I haven’t posted for awhile. I’ve been fighting with a nasty flu bug. However, I did manage to get this artist trading card done for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind. The theme is “morning in Tuscany.”

I used  clip art from Microsoft Office to create the expresso cup.

The scene in the cup is also clip art. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to paste the scene into the coffee cup.

I then printed and cut the newly created clip art, and glued this to a a backing of corrugated card stock.

The word Buongiorno means Good Morning in the Italian language — at least according to Google Translate. The letters are alphabet stickers.

A few days back, I posted a picture of a Diamond Fold card that I made using Washi Paper Quilting. The picture of the Diamond Fold Card is at this link.

I decided the card was too small to send on its own, so I made a cover for the card.

The quilted heart is made from one of the Washi Kits put out by Hanko Designs.

The quilting is not done with a thread. The kits contain a very light foam that is glued to a light card stock. The paper is glued in place over the foam. It’s easy to do and very lovely.

This little mini book is made by folding one sheet of paper to form four “pages” with pockets for tags.

The top picture shows the outside of the book. The bottom picture shows the inside.

The project uses one 8″ by 11 1/2″ piece of good quality printer paper.  This is the type of printer paper that comes in packages of 100, and is a heavier weight than standard printer paper. The paper I used is called Ivory Granite Letterhead by Gartner Studios.

I learned how to do the fold from this DVD: Ranger Tim Holtz DVD, An Altered Journey

I stamped the paper prior to folding, using a variety of stamps and a couple of colors of Ranger Distress Inks.

The fold creates four pockets, which I filled with tags made from a light colored card stock, and also stamped.

I decorated the tags with printed text, a cancelled postage stamp and a punched butterfly shape.

At the top of the tag, I used embroidery cotton and attached a hand made paper bead. The beads were a gift from a fell artist.

It is a cute little project and highly versatile.

I am involved in an ATC swap, in which we work through the alphabet, systematically creating techniques starting with each letter.

This technique is N. I didn’t know of any techniques starting with the letter N, so I created my own. I call this one Newsprint Glam.  It didn’t scan well, but in real life, the look is quite interesting.

I started with a strip of newspaper. I used the sport section since it is always in pristine condition at my place. I am not a sports fan.

I colored the newsprint with green and blue artist chalk.

Next, I sprayed with Radiant Rain and Glimmer Mist.

When this dried, I gave a coat of glitter Mod Podge to seal.

The last step involved making the actual artist trading card. The butterfly is cut from the pages of a book, I think. It was sent to me as a RAK but I think it is a punched shape.

I made this birthday card for a little boy who is turning four.

The young guy is a big fan of horses and loves his visits to the farm.

I used a couple of photographs as the basic elements in this simple collage.

To this, I added some scraps of Western themed scrapbook paper that I found in my stash, and some stickers.

The large sticker “4″ was a perfect colour match for the t-shirt, and the row of horses made a good border. I added a final sticker that read, “in riding a horse, we borrow freedom”.

The card opens to display more western scrapbook paper and birthday greetings.

This is an altered book made for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind. The assignment was to make a shadow box from a book.

The theme was to be, “Where in the World is Dorothy“, drawn from the Wizard of Oz.

I started with a hard cover book purchased at a book sale.

I decided to cut two shadow boxes instead of one, and to make them in the shape of a shoe.  When the niches were cut and the pages glued down, I painted the edges of the pages with Olive Green Luminiere paint.

The second picture down shows the double layout with the shoe shaped shadow boxes.

I lined the shoes with red scrapbook paper and filled them with an assortment of clip art, red beads, buttons and clip art.  The clip art used is found on the Net and is all in the public domain.

I had a sound button in my stash. Conveniently, it played the music of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I glued the button in place inside one of the red shoes.

I covered the front and  back cover with scrapbook paper. On the front, I used a cut out image of Dorothy from the first movie, and gave it dimension with pop dots.

