those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night - Edgar Allan Poe

Alex and I found these little beauties at a garage sale for $5.  Both of us are huge Halloween fans (Alex also adores everything spider) and so it wasn't a surprise when they followed us home. 

 

My vision: the lamps rest quietly until the end of September when all of the Halloween decorations are officially pulled out and added to the lawn and house.  Alex's vision: they are immediately included in his bedroom decor as night lights.  

Issue: finding a location where the lamps don't fall over with every slight breeze.  Solution: re-purpose a flower pot to hold our night lights upright.

The flower pot selected was a once gift from mr. click, print, scrapbook which included a bunch of homemade, gluten-free cake pops (it was mmm mmm delicious).  To create a spooky Halloween-y night light holder I first applied gesso and white acrylic paint to the rim of the flower pot.  The rim was stamped with Archival black ink and a fantastic cobweb and spider wood stamp that I found at Michaels for $1.50.  I also stamped skulls, potion bottles, ravens and potion labels onto the pages of Edgar Allan Poe's collective work (found at garage sale for $.50 and of which we already own a copy.  mr. everythingshetouches was feeling a little uneasy about the book ripping and sacrifice although I tried convincing him that I was using my crafting for good and not evil.  He stills looks at the final product with skepticism.  Oh well) and modge poged the tore pages onto the flower pot.  

The theme-related book and the book pages themselves makes this project a good fit for Anything But A Card Hitting the Books Challenge #27.

The fence and birch trees are Memory Box die cuts.  The stamps were taken from the Graphic 45 Steampunk Spells stamp set and the Ranger dylusions monster mash set.

 

I free-hand drew the two pumpkins and owl (you know I had to have an owl on there somewhere.  I love Halloween and the freedom of many owls).  Alex is crazy in love with the pumpkin gnawing on the mini pumpkin.  He chose the two pumpkin images from Google so props and thanks to the designers!  Both were coloured in with Distress Inks as watercolours and markers.  Highlights were added with my Viva pearl pen and gelly roll pen.

In a previous life, my craft of choice was painting and decorating flower pots.  I stopped because (a) I needed a new craft challenge and (b) my small apartment could only hold so many flower pots.  I had successfully found new homes for all of my "gifts" years ago (I had given nearly all of them away except for one) so it's been a while since I've worked on a 3D medium.  It takes a respite to appreciate what once was - I had an amazing time designing and crafting this flower pot.  And it was even more fun with all of my new products and toys.  I found the Styrofoam eyes at Michaels for $1.69 each. 

Thank you for stopping by. And with this project we have officially started to decorate for Halloween (don't judge I have shown great restraint; if it was up to me it would be Halloween every day in our house but mr. everythingshetouches disagrees that this is a good idea and so we have some winter-ish things at the end of the year because I'm a good sport and paper lanterns in the sun-room for most of the rest of the year).

phoebe, buttons and poppies banner

I went back to The Inked Stamper for another amazing mixed media class and this time I got to play on canvas.  We used so many different media and I got fabulously messy making this adorable Phoebe Prima Doll banner.  My end product doesn't exactly resemble Dawn's template.  At the bottom right was supposed to be an alcohol inked heart marked "princess" and my version had turned out well enough, however, the positioning of the heart was really bothering me.  Issue: when you pull up a glossy piece of paper from a printed canvas things don't always turn out so pretty.  When you do it at 10:30 at night your judgement and skill is quite impaired.  It is probably best to wait until morning to exercise a more rationale judgement.  Advice: Don't pull up said paper in the first place or have a darn good back-up plan to fix the boo-boo you create.  My back-up plan: buttons.  It only took 1.5 hours to figure out.  I pulled the green hue from the acrylic painted green stems of the poppies and had a good time hot gluing the buttons to the canvas (that was not sarcasm although at about midnight when I finally decided on buttons "good time" was not the term that I was thinking).

For the backdrop of the banner I used a large script stamped directly onto the canvas.  The poppies were also stamped on using a foam stamp and acrylic paints.  Foam loves paint and the result is fantastic if you are willing to accept some imperfections.  You can ink up the foam stamp quite heavily to get a more pronounced image, however, I didn't want the red to overwhelm Phoebe.

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The dress was cardstock paper and highlighted with markers and my gelly roll pen.  I painted in Phoebe's hair using Tim Holtz distress ink (vintage photo) and markers.

The adorable lettering was added with a coloured matte gel medium and a stencil.  We added gold to the the gel medium.  Easy peesy coloured gel medium.

My midnight buttons.

Dawn's classes are always fun (and so so messy - makes me so so so happy).  Even with the late night emergency (if only in my own mind) correction I adore this banner and my newest addition to my ladies (I have a growing bunch of girly stamps), Phoebe.

I'm entering my Phoebe banner in the a blog named Hero Challenge #31: Button It!

