John Wayne...The Duke

All through the month of June Altered Pages is celebrating men.  The men in my family love to spend Sundays watching Westerns and there's no cowboy more manly than John Wayne, The Duke.  My card today on the Altered Pages Artsociates page is an homage to those rugged men in movie Westerns.  

I found a great black and white image of John Wayne (please don't ask me what movie it's from) in an old Mailbox Muse kit.  There were other Hollywood collages in that kit, which is where the words came from.  The other cowboy images were on the Old West and Vintage Cowboy sheets.  

The black bar border and white stars border gave me the old-time movie feel I was looking for.  I rounded out the design with two rubber stamps from the Muse Hollywood Movies stamp set.

Supplies Used:

Muse Hollywood Stamps

Old West collage

Vintage Cowboys collage

12" Edgers

6" Edgers

Glue & tape adhesive

Black ink (to edge the images)

And if you like cowboys, check out this kit!  There is only one left!!

Fathers Day...Yeehaw!

We are celebrating men this month at Altered Pages and this rugged cowboy makes a perfect Fathers Day card for the outdoorsy type.  

These two collage images share a color palette.  Even though the sky and ground were different on each of the photos, I trimmed the tree line on each one so that it would flow across the card.  

To make it a "manly" card vs. just a landscape card, I needed to add at least a cowboy.  This fellow and his horse are both on the same collage called Old West.  Perfect!

I pulled a lot of different images out to combine for this card and opted to use just five of them. I cut the bottom barn away from the sky in the photo to add to my background.  Putting this barn in front gave it another layer of dimension front to back, putting the original barn image further to the back.

The ground on this second barn worked pretty well with the rocky ground of the mountain image.

The white edge where the trees came together was touched up with a dark orange Gelato and a water pen and quickly blotted.  The cowboy below has white between the loops of his rope so I used the same process to color them in with a dark green Gelato.  I also lightly colored the rocks in the bottom right corner with this color.

The image was squared up and trimmed to be a layer on a 5x7 card.  Before attaching my scene to the light sky I touched up the scene all the way around with a topaz ink, which matches the color of the next mat.

All of the matted layers were combined into the card below.

The Mini Tag Alphabet Collage comes in several colors.  I cut them into little rectangles and used the same topaz ink to distress the edges.

Each of the letters were mounted with a small square of dimensional foam adhesive.

I used the "D" in Day to camouflage the line where the two tree images come together.

Thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to come back again real soon to see what the Altered Pages Artsociates Design Team has to share with you.

SUPPLIES USED ON THIS POST:

Old West collage

Vintage Barns collage

Colors In New England collage

Alphabet Tags collage - several colors available

Double-sided Adhesive - several widths are available

Foam Dimensional Adhesive - several sizes are available

On the move - tag art

Summer is the time that a lot of families take long vacations.  The weather is nice, kids are out of school and it's always great to get away.  You're going to take a lot of photos while you're away and there is a good chance that many of you will create scrapbooks.  This could be used in a pocket perhaps with your own photos on the flip side.  Some of you may even be bringing back souvenirs for friends and family and need a gift tag.  Either way, my project today is for you.

Altered Pages has many destination themed collages so no matter where you're headed, chances are you can find some great images to compliment your photos or gifts.  I chose several images from mostly non-U.S. cities for my tag.  I've never been anywhere so I may as well dream big.

I chose to use Memento Luxe in 4 colors and Donna Salazar Mixed Media in in Truffle brown.  The Memento colors were sponged on at random and the Mixed Media ink was sponged around the edges and also used for the clock faces.

The images on the 6x6 Time Travel stencil are close together so I surrounded the one I wanted to use with painters tape.  This allowed me to get ink into the entire image without edges or ghosts of the rest of the stencil images close by.

After the ink was dry enough to not smear, I started adding the travel images with a glue stick.  A little fancy yarn at the top and the tag was complete.  

Products used:

Julie Nutting Prima Tags

Memento Luxe inks

Donna Salazar Mixed Media ink

Glue Stick

Decorative fibers

6x6 Time Travel stencil

Printable Art collages:

327D Glass Slides Travel

380D Travel Images XL

452D Eiffel Tower

2165 Train Travel Days

782D Yellow ATCs

246D Italia

2367 Pocket Quotes 2

Red - White - Blue two ways

With Memorial Day on the horizon this month I have started thinking about one of my favorite color schemes...red, white and blue!  We all know that those colors are associated with patriotic events, but they can be fun for other projects, too.  This week I'm sharing one of each over on the Altered Pages blog called Altered Pages Artsociates.

