Christmas Snow

I love this tag. And it was EASY to make. Perhaps this post will inspire you to give the technique a try?

Prompted by Simon's Monday Challenge Blog, where this week's theme is torn paper, I began to search for inspiration on the web and kept seeing cupcakes like this one by artist Nancy Standlee.

Her post made me realize that an easy way to start a torn collage is by using an underpainting as a pattern you can follow for matching shapes and colors.

So, using this image as my guide, I tinted several pieces of vintage book paper with red, dark blue-greens, and brownish grays and set out tearing and pasting my pieces down.

The paper on the snowman's face and body is untinted--it is the actual color of this really old paper and the darker areas are the page edges where most of the discoloration occurs.

His hat accoutrements were cut from Tim Holtz ephemera and of course there's lots of Stickles. I also covered the eyes, nose and buttons with Glossy Accents and I'm glad I did.

Making this tag put me in the spirit and now I'm now ready to tackle the job of setting up the Christmas tree!

Monochrome

A manila tag, a Halloween stamp set from last year (Tim Holtz), a vintage photo (reduced), Distress Oxide Walnut Stain and Versafine Onyx Black inks were used to create a monochromatic scheme as prompted by Simon's Monday Challenge Blog this week.

I found this to be quite challenging to make. First, I'm still getting used to the oxide ink used for the background's first layer. Then it took several stamping attempts to manage an arrangement of the single house stamp into the fortress you see before you. The Versafine ink is the best for bringing out the details of this really terrific stamp.

A poison label stamp (also from the set) was used for the base of the tag and I varied the degree of shading with a light wash of transparent black and even some diagonal scratching to create more depth and delineation between the two foreground planes.

The ladies came from a terrific vintage photo (source: Vintage Everyday) that I reduced in size before printing. Granted, the scale isn't accurate but I didn't want to lose too many details by making them super small.

I have to say working with a monochrome theme wasn't easy and creating a balance of light and darks in the same color meant thinking outside the box. But, I always appreciate the Monday Challenge prompts as I end up trying things I wouldn't have otherwise--so thank you, Simon!

Shoshin

A journal page to share today made with a technique that I'll definitely try again--a combination of Distress Oxide inks using a Gelli Plate, stencils with white paint and creating negative space with colored pencils.

I embellished my background with an image transfer of a shodo (Japanese calligraphy) for the word shoshin which means "beginner's mind" along with my own handwriting to further explain the concept.

The oxides provide a worthwhile alternative to acrylics when working with the Gelli because of the slow dry time.

Using white paint with stencils while the ink was still wet provided variegations and more subtle shades than just pure white.

I carved out some negative shapes here and there and darkened a few areas with colored pencils for further variety.