Thanks for the memories, Steph Ackerman

Hi everyone, Steph Ackerman here today.  By now you know that eclectic Paperie is closing it's doors.  That also means the end of the blog and the design team.

We have had a fabulous run as members of the eclectic Paperie Design Team and wish to thank you all for your interest and support over the years. With the eP blog coming to a close at the end of the month, we all wanted to do something special to celebrate the fabulous friendships, tons of inspiration from other team members, from Kim, and from all those who participated in our challenges. Each of the current DT members is taking a day to post some of her favorite makes from her time on the eclectic Paperie team. We hope you enjoy the look back.

While I've only been on the team a short while,  I have really enjoyed working with this team and have loved the wide variety of products available in the store.

This was the very first project I created for eP and I had so much fun creating it - the stencils, the stamps and assorted Art Anthology paints were so much fun to work with.

This canvas uses a large Prima stencil, some molding paste and Art Anthology paints.

And a fun use of the same stamp to create tags for all seasons with Gelatos.

I loved creating these cards with Art Anthology paints, a Gelli Plate and The Crafter's Workshop stencils. 

 

And I just wanted to shout out a big thank you to Kim for giving me the opportunity to work with her and this amazing design team.

 

Steph

 

Dreaming with Faber Castell

Hi everyone, Steph  here and I am so excited to be a part of this fabulous design team.

Do you ever have a day where you just want to play?  A day where you have no idea what you are going to create?  A day where you just want to have fun and see where the fun takes you?  This was my day to play with resist papers and Faber Castell Gelatos.  These are amazing coloring mediums and I know there so many things you can do if only you had the time to play.   I picked up this Heidi swap paper pad recently and because of the cool resist nature of the papers, they really lend themselves perfectly to Gelatos.

Not totally sure what I was going to do, I cut apart many of the papers and started adding color with Gelatos.  Eventually this project morphed into a mini book.

I cut chipboard into 6" x 6" pieces, planning to use them as my covers.  But once I started playing with Gelatos, I decided to add covers to my covers! 

I created Gelato spritzers by cutting pieces of Gelatos and mixing them with water in a spray bottle.  After a few minutes of shaking, they dissolve and you get this amazing color spritzer.  I wish I had a bottle for each color I created!   I then used the spritzers to spritz the background of the cover pieces.  They didn't take long to dry so I was able to continuing working.

 

Then I decided to play with all kinds of mediums on the cover.  I used a Crafter's Workshop stencil on the right side and added Embossing Paste through the stencil with a palette knife.  Once dry, I added color with Gelatos and a Tim Holtz Water Brush.  I love how it gives the cover some nice dimension.  Next, a small branch as well as script stamps were stamped with Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink.  Since I knew I was going to add additional colors, I needed to use a permanent ink.  I then rubbed purple Gelato all around the edges of the cover using both a water brush and my finger as I wanted a blended (not streaked) look, but also something slightly imperfect.

 

 

 

I have a very delicate die that I wanted to use, so I colored white cardstock with coral, pink, yellow and green Gelatos - blending them with water.  Once dry, I placed the die on top and ran it through my die cut machine.  The resulting die cut is very pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cutting assorted interior pages 5 1/2" x 5 1/2", I used Gelatos to scribble color on the pages then used a water brush to smooth out the colors.

Purples -

Yellows and Gold -

Blues  and Greens

Yellows and Pink -

 

Using a paper towel helps buff the colors.

 

I punched holes in all the pages and tied the book together with May Arts ribbon.  Then, finding a stamp I liked, I stamped it on a scrap of resist paper in Archival Ink, tore the edges and added more Gelatos.  Once I placed in on the cover, I used a Faber Castell White Stampers Brush to draw some dash lines around it. 

 

Now this little book has become my little book of dreams.  It is just waiting for me to add some little poems and quotes that I find along my journey.  I hope you like it and I hope I've inspired you to pull out your supplies and find some time to just play!!!  

Thanks for stopping by today.

Steph

Gelato Canvas and Wendy Vecchi products

Well it is official. Andiepants is becoming a southern bell!!! We will be moving to the lovely state of Louisiana very soon!

With all of our friends and family up here in Michigan it is very difficult to say goodbye, so one of the things that I like to do is to leave a little something with my friends and family as a token of my love. 

My friend from church, Delores, had a bit of spell and is currently in a rehabilitation facility re-learning how to use her arm. She misses her friends and her church very much. She is such an inspiration to me. Back in her hay-day she rode through the entire continental U.S. on the back of a Harley, all except for Alaska. As a hobby she paints these GORGEOUS china pieces and alters children's bouncy horses into carousel horses.

So for Delores I decided to make her a canvas. Something she could hang on her wall

This is actually a canvas I began a long time ago with the background stamping. It was just sitting in my cubby waiting for the right moment. So I doused it with water and used my gelatos, blending with my fingers.

