Watercolor Pencils

I've been using watercolor pencils on my Bible verse creations but have started venturing out with other things as well, such as faces of people, a bird and now this quaint little cottage which I copied from an antique postcard. I really had fun drawing/painting this picture and have absolutely fallen in love with using watercolor pencils. I splurged and bought myself a set of 60 Faber Castell Albrecht Durer pencils and am really enjoying them. I kind of wish I'd really splurged and got the 120 pencil set, but oh well....I can still buy them individually and continue adding to my collection.


I did this on 5 x 8 watercolor paper in a Strathmore Visual Journal. I am really loving these journals too. They are a nice size and good quality. I use a mixed media one for my Bible verses, which also seems to work well for watercolor pencils. The paper has more texture in the watercolor one, but I like the way it looks for this painting. I also have a bristol one which I'm planning on using for mixed media. All the ones I've bought so far are 5 x 8, but I'm wanting to get some 9 x 12 ones too, but Dick Blick, where I order them from, is temporarily out of the 9 x 12's so it will have to wait. By the way, if you've not checked out dickblick.com, they have great prices for art supplies.

Vintage Post Cards

I wanted to share a few of my antique post cards, which I scanned in. Feel free to print them out and use them in your own creations. I did change one thing on the 2 cards with doves. There was writing on the cards around their necks and i removed it. I hope you enjoy them.

"Truth" Cards

For the last several weeks I've been taking an online course called Soul Restoration. It is through bravegirlsclub.com and has really been amazing. One of the things we make in this course are these cards that remind us of the "truths" which we want to remember to dispel the "lies" that we've been listening to all of our lives which have been detrimental to where we want to be in our life.

Received ATC's

I have some more ATC's which I received from swaps. What fun getting them in the mail! The two on the left are from a sticker ATC swap. Stickers generally have a bad rap on ATC's, evidently because there's something called "sticker slapping" where someone will put a sticker on a card and that's it. Although there are some beautiful stickers available these days, the point of an ATC is showing off your own artistic skills, not someone else's artwork via a sticker. However, stickers do have their place and can be used along with other media to make lovely cards. Hence, the swap.

The top center card was from a vintage ATC swap and the top right another vintage ATC swap with the topic of gentlemen. The two cards on the lower right were both from the steampunk swap. It's fun to see my card collection growing and seeing other styles. Now it's time for me to make a book or something for showing them off.

ATC's for Swap

This swap was a real challenge. It is 3 ATC's with a steampunk theme. I'd never done anything steampunk before but happened to buy this sheet of steampunk designs not too long ago so was able to use those. It was fun and I think my cards came out with somewhat of a steampunk look.

ATC's for Swaps

I did 6 artist trading cards for swaps last week. The top 3 were for cards using stickers, the 2 bottom left were for cards using punches and the bottom right was for a vintage male card. I really like doing swaps with different themes as it gives me a chance to try different techniques and ideas.

The New Dies

I was a bit disappointed with some of these new dies that I purchased at the scrapbooking show. They weren't quite what I thought they would be. It's so hard to really tell by just looking at the die and while some had photos of the actual die cut, many did not. None of the black ones or purple ones had photos and the blue ones had some photos, but they weren't necessarily very easy to see. I probably would not have bought some of them if I'd seen the actual die cut it made. I put a photo here of all the ones I got in case anybody is interested in looking into them. Their websites are www.marianndesign.n. for the blue ones, www.joycrafts.nl for the purple ones and www.nellies-choice.com for the black ones.

All in all, I think I might have been better off spending the money I spent on these for Spellbinders. Some of them I really like though. My favorites are the bird in the upper right hand corner, the leaf design just to the left of the bird and I like those 3 daisy type flowers in varying sizes. They will be great for making prima type flowers. And I love the swirly designs that came in the set on the top left. The buttons are kind of cute too. I'd wished I had a button die. I thought it would be quite cute.

Fun at the Scrapbook Expo

Today I went to a scrapbook expo and I had so much fun. There's so much fun stuff out there and I spent about 6 hours looking at it and buying way too much. There were some really good buys, however, and I just can't pass up a good deal if it's something I "need". I put all my "loot" on the table and took photos of it so you can see all the marvelous things I got. I found quite a few of the acrylic stamp sheets for only $1.50. Even if I really only liked a few stamps on the sheet, it was well worth it. Only one I payed full price for but I just HAD to have that one too. It's the one that is standing up in the back. I bought my very first Prima flowers, the tube on the left. I just got plain white because I think it will be more fun coloring my own and putting them together. I also got a block of 60 sheets of the most luscious colors of card stock I've ever seen.

The other thing I bought quite a bit of was the cutting dies for my die cut machine. The prices were very good and I picked out a few of the ones I wanted the most (buy 3 and get one free) and a few that were on sale for even a better price. There was one booth that had dies I had not seen before and were absolutely "to die for". They are shown in the photo below. They were pretty expensive, but I think they'll be well worth it.


The last thing I got was a storage container that they were selling at about half price so they wouldn't have to carry it home. It has little trays that fit in the drawers (which are 12" x 13" for storing paper if you want) with tons of little sections for storing lots of little items. I think it will come in very handy for storing my little die cuts, postage stamps (I can divide them up by color) plus all the little embellishments I seem to be accumulating. I was storing all my die-cuts in a binder in pocket pages, but this will make them much more handy to find just the one I need.