Collage 3118 Greyhounds has a lovely vintage lady with her hounds and the colors are perfect to pair with the Authentique paper pad Heroic.  There is even a frilly brocade pattern that plays off the French words in the photo.  

Flip those patterns over and you'll find a more traditional patriotic design.  For this card I used the Uncle Sam image found on the collage called Patriotism.

Both cards were made with the same layout and embellishments so you can see how easy it is to create an entirely different look with a single paper pad.

PRODUCTS USED:

Authentique Heroic paper pad

Greyhounds collage

Patriotism collage

Dew Drops & Tacky Glue

Double sided adhesive

Foam dimensional adhesive squares

Add caption

I've got a notion ... a sewing notion, that is!

This old-fashioned sewing stamp set reminds me of the pajamas my grandmother used to make us when I was little.  Unfortunately, the "sewing gene" didn't make it to me!  I think she would have liked my trio of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) that I'm sharing today over on the Altered Pages Artsociates blog.  I hope you can take a moment to hop over there and leave me a word or two and say hello!

www.AlteredPages.com

Mixed Media Greeting Card

Spring is finally here!  Although it has still been cool, the sky is blue and sunny and the plants are beginning to stir.  In their honor I chose to work with blues and greens this week.

I started with two gel prints which were made with the same paints.  One was more green and the other more blue.  In fact, one of the prints is even on blue paper.  I cut them both into 1" strips.  I wanted an uneven mosaic so I used one long piece and 6 shorted pieces of various lengths.  

Each of these pieces had the edges darkened with green ink so that they would all blend together.  It also hides the fact that the card stock of each print was a different color.

I tried to get an even distribution of green and blue.  Double sided adhesive holds all of the pieces in place on the black card stock.

I just bought to lovely stencils from Altered Pages and couldn't wait to use them!  I chose blue and green inks to compliment the paints.

I'm not sure what this shape is supposed to be, but it seemed plant-like so I started with it.  

To make the card feel like a complete piece rather than 7 panels, I made sure each of the stenciled images covered at least two pieces.  I used almost all of the shapes on both stencils.  

To make them stand out, the word GROW and the focal leaf are silver.  Ink for the leaf and gel pen for the word.

Products Used:

Gel Press Plate

Brayer

Acrylic Paint

StazOn Ink

Silver Gel Pen

TCW Stencil Ravenscape

TCW Stencil Rebekah Grow

Silver Ink Pad

Dew Drops

Double Sided Adhesive

Just begin!

We've all learned to appreciate a job well done, but before that can happen you have to get a good start!  This is true whether it's a job or a hobby.  You might be amazing at something, but you won't know until you begin.  

Today's project for the Altered Pages Artsociates blog started with a monoprint on my gel plate.  I like to collect interesting patterned items to use with my prints.  The shapes in this print are from an empty adding machine tape roll and the wheel from an empty tape runner.

My print was made on a scrap of blue card stock with blues, greens and red paint.  We're all about red this month so I sponged in some red ink on the page and left some random areas untouched so that the other colors would pop out.

The addition of the permanent ink really altered the paint colors.  I added a little darker red around the edges after the paper was trimmed to size, in this case it's an A6 card panel.  I also dipped the edges into the dark ink so the blue paper wouldn't be obvious.

To keep the gear theme from the background going I chose some chipboard gears of various sizes and dipped them in the same pigment ink that I used on the edges.  

A hint of blue darkened the edges just a little.

This saying by Plato is on the Pocket Quotes 2 collage sheet.  These little pocket sayings are perfect for artist trading cards if you leave them whole or you can cut them apart.  

It really needed something to show off the chipboard since it's a very monochromatic card.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any of the fabulous silver gear embellishments from Altered Pages, so I raided my husband's hardware bin and found these lock washers.  Between the pop of silver and the dark blue card stock base, the gears show up beautifully!  

Supplies used:
Gel plate (Altered Pages has multiple sizes!)
Acrylic paint in your choice of colors
Texture tools 
StazOn ink - Valentine Red
Memento ink - Rhubarb Stalk and Nautical Blue
Chipboard gears
Pocket Quotes 2 collage sheet
Metal gears
Card making tools 
Scoring mat
Double-sided adhesive
Strong glue to hold the metal