future projects. She really made it very simple to follow along and this is what I created at the end.
There were four words that I added on each corner, Patience, Joy, Tenderness and Compassion. I only used three colors, but I really like how everything just worked together.
I call this piece – Compassion Personified
Tam wrote: “This week’s theme is all about getting in touch with the interconnectedness of us all and how each and every one of us matters in this world. We will symbolically represent this theme in the form of a drop of water falling into a larger body of water, making ripples.”
I really liked this theme, because I find it so true. Everything we do in our lives for someone has repercussions – good or bad.
She taught a shaving cream marbling technique that I’ve been wanted to try, but never had a occassion to use.
I just had to go to the new Hobby Lobby near my house (ahem) to buy some Daler-Rowney FW Acrylic Water-Resistant Artist Inks to use on this project. They are aaaaamazing!!
I used smaller watercolor paper for this project because I didn’t think I had a big enough container to spray the shaving cream on, so I used an 11 x 8 1/2 paper.
We were to write in the ripples of the water something we did at one time in our lives that had a rippling effect on someone else’s life.
The closeup of the marbling effect – so much fun!!
Although I used a little too dark paint on top, you can still she some of the marbling.
This is a closeup of the water drop that looks a lot like a person, but I forgot to draw a small heart on the “body”. I will when I go up to my dungeon, err, my craft room!
I was having trouble looking at the picture in the PDF that I downloaded, so I went looking for one on Google. There were so many different ripple effect pictures I could choose from, but I fell in love with this one:
It came with a quote which I thought was perfect: “When you truly love life and people, you start a ripple effect that changes the life of another, who in turn changes the life of another…” I’m sure it was computer generated, but nevertheless, I downloaded the picture and tried to paint it as close as possible.
I wrote the quote on the ripples coming from the heart splash.
There was not much marbling on this background, but I think it makes a good contrast with the rest of the project.
There you have it, my friends. Looking forward to another week.
Thank you for stopping by and please leave me some love in the form of a comment.
Carmen
Unity Stamps is having a challenge using any girl stamp and I jumped right in using one of Angie Blom’s girl stamps.
I was really limited on what surface to use because this stamp is only 2.5″ x 3.75″ so I cut a piece of watercolor paper just an 1/8″ smaller than my card. I used an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of black cardstock folded in half. I used acrylic paint, stencils, gesso, and my Tombow Dual Brush Pen Markers to color the image. I popped up the wagtercolor paper with mounting tape.
Isn’t this tatoo girl amazing? I added a sheet to cover up her bottom 🙂
I also used the script stamp from the “Let It Go And Focus” stamp set. It is the perfect size for greeting cards. This is a close up to show detail of the sentiment.
Sure had fun making this mixed media greeting card, now to find someone to give it to.
Hugs, and create something today!
Carmen
Hello my crafty friends, I combined two projects because they didn’t take any time to finish.
“Martha is a whizz with watercolours,” according to Tamara Laporte and she really is! She showed us how to create flower in a pot very easily.
I just started working with watercolors and the way she taught us to paint the flowers was the easiest way I’ve ever tried!
They really took five minutes to make and so let’s ge to it!
Once again I worked on a 11×14 watercolor pad using only four watercolors from Qor Modern Watercolors. These colors are fantastic! They are very rich and smooth because of the special binder called Aquazol. They make everything look like you’re an expert. I separated each pot to look like tiles and added some arrow stamps on each corner. I also dripped some of the colors to give them some texture.
These are Tulips, if you can believe it! I just dropped some paint on the paper in the form of tulips then went back with my caligraphy pen and outlined the flowers and the stems.
I really meant to make blue bells in this pot, but the pen (ha ha) just made petals that looked like orchids, so I went with that.
These Irisis came out looking good, don’t you think?
And finally the roses which I love!
I made each pot different in shape to give the project a bit of contrast.
Mary Beth is the owner of the amazing Stencil Girl Products, so you know she has unlimited resources.
The first thing we did was to collage some vintage papers and highlight some words that we liked. When I went to my old books looking for paper to pull out I found this amazing saying “What Will You Do With This Day That’s So New?” so I made it my focal point.
![20160229_112216[1]](https://visionaryartbycarmenalicia.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/20160229_1122161.jpg?w=604)
After we highlighted the words we liked, we wrote them on tissue paper for use in a later step, then we covered everything up. As you can see I used acrylic paints, and stencils, lots of stencils! I like that I’m finally learning not to be so heavy handed with the paint so some of my collage can be seen through it.
Mary Beth chose a word that was highlighted in her piece and then using alpha stencils, she used the different letters in different positions.
In this closeup, you can see some of the words I chose written on the tissue paper and glued on to the watercolor paper and my focal point quote.
I then used my alpha stencils using black ink and wrote the same quote all over the piece, but kept the some of the words I wanted to highlight in answer to the quote.
This was supposed to be a journaling page so there is a block on the left bottom side where I journaled and then covered up with gesso and more stencils. I think it’s a fabulous idea to do that. You can show your work, but your inner thoughts are hidden from everyone’s eyes.
So to answer the question: What will You Do With This Day That’s So New? My answer is:
Have gratitude, have fun, play, love, have faith, laugh, kiss, and live. The number seven is for the seven days of the week.
Thanks for coming over. Hope to see you back very soon!
Carmen
Welcome to another week of Life Book 2016 projects. Faith Evans-Sills‘ project this week is all about layering different elements using stencils and silk screen with spray paints, acrylic paint, and molding paste. She does some beautiful work – you have to go check her out!
First thing I do when I start a project is research the subject matter using Google. My friend Google has prevented me from straying too far to the left when it has to do with spirituality.
Since I had an idea that Mandalas had something to do with Eastern Philosophy, I didn’t want to take any chances. This is what I found Wikipedia regarding mandalas.