Here's to late night plan Bs.

and now for something completely different ..

When one of the deal-of-the-day websites offered a deal on a glass fusion class I hopped out of my chair and onto that train of crazy fun without hesitation.

Lara, owner of the Glazing Pot Studio & Gifts, created an amazing first experience with glass.   It's actually a pretty easy process. You get a base piece of glass and add your glass pieces in a design of your choice.  We made three items in total: two necklaces and one plate.

Necklace One:

Necklace Two:

Finished fired product Necklace One and Two:

As I was leaving the house for the class Alex asked if I would create one of my pieces for him.  I didn't have much trouble coming up with designs for the pendants, however, with the larger medium the pressure to create was amped and I struggled a bit with deciding on what to design.  I was very grateful, at that point, for Alex's little voice to remind me to devote one of my pieces to him.  My little muse is very much enamoured with octopuses (grab a coffee and take a look at suction cup the yarn octopus).  I created the following piece:

And the final fired product:

My octopus' garden made the Glazing Pot Studio Facebook page!

All three pieces together:

Alex loved the end result so much that we signed up for camp at the Glazing Pot Studio this summer and Alex made a stunning spider in a tree hanging from a web:

I'm entering my glass fusion pieces into PJ Challenge New Technique Challenge September Motivator as my second entry.  It's not a card or a layout or a tag but it definitely is a new technique.

My crafting space is undergoing some minor adjustments and renovations and I am definitely going through crafting withdrawal.  I did manage to open my art journal and start a page which is a great leap in the right direction.  Very happy with the beginnings of my first page and I can't wait to get it ready to be posted and to share.  And thank you for stopping by!  I love the comments and support.  It's incredible to have so many talented people comment positively on my projects.

washi .. pamshi birthday card

Have you had a chance to check out PJ Challenge yet?  My amazing friend Jo (Three Cs) has put together a great blog with the sole purpose to challenge creators and allow us to create using our cache which we collect (that's me using Jo's Three Cs in context (context is a "C" of a different kind - ack double parenthesis!): Collect, Cache and Create).  The prize is self-satisfaction and if you really want to push the envelope check out the New Technique Challenges where you can demo a technique that's "new to you".  You are encouraged to learn something new and then show off your nouveau mad skills in your own project or interpretation.

This birthday card, made for my mother-in-law, will count as one of my two PJ Challenge entries and I am also using it to demonstrate a new technique which I have now added to my ever-growing repertoire.

Washi is a style of paper first made in Japan and it translates to mean Japanese (wa) paper (shi).  For more information on washi link to the wiki page.  Here's my introduction to pamshi - paper created by me, Pam.

How to create your own washi tape in three easy steps for pennies a strip:

1.  Roll your double-sided tape onto tissue wrapping paper.  I like making loads of tape at one time and I love the slight imperfections in the strips as you line up the adhesive and attach it to the paper.  Both items, the tissue paper and double-sided tape, can be found at the dollar store of your choice.  You can play with types of paper (doesn't have to be tissue paper although it does give you that fun transparent style and if you check out my final product you can really see through the paper fringe which is fun) and you can play with the width of your tape.  I didn't want very many thin strips in this project but I did run two thinner strips of double-sided on the pale yellow tissue paper.

2. Rip the taped paper into strips.  And again, you have a choice depending on your style or the style of your project.  You can (a) rip the strips carefully and enjoy the rough edges, (b) cut the strips out to get more accurate and straight lines or (c) combine both techniques.  I, as you might have guessed, am a rip-and-fall-in-mad-love-with-the messy-rough-edges kind of girl but guess what friends - I ended up with (c) combining the two techniques.  Ripping was great for most colours of tissue paper but for some reason (maybe the fibers are more dense for different dyes or different manufacturers make certain colours) some of the colours didn't rip as easily.  To ensure that I didn't muck up the whole strip I ended up cutting some of them out.  You can wait to cut up your strips of washi after you have stamped your images onto the tissue paper, however, I like to capitalize on my paper and so I place the tape rather close to each other and because I didn't want the stamps to run into each other (or maybe I do in the future - that could be fun) I cut the strips out before stamping.  If you notice I left the two lines of thinner tape on one tissue strip and stamped the flowers onto both at the same time (fifth from the top in the image below).

3.  Stamp the tissue paper side of the strip.  Et voilà. Washi tape haute couture to match your project.  You may use whichever stamps you have in your arsenal, however, I found the ones that work really well are those that repeat in pattern or are small enough to repeat by hand.

