Link Sharing by Susan Walls

Hello everyone!

I've been a bit lax on the schedule here because of busy times in my studio but wanted to jump in and do some link sharing today. Maybe give you some new things to read and learn about for the weekend.

So...I do a lot of cruising around the internet when I have a chance. There are many artists, writers, cooks, and general life enthusiasts and, in my opinion, too little time in the day. The following links are the tiniest portion of my list but in the top 20 of the sites I go back to over and over again.

Food. Is there anyone who doesn't like food? Food has been a huge focus in my life for a very long time now. Over the last 2 to 3 years our family has rid itself of all processed food stuffs and I have taken on eating vegan whenever I can swing it. but it wasn't until I found Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her vegan cookbooks that I really figured out how good vegan cooking could be. You might be a vegan skeptic but all you have to do is try one recipe. I've bought almost all her books and every single one is great!

Her site is: Post Punk Kitchen and she is the bomb!

This week one of my favorite business women has been holding her fifth free entrepreneur video summit. She is the writer of "The Right Brain Business Plan" and Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way ". If you are creative and want to start or build on your business...this is the gal!

Her name is Jennifer Lee and her site is: Right Brain Business Plan and the video summit, which I highly recommend, is on through the 20th of March.

March is National Craft Month and the craftiest, amongst other things, gal I know is Jennifer Priest. She has some fabulous projects and tips on her site plus her family also crafts with her.

Check out her work at: Hydrangea Hippo and for those of us in creative business wanting to learn more about social media she is also an expert. 

Check out her other site, Rainmaker Media Works plus her groups on FB.

Last but certainly not least is the wonderful artist and person Tracy Verdugo. One of the reasons I'm kind of in a creative fog, a good one, is that I just came home from 5 days with her immersing myself in "Paint Mojo." I had never taken a retreat like this for this length of time and it was hugely inspiring! Tracy is warm and intuitive truly a guiding spirit through all the artistic techniques shared through the class.

If you aren't familiar with Tracy I suggest you hop on over to her site: Tracy Verdugo or her blog and start learning!! 

Those links should get you started! Tune in next week when my friend Ursula tries out Ice Resin and I do a follow up Resin 101 post...should be good fun!

Until then you can find me: 

on FB at Susan's Charming Trinkets

or my website Susan's Art Circus

Stamp Carving Transfer by Ursula Smith

In case you don't know me very well, I am a stamp-a-holic. As such I have carved my share of stamps. Recently on my own personal Blog- Ursula-Smith.com/Blog, I started a series of posts on stamp carving. The first one is my two cents on how to transfer designs to the carving material, and the material I like best (Spoiler alert: SpeedyCarve by Speedball- the pink stuff). If you'd like to check out that post, it is located here. There is another post that shows me actually carving a stamp, which is located here.

For those of you who love to carve like I do, I decided to do another post here on the Cre8ive Klatch and show you a fun way to use your carving material if you have an extra sheet of it laying around. I am going to be using this with a Gelli Arts Printing plate (another of my favs!!! You can read more about it here) and a plastic stencil. You could maybe get away with just rolling paint directly on the stencil (or even using sprays) if you don't have a GelliArt plate. In my world, I have limited time to craft and so I am always looking for ways of getting 2 or more things out of one project. I call them 2-fers or 3-fers etc. This idea gives you multiple prints.

You can follow along with me on my YouTube channel, however I was trying to do this one handed, and my paint was pretty dry so the end result in the video was not the greatest. I am also including instructions here, with pictures, so that you get see a better end result, and  I also pass along a few extra tidbits.

Enjoy!!

The first thing I did was add some paint to the Gelli Arts Printing plate. My plate already had a little bit of paint on it when I started. I placed the stencil down and then rolled paint on top of the entire thing- over the stencil also.

 You could also roll some paint on the plate first, then place the stencil on the plate, then roll more paint over the top of the stencil.

Once the Gelli Arts plate and the stencil are fully "inked" I placed a large sheet of Speedball's SpeedyCarve carving material next to the plate. Then I took the stencil off the Gelli Art plate and flipped it over onto the carving material. So the top of the stencil that was painted is against the material.

 Place paper over the top of the stencil on the carving material and VERY CAREFULLY press the stencil all over to transfer the ink to the carving material. If you put paint on your Gelli Art plate before you put the stencil down, you will get another print on the paper placed over the stencil.

Here is a transfer onto the paper that covered the stencil on the carving material...

Now remove the stencil from the carving material and you should have the reverse print on the material.

Place another piece of paper of the material and again, VERY CAREFULLY, press the paper onto the inked image to pull the image onto the paper from the carving material. If you are careful and go very slowly, you can try to use a brayer to get more contact.

Now carefully pull the paper off the carving material and see your reverse print.

But wait- there's more! You still have the Gelli Art plate with paint and the impression of the stencil. Go ahead and pull that print now.

If you are lucky, and your paint is slow drying, you might even get a second print from the Gelli Art plate directly- a ghost print! That is (let's count them)

1. One print while you rubbed the piece of paper over the stencil trying to transfer the paint to the carving material. This is only if you put paint onto the Gelli Art plate before you placed the stencil onto it.
2. One print from the Carving material transfer.
3. One print from the Gelli Art Plate directly
4. Possibly another print (ghost print) from the Gelli Art Plate directly

Now all these prints take time, so you want to use a paint that dries very slowly. I used Golden's Open Acrylic, but that can be expensive. The other thing I have tried is using other paint mixed with Glazing medium, to slow the drying process.

So now you are left with Carving Material that has paint on it. You can always flip it over and carve the other side if you wish. Or keep using it as a transfer plate. Or you could use paint remover wipes like Soho and try to get the paint off. You can read more about them on the Creative Clearinghouse site under Favorite Supplies.