Yes, friends, it’s “a ritual symbol, but also a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern.” I’m a Christian and it goes against my religious beliefs to draw one as a form of meditation or a way to get close to the Universe. But, that is my opinion, and people are free to make choices, right?
Ok, that said, I opted to use a Martha Stewart doily stencil instead, as the focal point. I first started by collaging various pieces of paper I cut out of magazines, scrapbooking paper, musical paper, etc., then I went to town with my stencils and spray paint.
I had a whole box of spray paint I won some time ago on Mark Montano’s YouTube channel and it came in very handy. They are all glitter spray, so I chose some that wouldn’t overpower the background and covered some up with gesso, then I took the doily stencil and used several colors to fill it in.
This is the project after I finished filling in the doily, but I thought there was something missing, so I went back and added more silk screens using molding paste and a few
rub-ons.
I think the addition of the butterflies, birds, and gold paste added so much texture to the piece, I’m so in love with it! Except that while trying to fix the word Namaste, I ended up misspelling it!
A few close ups here:
The doily in it’s full glory 🙂
The top with a silk screen and a stencil on top of gold spray paint.
Bottom right. A stencil with blue spray after I gessoed the corner.
Upper right with a butterfly rub-on.
Lower left with anoter silk screen of a flower with Heidi Swapp pink paste.
There you have week eight. I hope you enjoyed looking at my very busy project.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your commments!
Carmen
This was a bonus lesson from Donna. She said it was a challenge for her not to use any other colors, but she did great in her example.
I cheated a little because I remembered I had painted some sunflowers in black and white and never finished so I took that painting and refined it a bit.
I just added the shadows and made the right side where the light was shining lighter than the left.
I still think there is something else I needto do to this painting because it doesn’t look finished. Maybe add splashes of white and black paint all over.
What do you think?
A closeup of the sunflowers
This lesson was my favorite so far because it made me step out of my “comfort zone” and try new things.
First of all I used my own picture and did a transfer technique to the watercolor paper, and I made my own skin color using only four primary acrylic colors – blue, yellow, red, and white. I learned this from a free class on the Craftsy blog. You can get many free classes on a variety of subjects. I have also taken several jeweley, greeting card, and mixed media lessons when they go on sale.
But, I digress! I wrote out some words I wanted to use for the Affirmation Board as if I was actually carying them out, then I used my computer to print out the words. Here is the finished project using this picture of me!
Yes, I know, I look so young and fresh! That’s because I did not add all the wrinkles and shadows! But, that’s OK. I know it’s me and I’m very happy with it!
Here are a few more details. When I was cutting papers for my collage, I saw this quote and had to use it. It says “Find the Beauty Within, Love with your whole heart.”
I used a variety of stencils, watercolor crayons, acrylics, scrabpook paper, and gesso for the background. This shows the dolily stencil I used for the first time. I cut out the flowers and the butterflies from papers I had in my stash – I think they were from a Donna Salazar paper stack – perfect! I arranged the flowers and glued them around the top of my face.
This is a stencil I used with Faber Castell gold dimensionals. The flowers on the left and bottom I stenciled through some paper flowers from Heidi Swapp.
On the upper right hand side, I collaged a peacock and didn’t cover it up as much as I usually do my papers. I also took a piece of the paper flowers and added it to the edge. I used red acrylic paint through another stencil to match the red on other parts of the painting.
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On the left hand side I used one of Tim Holtz stencils and magenta acrylic paint to add texture.
The stencil I used for the hearts on top of “Family is Everything” is also Heidi Swapp.
And here is a closeup of the face. The paper I used to cut out the butterfly on the upper left hand only had half of it, so I used it in the corner.
This lesson inspired me to make a photo transfer of my mother on her wedding day. Mom’s picture came out too dark so it didn’t show her left side. She was also leaning on my dad, so the body was a little wonky.
She was very artistic and craftsy also. She used to make flowers out of bread dough and make earrings, pendants, and home decor with them. She loved canaries and always had them in the house singing away, and yellow roses, so I added all those elements to the painiting.
My sister, as well as some of my close friends and relatives said it was a close resemblance, so I’m happy with that. I will make my sister another painting using a different picture because I have all the family photos. She needs one of her own.
That is it, my friends! The next lesson is all about Mandalas and I will share again here some time this week.
Thanks for coming over and leaving me a comment. I read all the comments and they make me very happy to answer them.
Have a wonderful week!
Carmen
Good morning my friends!
I’ve been making cards for several years and I love to give them out to people. Some have said they wish hey could make cards, but find it too difficult. So I decided to give card classes for them using a variety of stamps.
I started in the summer and I find that not only are we making cards, but we’re also getting to know each other better and enjoying a creative form of entertainment.
For this week’s lesson, I set up all the materials for them and will show them how to put them together.
I had so much fun making this one – lots of layers and dimension, but it will take some time to put it together.
I used the Now And Always stamp kit (an oldie) from Unity Stamps. I love this kit because it has flowers that can be stamped on different colors of cardstock, and be cut apart to stack them and give them dimension.
I saw this type of card online and since I don’t have a beautiful butterly die like the one they used, I chose an older dragonfly from Spellbinders.
And, used this kit with that has many different sentiments and fonts!
Finally, this is my favorite.
I used Poppy Pattern Penny Black background stamp for this one, and the sentiment from this kit:
One of the friends that comes to take classes prefers 6×6 cards and I usually make 5 1/2 by 4 1/4, and so I’ve been trying to accomodate her, but the background stamps are usually 5 1/2 by 4 1/4. I guess I’ll have to use single stamps to make the background, but it will be more time consuming.
So, if you’re in the area and want to learn how to make stamps in two hours, leave me a message on my Facebook page.
Have a wonderful day!
Carmen
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