For the front, I cut circles out of “map” scrapbook paper and used alphabet stickers to spell Where is Dorothy?

On the back, I used die cut alphabets to spell Follow the Yellow Brick Road. I added a few yellow buttons.

I ran a variegated ribbon around the book and sewed both ends to a clip that closes and opens as desired.

Lastly, I decided to make a bookmark out of the shoe shapes that I had cut out of pages.I covered the top “shoe” with red artist’s chalk, then sprayed this with Pearl colored Radiant Rain. The result was a transparent, shimmery red shoe with text showing through nicely.

Radiant Rain is by LuminArte and is Twinkling H20′s in spray format. You can purchase it at Amazon: Radiant Rain

I punched a hole through the heels of the Ruby Red Slippers and used a binder ring to attach this to the ribbon.

And that is my altered book. It is going in the mail tomorrow to my swap partner.

This diamond fold card was to have a Japanese theme. I decided upon Washi Paper Quilting.

You can find directions for making the diamond fold at Split Coast Stampers.

Washi Paper Quilting is a Japanese art form that uses beautiful Washi paper. The paper is quilted using a light card board for the backing and a fine foam for the quilting. You can get the information at , or purchase the papers and other supplies on eBay. This is the eBay search result:

I made a video a while back showing how to do Washi paper quilting. I’ll put it here again.

As you can see, for this card I made a kimono using Washi paper and added a gold fan charm. It’s for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind.

This is the front and inside of a custom made birthday card. I was asked to make a card that was “very large”, “beautiful”, and “had space for a lot of people to sign and leave messages.”

This is what I came up with.

It doesn’t show in the picture, but both sides of the card are bound with O rings using the Zutter Bind-It-All, Version 2.0.

The front cover opens in the middle to reveal several blank pages that are intended for people to write on and leave messages.  At the top of each blank page, I attached an oval die cut on which I had printed the word Messages.

The front covers are decorated with clip art, alphabet stickers, pearls, ribbon, a hat pin and three small paper rosettes.

On the inside, after open all the blank pages, we come to the inside back. It contains another collage image, a photograph of the birthday gal, and a message spelled out with alphabet stickers.

Is this a card?  Or is it a small mini-book?

Whatever it is, I hope the recipient in pleased.

I made this 4″ by 4″ inchie quilt for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind swap group.

The theme is A Spring Morning.

Now when I say that I made this project, I am not being completely truthful.

The truth is that my friend Joan designed, created and made the fabric inchies. She is a whiz with a needle and can do every form of needlework known.

Anyway, Joan kindly made the inches, since I am not great at doing needle work myself.  My role was to glue the inches together onto a square of card stock, and I added the dangly button, charm and fabric at the upper left corner.

This is the thinking behind the quilt:

1. The Bottom Row:  This row represents ground level, small flowers and grass.

2. The Second Row from the Bottom: This row represents bigger things that stand on the ground. The brown is the beginning of a tree trunk, and the other three squares are animals and larger plants.

3. The Third Row from the Bottom:  This row represents things a little higher up. The brown square is the tree trunk. The next little green and brown square is a birds nest among leaves. There are several tiny eggs in the nest. The next two squares are butterflies.

4. The Top Row:  The first square represents the tree’s foliage. The next square in (a button) is a bird returning to the nest. The third square is a butterfly and the last square represents the rays of the sun.

Didn’t my friend do an an amazing job?

We are collecting 4″ by 4″ pages to add to a fat book or chunky book.

This is the third ATC or artist trading card that I made for the Words of Wisdom swap.

I was not in a serious mood when I made these cards.

This card features a stamped image of Michaelangelo`s David.  I stamped it in black, dye ink on glossy paper.  I colored it using the blending technique that I learned from Stampscapes. I don`t remember the name of the technique.

I used computer generated text to produce the words of wisdom. “It is always easier to to get forgiveness than permission.”  The word Remember is a stamp.

Finally, I added some black eyelets to the card.