AWNB Summer Skies Week 2

This is Week 2 of our Anything Goes/Summer Skies Challenge at Art With No Boundaries. This week I played with the Cosmo Wide Panel image from CS Designs.. She has the most haunting expression on her beautiful face and I love colouring flowy hair.

The foundation for this piece is a raw wood framed mirror from IKEA that's just been waiting to be altered. The entire frame was covered in black gesso and then watery acrylic paint was flicked on by tapping a toothbrush over it. If you flick the toothbrush with your thumb you get smaller dots but if you tap it, you get larger rounder dots.

For this piece, I imagined Cosmo as the guardian of the earth with the desire to bring harmony and order to our universe. Those two words come from the definition of Cosmos. I fussy cut an image of the earth out of an old school atlas (1961) and glued it to the upper right of the mirror frame so that she would be gazing upon it from the night sky. A small tag with a foam letter e was placed on top of the image.

Cosmo was coloured with Prismacolor pencils using OMS to blend. Her hair colour is darker this time and her eyes are brilliant green. Her image was mounted on teal cardstock and then layered over pices of drywall tape. I really like the texture this gives and also the idea of a net...maybe a safety net or perhaps she used it to catch the stars in her hair. I used black marker to colour over an embossing folder in order to achieve some texture in the image background.

Cosmo knows that time is of the essence in achieving harmony and order. The watch came from my stash of charms and the ball chain from that toolbox raid a few weeks ago. The silver stars are buttons with the shanks cut off. The computer generated words are printed on swirly vellum.

Do you think Cosmo looks worried about her favourite planet? Dismayed or wistful? Or is that just my imagination carrying me away again?

Thanks for joining me on this journey. I hope you will join our challenges at Art With No Boundaries in either the Anything Goes or Summer Skies category. I always look forward to seeing your creativity in action.

Life is good; so is art.

Bonnie

Butterfly atc

Wow! it's been ages since I made an atc. I'd forgotten how fun they are to create. I'm in a swap called Butterflies Everywhere on Split Coast Stampers. One of the categories is atcs . Butterflies and atcs...how could I resist?

I used some paper I've had for ages for the background. It's  from the Butterflies & Blossoms Stack from DCWV. I used very thin silver cord to outline the stripe  with the printed butterflies. Then I stamped a Lockhart butterfly stamp with Memento Rich Cocoa ink on white cardstock and coloured it with my Prismacolor Pencils. The dots which appear white in the photo are actually very glittery. Dots  of Glossy Accents were covered in Stamp N Plus' Opalescent glitter which is super fine and very shiny. Wish I could have captured that for you. I wanted those dots to repeat the shininess of the silver dots on the blue paper. Anyway, Ms. Butterfly was popped up on foam dots both for dimension and because she is the star of the show :)

Paper flowers were Glimmer Misted to match the butterfly. A shiny bead was added to the center of the layered flower and two punched sprigs to the bottom. The words were computer generated, mounted on brown and silver, and popped up on foam dots. The whole atc is very glowy.

I have a quirky thing (among many) about finishing the backs of my atcs. My go-to system is to make a small pocket on the back. A tag is punched and decorated on one side with my swap info on the other side. It's kind of a little bonus surprise for my swap-mates and it finishes off the card so it's pretty on both sides.

Well, thanks for visiting. Hope you get some crafty time today.

Life is good; so is art.

Bonnie

On a Krafty Note

This simple card was a lot of fun to make. I used one of the iris fold stamps from Stamp N Plus to create the opening and show me where to place my music note strips. Easy-peasy but it looks so complicated. Love that!

I rounded the edges of the black cardstock and glued it down on some kraft cardstock cut to size. Then I stamped the Stamp N Plus sentiment, Just a Note, in the opening and faux stitched with my Micron pen. I used tiny dots of Black Stickles to emphasize the letter dots. The kraft cardstock piece got its corners rounded and faux stitching was added to the edges to repeat the other stitching.

 Before the kraft was adhered to the card leaving a little border of white still showing, I attached the music brad so that the legs would be hidden when the kraft piece was glued down. three little heart buttons and ahemp bow were attached to the corner to add some more detail. Simple, quick, fun. Can't beat that!

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate that!

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie

AWNB's Cosmo's Dream

For this Fortnight's challenge at Art With No Boundaries, the CS Designs DT was able to work with the lovely Cosmo digital image. I am crazy about this image. Her eyes are so expressive and her hair is a treat to colour. Plus I am a star collector. Thank you, Chris! Our new challenge themes are Anything Goes and Summer Skies (bonus round).

For this project, I started with a 12 inch round canvas which I painted and then sponged with two colours of acrylic paint. The moon rays were spritzed with glittery gold ink through a stencil to lightly suggest the glow. More of the same mist was spritzed over the rest of the canvas. The moon was sponged with two colours of acrylic over a circle of watercolour paper. The edges were inked to show the roundness. Cheesecloth was roughly cut, spray inked and dabbed with glitter glue here and there to create clouds across and behind the moon. The stars are bling glued over smears of glitter glue to create a halo effect.