I started with just blues and then decided it made a pretty sky and I wanted a scene of some sort.

Next I covered all the edges with Tea Dye distress ink. I used my finger to smudge in and over the white areas to give it an antique look.

Then I bust out my Wendy Vecchi crackle paste. This stuff ROCKS!!!

I used the crackle to make the "clouds" of my scene.

I forgot to take pictures of the next step. For this part I sprayed some water on my craft mat and added some drops from a Distress Stain re-inker in Antique linen. Then I used this wash to cover the entire canvas. This helped the gelatos to blend better and highlighted the cracks in my crackle clouds while giving the whole thing an antique appearance.

Then I bust out my stamp it stencil it by Wendy Vecchi. I used her archival inks to color it in  and went back over the base of the stem with gelatos to help highlight the grass. I ADORE how this turned out. I went with red in honor of Donna Downey. I love her:)

I then used gesso and water to create a water white paint and flicked the paint onto the bottom of the canvas to mimic flowers growing in the grass. 

Using my Tim Holtz layering stencils, I took a phrase from some Stampers Anonymous stamps and I added my title with a smudge stick and black gelato 

and voila...

My parting gift is complete. I  hope it inspires her as much and she has inspired me.

Til next time...

{{hugs}}

Andiepants

House of Cards

Hi everyone, Micki here to share another one of my art journaling adventures using every single one of those yummy Dina Wakley paints, lots of stencils and some playing cards.

I began by opening up my art journal, found a couple of somewhat empty pages and covered both pages with some color.  One side was painted yellow and the other blue using Faber-Castell Gelatos and my waterbrush during my lunch hour at work or more appropriately called, my therapy session!  My initial idea was to sketch a tower of cards, the way one would built them on a table but I couldn't figure out how to incorporate real playing cards.  I thought about cutting the cards up and paper piecing my sketch but instead I glued whole cards sort of crooked to my pages (yes, I also brought glue in my traveling art sack).

Later that evening, I grabbed several stencils and like I mentioned at the beginning, used every single color of Dina Wakley paints.  I threw a lock on my analytical mind and just played with those awesome paints, adding lots of stencil layers.  Before adding the stencils over the playing cards, I lightly sanded the cards and covered the cards with a layer of Clear Gesso to ensure that the paint wouldn't chip off.  Those playing cards are pretty slick since they were brand new.

I thought the lines from the bridge in the Cityscape stencil from The Crafter's Workshop would make great journaling lines as well as a neat background behind my "tumbling houses".  I use a blending tool to dab paint through stencils, which seems to work for me.  I seem to get the best impressions with no over spill using the foam blending tool. After stenciling the bridge, I continued dabbing my tool around to get the night sky.  I liked the variation in the black paint.  (Complete listing of stencils and supplies used is below).  Then it was time for me to step away.  When I came back to the journal the next evening, I decided to tone it down a bit with watered down white gesso.  I still wanted the stencil layers to show through but didn't like the background color - not enough contrast.

This time as I was adding paint colors I paid a little more attention to my color wheel and placement of color.  While the other side was drying, I focused on the face.  I initially was going to sketch a side-view face, but ended up using TCW's Profile Stencil designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (who is teaching a class at the eP Shop this fall!!!!).  Instead of dabbing paint through the stencil, I lightly traced the face with a pencil so I could make the end result sort of my own and make it look more painterly.

Boy, the trouble I had with the lips and eye almost caused me to start over and just stencil the face with paint, but persistence won out.  I kept at it.

Still not happy with the eye, but trust me, a lot better than the previous layers.  To help cover up some of those mistakes, I used some bleeding tissue paper piece under her eye.  It covered the black lines even if I could not get the skin color to match the rest of the face.  I used a blue watercolor pencil for some eye make-up, which was blended with a wet brush.  

For shading I used a combination of Stabilo All Pencil and some watered down paint that was left over on my craft sheet.  Once that was done, I used my Fude Liquid Ink Roller Pen to doodle around the houses.  To spell the title of this spread, I used Tim Holtz Idea-ology Alpha Cards which were cut apart and glued to the cards with Beacon 3-in-1 Glue to make sure they stay put.  Then I started journaling with with my Uni-Ball White Gel Pen, starting at the bridge but I had quite a bit to say and ended up journaling around each of the houses too.

I added some random stamping using some old, but much loved, Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamps.  Lastly I darkened the edges using Vintage Photo Distress Ink and blending tool.

I love how this turned out.  Dina Wakley's paints are AWESOME!!!!! And I do like how the side profile face turned out, if you didn't know you might think I painted her from scratch.  On a side note, the blurry part in the picture was done on purpose. In the journal it's the name of the "house of cards", which is just for me :-).  I'm telling ya, the best therapy!

I hope you enjoyed this trip through my art therapy session and came away inspired.  Oh and if you haven't tried Dina Wakley's AWESOME paints yet, what are you waiting for!!!!

Supplies Used:

InLinkz.com