Side note: enjoy the messy.  Imagine this:  tissue paper all over my work table and strips of double-sided tape sticky side up.  It didn't take long for one of those lightweights to accidentally get stuck onto my double-sided tape in a crazy random askew kind of way.  As I gently pulled the tissue from the tape, thinking I would just have to cut that section out I had a lightbulb moment: enjoy the messy.  I decided to rip up tiny pieces of tissue and randomly stuck them onto the double-sided tape.  Hence the two strips of messy pamshi which somehow reminds me of ballerina tutus. Seriously, this was the most fun I had in creating this project.  There will be more messy pamshi in the future!

The end product:

Prima Doll's backdrop was created with Tim Holtz's distress inks (tea dye, black soot) on watercolour paper.  The Prima Doll, herself, was stamped onto script cardstock paper from the Recollections: Tattered and Worn ginormous book of cardstock paper and her dress was made from scraps of various cardstock paper and leftover wrapping paper (see mr. everythingshetouches? there is sometimes a method to my madness in keeping random wrapping and packing materials which means there has to be a different better nicer word than hording).

The wings (Graphic 45 Steampunk Spells stamp set) were stamped onto the same script cardstock and highlighted with my Viva pearl pen.

The Happy Birthday tag was created from leftover watercolour paper from the main backdrop and distressed with black soot.  The brad is from Recollections collection and the little butterfly punch was a treasure found for $1.50 at Michaels.

 

I had been playing with the idea of this card for a few months.  I really wanted to highlight the washi tape and keep its integrity.  The front of the card is, therefore, a bit shorter than the back and the washi tape is a fringe along the length of the card.  I adore the transparency and delicate personality of each strip.  

PJ September Challenge #2 soon to follow: stay tuned my wonderful blogster friends.  And I greatly thank each one of you for the amazing words of encouragement.  You're all so very very sweet.

carnival, fort edmonton park august 2012

One of my favourite outings last summer was our trip to Fort Edmonton Park (see bill's confectionary fort edmonton park august 2012 for  more of the story).   Alex and I spent some time with friends walking through the park and ended the day in the midway with a ride on the carousel and Ferris wheel.

I started this manila 12x12 with a layer of gesso to prime the page and prepare for empty spaces.  The background was created with a layer of carnival images I printed in black & white and sepia, a sheet of white tissue paper, a crazy circle stencil and Tim Holtz distress inks.  I used broken china with the stencil and then distressed the edges of the layout with tea dye.  I also added some tea drops throughout using Earl Grey.   

I love the event banners which line the midway - bearded lady, strongman - and so my version of the advertisement banners was taken from the Graphic 45 Find your Wings and Fly paper.  I free-hand drew in posts holding up the banners.  I am really enjoying including some free-hand drawing in my pieces.  It has a great homegrown authentic feeling.

The  prescription eyeglasses are from the Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe Collection and I cut the Ferris wheel out with the Silhouette Cameo.  The red and white strips beneath the Ferris wheel were b-side scraps from the Graphic 45 Find your Wings and Fly banners.

 

 

I had a great deal of fun putting this page together and I definitely will use these techniques again in my art journal (whenever I get that going).  Working with tissue paper is incredible.  It adds texture and dimension to the art piece and it's relatively simple (as long as you're okay with it not being perfect).  I'm entering this page in Simon Says Stamp Carnival Challenge.

Thank you for stopping by and all of the encouraging comments.  You're all so very sweet and kind.

rusty the invermere moose august 2012

For those of you who have been following along in my adventures you know that the family (Alex, mr. everythingshetouches, Baba, Dyeda and myself) went on a fabulous road trip to Fairmont, British Columbia last summer (bavarian mining railway north star school august 2012).  Invermere, B.C. is 37km north of Fairmont Hot Springs and is a summer destination to approximately 36 000 visitors on weekends throughout the summer (population 4000).  Invermere is also home to Rusty, the Moose, a large Canadian roadside attraction.  I'm a sucker for (a) large Canadian roadside attractions and (b) moose which equals photo op.

I layered a stitched piece of material, packaging, wooden moose, washi tape, metal sprockets, chipboard gears, distress inks and acrylic paint onto Hot Off The Press Steampunk paper.  The moose trio are wooden cutouts that I found at Walmart for a dollar (a dollar for a package of three moose and three moose heads!  The moose heads are a bit too odd for me and so they may be migrating to another happy home.  I'll have to see if I can come up with an art piece which incorporates moose heads.  If you want them let me know.  I'm sure we can get moose to travel without much hassle) to which I applied gesso, white acrylic paint and weathered wood distress ink.  I gave them personality by adding washi tape and, from Tim Holtz Visual Artistry The Journey, the phrase enjoy the journey.  I love that statement.  Simple and yet so meaningful.  The argyle stamp (Tim Holtz's Stampers Anonymous) behind The Dude (the largest moose on the right; the other two are Walter and Donny for all you Big Lebowski fans) was added with white acrylic paint.  Yeah, I named the moose.  The enormous gear photo was actually taken on our trip to the Bavarian Mining Railway in Kimberley, B.C.  It's a bit of a cheat but it fits in nicely with this layout and I just couldn't resist.

