Brutal Busy

No, it's not that it's summer and close to school. I'm working on a lot of things, and it's been hard keeping up with everything I want when everything I must do requires more of my time. You deal with it too, right?

Here's a little project I was able to squeeze in because it was fast, and because it has such awesome results. It doesn't require special equipment or a lot of supplies. All you need are some Distress Ink pads, a flat circle of plastic or cardstock, a drop or 2 of a reinker, a stamp you love (or 2), some water, a straw and maybe a white gel pen.

This is an ATC that I created using the above list of supplies. I sometimes use a can of compressed air to move the reinker around. Here's my process:

So there you have it. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments. Thanks so much for visiting!

Ta!
~ky

Swap and Trade

Hey there folks! I've been very busy and spent a lot of time contemplating whether or not I should resurrect my blog. I've decided I should give it a try, despite the lack of comments and traffic. If you have any suggestions about my blog, please kindly leave me a message. I would greatly appreciate constructive ideas!

I am a proud member of the Splitcoaststampers' newest challenge site. It's all about mixed-media! I do hope you'll check it out, and play along. Share your work here on my blog - just add a link in the comments - because I want to give you some love! Here's an art journal page I did a few weeks ago. Our challenge by Tiffany (IHeartArt is her blog) was to use multiple surfaces in the creation of our project.

I pulled together a lot of surfaces because I love collages. I started with gesso over a layer of distress inks, then built more layers with tape, gesso and bits of papers. My surfaces include: cardstock, medical tape, corrugated cardboard, Styrofoam  twine, vellum, metallic paint, acrylic paint, tissue paper, gesso, wooden stir stick, and machine stitching. The text on the embossed vellum says: 

"As a son, a man receives love. As a husband, a man shares his love. And as a father, a man gives his love." 

This will have a good bit of journaling about my life with my Dad. He's an amazing man whom I am getting a chance to be with day in and day out.

These pieces are Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). I participated in an ATC swap on Tamara's Willowing website. My partner was Sherri Mash, and she sent me the ATCs on the right.

Our theme was summer travel, and I created the ATCs on the right. I used Tim Holtz's and BoBunny papers, Distress ink, miscellaneous brads, ribbon, spinner. The gold edging is Viva Modeling Cream (Love this stuff!). I used Prismacolor pencils on the truck, and the stamps are by Tim Holtz and Gina K Designs.

I hope you've enjoyed your visit here. Feel free to follow me, or 'like' my Facebook studio: the ArtLab. Head out into the land of art, inspired!

~ky

Mix-Ability

Hello my friends! I want to tell you about an awesome new mixed-media challenge site. Splitcoast Stampers has a challenge specifically for getting to know and use mixed media methods for making cards. BUT you can easily follow along using your art journals! It's called the mix-ability challenge. Here's a project I did for one of them.

At first, I was resistant to the idea of using these techniques for cards. Why? I don't know - maybe my OCD is showing! This was the first challenge, called Yin Yang, to use something shiny (here it's the embossing powder, shiny ribbon, and rhinestones) and something matte (I used matte brads, and Pan Pastels). See? Easy and fun challenges!

So what are you waiting for? Run on over and check it out. If you make a project for any of the challenges - come back and link me so I can see and show you some love! Remember, these do NOT have to be cards, and they are just for fun, so get going!

Ta for now,
~ky

Recipe:
Cardstock, Gina K Designs
Patterned paper: Basic Grey, Wisteria
Images, Gina K Designs Bold and Beautiful
Inks, Versamark, Memento
Brads, ribbon and rhinestones: Basic Grey, Making Memories, Michaels
Coloring, Pan Pastels
Embossing powder, Ranger, Inc.

Friends and Neighbors

It's been a long road, but finally, the ArtLab is functional! It's still a bit of a train wreck, but I can get to all of my wonderful toys! Yay!!

Some friends of mine from the author side of my life decided we needed to form a small sub-group to work on a different brand of creativity. We had our first Google Hangout today. It was supposed to last about an hour, but we didn't close out until FOUR hours later! It was a LOT of fun!

We started by talking about new toys we had from Christmas (ahem, we did get Tim to take the plastic wrap off his goodies), and shared some projects we had done recently. Jade showed us a rocking watercolored bird piece that graced a front magazine cover. She's amazing with the watercolors, folks. Once we get everything ginning along, I'll try to link you all up with some of their art. Seriously good talent!

Jade pointed us to a 'new' blog (new to me) that posts a new prompt every Friday. It's Illustration Friday, and this week's prompt was "Wheel". In true Naperville fashion, we jumped in with both feet! We had a little conversation about how to approach the prompt, then each of us dove in to creating our piece. It was really cool. Here's mine:

7x10 inch Mixed Media Canson journal

I chose to use a 'wheel' to represent the circular passing of seasons. Lately the weather has been center-stage, so I'm sure those latent thoughts surfaced in this piece. I will be adding some text to this, and I'll post the final piece later.

I painted the basic tree frame with Neocolor II water soluble wax pastels over a mixed acrylic/pearl mist background created from leftovers of another project. I stamped lots of leaves then painted those. I worked distress inks into the tree crown to mimic the different colors of leaf progression through the year. Then I added depth and dimension with round dot stamps (Papertrey Ink), and mistable masks. I also used my Copic markers to give better definition to the tree and some other bits on the page.

Next we played a familiar game of word associations. We started with banana, took a detour to Mt. Everest, and wound our way back to dinosaurs. Tim was our tour guide and read our list back to us. The resulting prompt? Plaid Dinosaurs! Rawr!!

3.5 x 3.5 inch tile on Strathmore Mixed Media paper
Copic multiliners shaded with Copic markers

I came up with my take on a prehistoric (dino) fish hanging out with some bananas, a bird and done in black and white zendoodling. My plaid isn't the traditional plaid, but I think it turned out just fine. That's what we did today.

If you want to use these prompts and come up with your own interpretation  feel free. Be sure to come back and link me to your work, because I want to see it!

Thanks so much for your patience while I got my studio back together. I'm so glad you dropped by!

Ta for now,

~ky