Thanks for visiting the Cre8ive Klatch. If you wish to see more of my ideas, tips, techniques and experiments, you can find me here:

Ursula-Smith.com/Blog

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Creative Clearinghouse

A Different Tag Post by Lori Leissner

Tis the season for tags it seems.  I love making tags. It's a quick, easy and inexpensive way to be creative.  If you want to be creative this time of year, quick, easy and inexpensive is definitely the way to go.

This little project is even less expensive than the norm because we are reusing clothing tags.  I  have a confession: I sometimes purchase clothing based on the quality of their tags.  The shorts that came with this awesome tag were not necessarily better than the alternatives (in spite of all the stretchy talk). The tag made the sale.  It was a good size and especially sturdy.  After this post, you are totally going to be checking tags. Now's a good time, too!   Those jeans you got your kid for Christmas?  Go check the tags!!!!

This tag had a plastic coating on it, which is probably why it was so sturdy and why I liked it so much.  I'll save you the trouble of all the paint peeling off and tell you to give it a good sanding first to rough it up.

Now gesso!   Yours won't look this smooth though because this was before all the paint peeled off and I had to sand it.

Use a heat gun or blow dryer to make it even speedier if, for example, you need it for a gift tag for a party you will attend in an hour (and you still don't have any makeup on).

Grab some complementary colors.

 

Slap some paint on there. Literally, you do not have to be all neat and tidy. You don't even have to cover all the gesso. That's what's so fun about this!  You're going to sand it again, and you want some of the other layers to show through, so just get some paint on there however you want.  Make sure it's dry.  Then sand it off slightly so the gesso and the bottom original color shows through a little.

Then paint another color on top.  Also let that layer dry and sand it a little, especially the edges.

Now you can paint your image.  I chose a bouquet of roses in a vase.

 

Use a Sharpie pen (not a Sharpie marker...a Sharpie pen...they work so much better over paint) and a white Uniball Signo  pen (the only white pen I've found to work all the time) to add embellishments.  Then add some words.  I think all art is a little better with some words.

Finally, add some frilly yarn and ribbons and spritz with a little clear coat and let dry.  These make great gift tags. This one is so sturdy, it could even be a Christmas ornament.  I especially love them as book markers. For a super quick gift, print out an Amazon gift card and use washi tape to attach this cute tag to the envelope.

Catch up with me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/LeissnerArt 

My website here: http://www.leissnerart.com/ 

Instagram here:  http://instagram.com/leissnerart

Or Twitter:  https://twitter.com/leissnerart

Come join us for more cre8ive ideas and crafty connections at our Facebook group:

Cre8ive Klatch

Handmade Christmas Photo Ornament By Jill Lambert

Christmas and sweet memories go hand-in-hand (most of the time) and I love pulling out my box of ornaments each December and seeing the ones I've collected through the years.  The ones my daughter has made through the years are my favorites.  I also love the personal ones that have photos of my family as well as ones given to me as gifts.  When my younger nieces and nephews were born I decided to make them homemade ornaments for each of their first Christmases.  I know how much new parents love to receive something made just for them with a sweet picture of their baby on it so my first Christmas ornament usually involves something with a super cute picture of their baby as well as the name and year. This July our niece Charlotte was born so I'm excited to create a first Christmas ornament just for her that she'll hopefully have as she grows through the years.

Materials needed:

• round wooden, flat circles (mine is 3 inches) - purchased from Michael's
• gesso
• acrylic paint, colors of your choice
• glitter (optional)
• stencil or stamp (optional)
• Mod Podge or Gel Medium (I used Mod Podge)
• photograph of person ornament is for 
• (I printed mine on Epson ultra premium presentation paper, but regular paper would work fine, but be a bit thinner)

• ribbon
• glue gun

1.  Cover the wooden circle with a layer of gesso.  I do this so the paint doesn't get sucked into the wood.  It just makes a nicer layer for the paint to adhere to.  Let it dry and gesso the back side as well.

2.  Paint a layer of color of your choice over the dried gesso.  You can paint both sides the same color or two different colors if you want.  To keep it simple, I did the same on both sides, a deep red.

3.  I'm into fun patterns lately, so after your base color dries, I painted a pattern with a contrasting color using a chevron stencil.  Using a stencil is optional.  Of course, you can paint any pattern freehand too!  As you can see depending on how big you make the photo, your original background pattern may not show so much.  Decide how much you want it to show when you choose how big to make your photo.

4.  Size and print your photo.  Let it dry!  After it dried I even sprayed it with Krylon varnish so the ink didn't smear when I put Mod podge over it.

5.  Cut your photo to shape and size you want then put Mod Podge (or Gel Medium) under it, pushing out any air bubbles so it's smooth and flat.  Then put Mod Podge ALSO on top of the photo.  This is very important to seal it and allow you to paint possibly over and around it without ruining the photo.

6.  I painted/outlined the photo with a deep red and then I painted some Mod Podge around the edge and sprinkled white glitter around it to make it sparkle.  As you can see my chevron pattern is no longer showing that much, so the glitter is optional if you want your background pattern to show.

7.  On the backside I hand-painted her name, the year 2014, "first Christmas" and added a snowflake.

8.  After all is dried, varnish both sides for protection.  After that is dry then you can hot glue your ribbon on the back side.  Unfortunately I wasn't thinking about where the ribbon was going to go when I painted "first Christmas" so be sure you know where you want your ribbon to go so it doesn't cover anything important up.

I hope this gives you a fun idea that you can make as a gift or do with your children.  Family pictures from the year, maybe a fun vacation you took or pictures of the kids make great gifts for aunts and grandparents!  

This could even be the start of a new tradition - making a yearly, personalized ornament!

Find Jill's wonderful, bright artwork in her shop.

More about Jill can be found on her blog.