I love the little Steampunk-esque hat on Donny.  It is from the Dylusions Couture Collection set stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured in with markers.  The feather was drawn free-hand.

The sprockets are Tim Holtz sprocket gears.  The gears were cut using my Silhouette Cameo.  You can't see it but I'm grinning.  I painted some of the chipboard gears with Martha Stewart Crafts acrylic pearl paint (aquarium) and others with FolkArt metallic acrylic paint (antique copper).  The large gear at the top in the photo below was painted with antique copper and embossed with black embossing powder.  I added the powder to the very wet paint and heat set it.  The bubbling drying paint created a bit of a crackle effect which I absolutely adore.  The gear has an incredible texture now and really sets up that corner of the layout.

I added more argyle and numbers from an eye chart stencil in white acrylic paint to the top right of the layout.  The hexagons are Tim Holtz distress ink peeled paint, applied with a stencil and doodled with my black and white gelly roll pens.

The gauzy material was doubled over and stitched free-hand with grey embroidery thread.  I also added the packaging from the Tim Holtz sprocket gears set which I randomly tossed about the page (somewhat randomly.  Perfectionist Pam only permits a calculated amount of randomness.  I found more freedom in doodling than I have in "random" placements).

I created a Rusty Moose tag to tuck away in the back of the layout.  I love making tags.  I recently purchased my first art journal and I have yet to crack it open.  Perhaps once I create my first page the trepidation that comes with new blank pages will lessen, however, at the moment I feel incapacitated.  I need to transfer the tag and doodling joy to the pages of the art journal somehow.

I am entering the Rusty Moose layout in About A Boy's mid-August Challenge: Anything Goes.  I am so honoured to be In the Spotlight for About a Boy August 1st Back to School Challenge.  The design team is incredibly talented and the entries are very beautiful.  You should definitely check them out.

I have a few more posts lined up for the end of August, including PJ September New Technique Challenge and a craft outside of the world of paper.  Be sure to come back and visit.

silhouette cameo .. i found a stray and he followed me home

I tried telling mr. everythingshetouches that I found this poor little critter by the side of the road and that he followed me home but mr. everythingshetouches is far too wise for stuff like that.

The truth:  this little guy was on super sale and I couldn't resist missing the great opportunity to bring him home five months earlier than planned (do you think mr. everythingshetouches will forget this was an early Chanukah gift by the time Chanukah Harry actually rolls into town with his bag of goodies?  Yeah.  Not likely).

And even on sale (did I mention that it was a really good sale? - 40% off!) I struggled with the idea that I hadn't done enough research to bring this baby home and crack it open the minute the keys hit the bowl and the door closed behind me.  So for two days the box remained closed and I watched YouTube videos on how to use the Silhouette Cameo and read countless reviews.

On day three I opened the box.  Set up was easy peesy lemon squeezy.  Cutting?  Not as much.  Here's my first unsolicited bit of advice: don't open a new machine after 10pm.  Fatigue, technology and despair don't mix like White Russians and red wine.  Save the grand opening for a time when you (a) have time and (b) don't feel the need to check your eyelids for holes desperately (I'm no longer a night owl).

In my search for answers as to why the Silhouette would not cut through the paper (or when I had more hope - chipboard) I found that there is a bad batch of blades included with the Silhouette itself.  A quick, and very nice, call to customer service taught me that Silhouette does not ship to Canada (was my machine somehow smuggled across the border by the store elves?) and I was on my own to procure a replacement blade ($21 at Michaels which is almost as much as the Silhouette itself.  Criminal!  They're $16 at Treasured Memories which is slightly better).  The Michaels staff member was quite sympathetic and very accommodating.  And with great trepidation and a series of plan Bs if the new blade did not work I plunked it into the machine and I cut my first image.  Success!  And then I cut another and another and well, you can see for yourself I had a lot of fun.

Now the mission is to maximize Silhouette functions to really enjoy my newest toy.  Perhaps I can teach it to also clean the house ..

the man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed - Henry Ford

Sometimes when you go garage sale-ing you come home with a little treasure.  This Ford Model T, also known as the Tin Lizzie, was not only a great find because it's simply a fantastic design and made completely out of metal but it is also a music box.

I debated painting it black or covering it with paint, gel medium and embellishments and decided that for now it will live as it was found.  Distressed.

The crank at the front of the car can be turned and the best part: the hood rises and falls as the music plays.  Super duper bonus: the music box isn't mint condition and so the music has a very tinkly twangy sound quality and is creepier than a clown under your bed. 

Did I mention that this little aptly named find was $4? 

So what do you think?  Should the Ford Model T be re-designed?  If so, what would you like to see?