Cosmo was coloured with Prismacolor pencils using OMS to blend. The stars were watercoloured with mica paint. I added some tiny bling to her eyes because the moon is creating quite the shine. Whenever I create a piece like this, I imagine who the character is and the story surrounding her. I chose this quote by Kit Williams from one of his children's books. As soon as I read it, I knew it was describing my vision of Cosmo with her pale and beautiful face and the tresses of her hair reaching out to make the constellations. I coloured her hair with extra strong highlights to make her seem as if she was glowing. She must be some kind of goddess watching over the night sky. The quote was printed on old fragile book paper and then singed around the edges (from the heat of the sun). Both the moon and the quote are popped up on dimensionals to create depth.

Finally, I added Scrabble tiles to spell out the word dream. She certainly looks dreamy or maybe she is just part of my dream. Either way, she's mesmerizing.

Thanks for visiting Cosmo and me. I hope you will play in our Art With No Boundaries challenge. I really look forward to checking out your creations and visiting your blogs. Check out the amazing designs by the rest of the DT and be sure to welcome our newest DT member, Beverly Gotthardt.

Life is good; so is art.


Bonnie

RR &R July Challenge

Welcome to our new DT member, Beverly Gotthardt, at Recycle, Re-Purpose & Re-Invent. She's an awesome addition to our team. Be sure to visit her blog as well as those of my other teamies.


For July's Challenge at Recycle, Re-Purpose & Re-Invent, the theme is Anything Goes as long as you use something recycled on your piece. Remember to identify what is recycled or repurposed when you write your post. I used I used this stunning digital images of Cosmo by Chris Stern at CS Designs  to play with this time. I am wild about her. Her face is beautiful, her expression intriging, and her eyes just pull me in.

I used a metal gift card case left over from a Christmas present as the foundation for this piece. I layered the background with dark blue felt for the night sky. I wanted to create the planets and universe for this piece. I used a recycled piece of a hand-embroidered doily for the moon, and took apart an old pair of earrings for the scattered turquoise stars.

Cosmo was coloured with Prismacolor pencils using OMS to blend. Star charms from an old bracelet were used in her hair once the loops were cut off. She was mounted on a piece of  painted and faux finished watercolour paper left over from another project.

Then came her planets. When we first moved to this house which is an oldie but goodie, we were digging to expand the flower beds. We came across a bunch of marbles buried in the dirt with a few other tiny toys. So charmimg! Cosmo's planets are three of those marbles. A binder ring from my old school stash was used for the ring on the green and red planet. Because the blue and green marble looks like the planet earth, I placed a #3 metal tab next to it...third planet from the sun. In my imagination, Cosmo is looking with wonder at this huge and spectacular universe which explains the banner.

Finally, to frame the whole collage and add sparkle, more of that ball trim from the toolbox was glued to the edge of the metal case. Lots of recycling and re-purposing on this project. That combined with the gorgeous image was what made it so fun to create. I hope you will join this month's challenge at Recycle, Re-Purpose & Re-Invent. It's so fun to see the inventive ways you use things.

Thanks for visiting my little piece of the universe :)

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie

Birthday Wishes

Happy 4th of July to my American friends!

Lots of celebrations this week...Canada Day, my husband's b-day, and Independence Day! To celebrate, I made this simple little card using Patti's Kids large birthday in envelope stamp from Stamp N Plus. It's such a fun image to play with.

I coloured the hand, cupcake, and envie with my Prisma pencils. The balloons were paper pieced with the middle one popped up on foam tape for added dimension. The image was cut out with a Spellbinders die, matted in black, and doodled around with a Micron pen.

The background consists of a scrapbox patterned paper, matted on black, with two rows of ribbon adhered under the focal. The image was popped up on foam tape and a satin ribbon pull was added. Three glittery brads were added to allow the image piece to tuck into the corner.

Clean and simple, and I got my colour fix :)

Enjoy the celebrations, wherever you are. There's always something to celebrate and be grateful for!
Thanks for visiting. Remember to check out the Anything Goes Challenge on the Stamp N Plus Scrap N blog. We have some cool entries already :)

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie

Stamp N Plus July Challenge

I can't believe we are starting our second Stamp N Plus challenge already. Thanks to all of you who participated in the first one.  It was exciting to see all that talent and creativity right there in black & white :) To check out the winners , visit the Stamp N Plus blog.

This month's challenge is Anything Goes. This is the last month where you can enter without using a SNP stamp. The DT went all out to show you a small part of the selection of stamps SNP has to offer. Be sure to check out their cards.

I chose to feature this funky shoe stamp which you can find here. I love the detail in this stamp...lots of opportunity to go crazy with colour! Prismacolor pencils were used to bring this shoe to life. Then the image was fussy cut, matted on black, and again on white cardstock to set it off against the busy background.

The background pieces were all mounted on black cardstock as well since they were close in colour and needed to be "outlined". All came from my scrapbox...yup, still digging in there. The stitching on the left side was done with black embroidery floss through holes made with a piercer. The sentiments were written on the computer with faux stitching doodled on the tag and tiny brads added to the other word strip. The final touches were a bit of black satin ribbon on the tag and some flat back pearls in opposite corners of the card front.

I hope this card gives you your daily dose of colour...kind of like sunshine. It certainly gave me mine.
Thanks for visiting. I hope to see your creation linked to this month's challenge. I just love to see what you've been doing.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie