It has been a busy start to the month. I have been having fun joining in Artist Trading Card exchanges through Facebook. For each card below, I have made a minimum of 9 copies- one for myself and 8 trades.
The first card was for a Hearts swap. I thought I'd deviate a little from cutsie and went for a zombie girl with a shiny red heart. The background was a stamp but I wasn't happy with my masking so went back in with prismacolors.
Art Deco threw me a bit but I found some great gold embossed paper in my stash and tried dry brushing it with red paint. The colour didn't really pop so I brushed over the paper again with Red Distress Ink which sunk into the paint and held well. The rest of the card is quite plain but I didn't want to cover up all of the background paper.
Two of my swaps were to use wax as the technique this month. For the first one I thought I'd go for the look of blood drops to tie in the anatomy theme. After dropping blobs of wax on red Lumiere background, I went over everything with several coats of cream acrylic paint. Once dry, I scraped off the wax and then distressed the card with Tea Dye Ink. I initially tried stamping on the card but it was difficult to see the image. I ended up stamping the image on white card and colouring it with copics before fussy cutting and adhering the image.
I was pleased with this wax technique/anatomy ATC for another swap. This time I did both layers of paint using Lumieres. The eye diagram has been coated in Crackle Glossy Accents after distressing. I love all the colours in the background. (Apologies for not turning this image but something happened between My Pictures and Bloggers Download. Need to work on solving this one but you get the idea!)
This ATC is a favourite of mine as I love vintage images. After much searching through utube videos and experimenting I finally managed to successfully do a picture transfer using gel medium onto old book paper. For those of you who love books, I promise the ones I used were both second hand and in a poor state already! My friends and I have shared many pages already and I like to think of it at giving the book a new life.
I am having a great time joining in with others in the Simply Betty Fan Group on Facebook. There are some wonderfully talented ladies in the group and I am learning so much about colouring ideas and techniques for copics. I have only a few of Betty's beautiful rubber stamps and digis but ordered some in her recent sale and am looking forward to colouring. In the meantime I have a few challenges to do- one which will be revealed very soon!
The image below was for the January Challenge. It was a Steampunk theme. I had lots of fun with my Spellbinders cogs and good old Rub 'n' Buff. My colouring is getting there. My next thing to try and master is folds in clothing.
Look out for a Secret Release Blog Hop for Simply Betty Stamps on my blog tomorrow (12.00 PST). You are going to LOVE these gorgeous images.
There is also a special Valentine's Bucket Swap Blog Hop post on the 20th February.