My feet were sore when I finally got home, but it was well worth it for all the fun stuff I found. Now to get busy and create! Well....maybe tomorrow....

"Vintage" Art Trading Cards

Today I made these 4 ATC's and just love the way they turned out. I really am enjoying doing collage on the ATC's. I've never really done much of it before. I'm having fun making use of all my pretty little die cuts too (recently bought a die cut machine). I tried using some pressed flowers and leaves on one of these cards. I'm not too sure I like the way it looks, though. I love that little bird that is on two of the cards. That's actually a Martha Stewart punch that I purchased just last week. For some reason old postage stamps seem to always work on these vintage collage cards too and I have plenty of them as I was collecting postage stamps for a while and purchased quite a few of them on Ebay.

Giving "Antique" Look to Laser Prints

I have some old magazines from the early 1900's and love the nice ivory color of the pages. I was wanting a source for more of those vintage fashion plates for my ATC's, but was thinking that, even if I collected them from Google images, when I printed them out on white paper they just wouldn't look like the ones in my old magazines. So I got an idea to "antique" them.

I mixed some inks with some water (I used All-purpose Inks for fantastix just because I had them) until, when testing it on white paper, I got a nice ivory finish. Then, using a dampened craft sponge, I dabbed a little of my ink mixture onto the sponge and sponged it over my printed page. It took some trial and error to get it to the right mixture of water/ink so it wouldn't be too dark, but I finally managed to get it to the shade of ivory which I wanted. After letting it dry, I tore out my pictures, and distressed the edges a bit more with a tan ink pad.

I also tried printing the images on some light weight faux parchment paper I had in ivory and a mottled tan. That also gave a nice look (better than white) but I liked the look of the sponged on ink mixture better. Below are photos of 3 of the images, one on white paper, one on the ivory parchment and the 3rd with my "antique" look and distressed edges.

My Latest ATC's

I made these ATC's today. For the top 3 I had a set of stamps, which I used as the base and then embellished them. I wanted them to look similar, and yet have slight differences, which I was able to obtain with the different colors. The bottom left one I was experimenting with texture. For the one on the bottom right, I used a piece of cardstock which I had embossed. I wasn't quite sure how to add other elements to it, but played around until I found something I liked.

Retro ATC Swap

I did an ATC swap through Swap-bot and this is the card I received. This was my first swap, so this card will always have a special spot in my collection of ATC's. I sent off 2 others as well, an open theme ATC (which I ended up sending the parchment craft one shown in a previous post) and a packet of "pink" stuff. I haven't received those yet, though. Yesterday I sent off a butterfly ATC and today I sent off a packet of die cuts for my latest swap. It's kind of fun doing swaps but the postage can get a bit expensive. My swap partner for the pink stuff lives in Australia so that was a bit spendy sending that. Can't wait to get my pink stuff though!


This card I made this morning. I had an idea to make a pocket ATC so that's what I did. Picture 1 shows the whole thing, 2 shows the card with the empty pocket and 3 shows the tag, front and back. It was fun to make and I look forward to making more like this.

Parchment Craft ATC for Swap

I made this ATC today for a swap. This one is done in parchment craft. I designed the pattern and sized it to the 2.5 x 3.5 inches for the ATC. It's a bit different than a normal ATC, but was fun to make.

ATC's for Swap

I signed up for some swaps on swap-bot and these are a couple of the cards I made. The pink one is for a swap of pink stuff. The one on the right is a retro swap. That one was fun to make. I have some old magazines from 1953 and found the photo of the lady in it. I also found an ad for some carpet and it had different colors of carpet shown. The background was made based on one of the carpet samples. I used dark green cardstock and then stamped the lighter green color on it. The little rose on top was also cut out of one of the carpet samples and the border on top was die cut from the gal's skirt.

Artist Trade Cards

Today I made my very first ATC's (artist trading cards). It was fun and much like a lot of the stuff I've been doing already for my mini books. I've joined a few swaps on swap-bot and am excited about making my first trades as well. I like working on the smaller area and it will be a good way for me to practice techniques for my art journaling that I'm also learning to do and hoping to work on more in the near future.

Carving Your Own Stamps

Carving your own stamps is quite entertaining and, once you get done, it's great fun to try out your stamp for the first time. I usually have to go back and clean up quite a bit, as it's easy to miss spots here and there, but that's part of the fun. Many people leave on the bits to add more of a rustic "hand carved" look to their images. Personally I like them cleaner, however, and will attempt to clean up all the missed bits.

I used the soft rubber (similar to erasers) stamp carving material that you can buy at arts and craft stores, but found there is quite a difference in the quality. I ordered some from Dick Blick but found them way too soft and "rubbery" for my taste. It was hard to get a clean edge at times. I definitely won't do that again, although I ordered a dozen small sized pieces to get a better price so am stuck with them. They're fine for the larger designs with less detail, such as the branch but are harder to use for the more detailed designs. It's worth the extra money to buy the higher quality carving material.



The images in the picture are the ones I've carved so far. The one on the far left was my own design. The upper right one is supposed to be cracks. I wanted to give a look of cracked paint to my pages. I think it kind of looks ok, but the lines could be a bit thinner, although that's one thing that is rather hard to do with the soft rubber is getting nice thin lines. The other 3 are designs from Dover books, which I traced and changed a bit here and there to suit myself.