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Sunday 22 June 2014

Welcome to our June guest designer ...

Kripa Koushik, with her delightful layout inspired by this month's challenge.


Hello everyone,

I have always loved handmade and dabbled with paints from as far back as my memory goes - art journaling, oil pastels, glass painting, tile painting, pottery, embroidery and the list goes on. Then, there was a gap of almost 7 years when I didn’t do anything. My art journey made a comeback in the form of scrapbooking a little over a year ago when I made a mini album with pictures of my baby boy. I had no idea back then that I would get hooked onto scrapbooking, let alone start a blog and meet so many talented scrappers like you all.
I love using different mediums in my layouts for texture – lace, chipboard, texture paste and almost all my layouts have shades of blue and pink. Scrapbooking / art journaling helps me relax and de-stress after running around 2 little kids all day long. Yes, you guessed right most of my paint play happens at night when the kids are asleep.


For my layout, I've picked colours from the painting and also distressing (torn tissue to create the background, distressed paper and lace) The lace is from Alacraft - bought from the gift voucher I won with ARTastic's Feb '14 challenge. 



And here are two more examples of my work ...



I never imagined there was such a friendly and welcoming community of crafters online and am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to share something about myself and my work on ARTastic.

I hope you take the time to visit me at www.thecolourpress.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for guesting with us on ARTastic this month Kripa.  It's been wonderful seeing your beautiful work.


You still have time until the end of the month to upload your own take on this challenge.  We'd love to see what you can do with our inspiration artwork this month.  



Sunday 15 June 2014

May winners and more inspiration for June ...

Welcome to our mid month reveal and the announcement of our May winners.



We'd like to especially thank our sponsors for May, Julie from Shop and Crop, James from Alacraft, and Julie from Time to Create


 Alacraft is a family business originating from an established bricks-and-mortar store and stocks a range of quality materials including lace, ribbon, yarn, scrapbooking supplies, stickers, iron-on motifs, quilting fabric, craft flowers and much more.

  Check out Alacraft today!



Time To Create is a family business. We share a passion to create, share and develop the best that we imagine!  We only stock products that we use and believe in. Our stock is always priced at the keenest costing we can do. We support Australian manufacturers and many Australian suppliers and try to have as wide a variety as possible.



As a family business Shop and Crop  strive to bring you all the latest from the Scrapbooking and Papercraft Industry, all our staff are very experienced and talented scrapbookers...We pride ourselves on great customer service, with a quick turn around of your orders of instock items.  We cater to both the online customers and through our store front at 10/335 Hillsborough Road, Warners Bay.  We love nothing better than for everyone to drop in, have a coffee on us and browse and enjoy all the great scrapbooking products.


We had some more amazing entries last month so a very big thank you to everyone who entered.

Our TOP 3 winners are ...

Merry who has won a $25 gift voucher from Alacraft.



Chris Sexton who has won a store voucher from Shop and Crop.



 Wendy O'Keefe who has won a store voucher from Time to Create.



and our random draw prize goes to Laura Whitaker.


Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me at jjjustjane@bigpond.com with their postal details.  Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar. 


Our Creative Team favourite this month is Elaine who will receive a little something from me.



Next some more fabulous inspiration from our design team using The Jam Session by Max Mannix.  Criteria this month is distressing.

We would LOVE to see more entries - think music, old buildings, sitting on a verandah, trips to the country, kids, dogs or just use the colours!



We welcome Wendy O'Keefe to the team with her first upload ...


I liked the shabby, rustic look of the artwork with its strong colours and shabby wooden elements. To get a shabby, grungy look I used distressed paper for the background with stencilling and inking, then I overlaid it with roughly torn papers. The wooden photo frame, the barrels and the tree log elements all add to the rustic effect as well. Finally, I wanted to show that “laid back” relaxed Aussie attitude and I did this by slinging an akubra over the photo frame and placing an expensive brass instrument on a rough- cut tree log. The photo is a few years old and it's of my youngest son playing his trumpet.  He doesn't play it as often now as he has taken up the guitar ... and he's still jammin'.  

DI


My inspiration came from the nature of the Australian bush with its ochres and browns, the weathered look of the building, the music and trees.
My photo is of an oil painting I have, done by Ken Harris. My mum, when she was 70, started painting workshops with him and bought this as a gift for me.


This piece has been done on corrugated cardboard packaging. There has been  distressing of papers, smooshing with inks and stains and stencilling.


MAJA


 This month is all about distressing so I have used my distressing tool on all paper edges.

To get that more shabby feeling that is in the inspiration painting I´ve used some brown chalk and I've gone with the music theme.


AUBRIE


So this was one of those crazy pages where I had absolutely no plan.  No idea what I was going to do.  Because distressing is something I do on nearly every page, this month's challenge was my happy place!  I started with the background.  That was done by folding and then rolling white tissue (not bleeding tissue, by the way!).  I dripped dye on it to create the distressed tie dye effect.  I then used matte gel to adhere that page over a thick piece of printed cardstock.  The pattern I made with liquid pearls is actually following the pattern from the base paper, which shows through a little bit.  I distressed the frame and paper cut out by balling it up and then inking and spraying with water.  The cheesecloth "frame" was done by pitting dye on a frame-shaped paper, heavily misting with water, then laying the cheesecloth on top.  Then I ripped and cut the cheesecloth.



I was really inspired by the wood this month and I found this photo of me and my girls. I have tried to keep the layout within the same tones with touches of distress ink all over. I think this gives it a subtle effect.




This painting is all about country and music so naturally I had to marry them both with a layout celebrating THE country music event in Australia - The Tamworth Country Music Festival.  I used colours from the painting and ink and paint distressing techniques to create my page.

Now we'd love to see your interpretations of our inspiration this month.

 Remember we happily accept all forms of paper crafting for your entry including digital and encourage international submissions.  All we ask is that you create an new entry for our challenge although you are most welcome to combine with a sketch and/or colour challenge if you wish.  You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.
  

Next week we will be introducing you to our June guest designer, Kripa Koushik.


Sunday 8 June 2014

June 3T's ...

Welcome to our June round of ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques where each month one of our creative team will show you are few quick tips and/or techniques to use on your layouts.  This month we feature team member Aubrie Wancata with her promised step by step tutorial on how she put together her wonderful layout from last month using bleeding art tissue techniques.  The results are truly amazing - hope you try this one yourself.


Bleeding Art Tissue Tutorial by Aubrie Wancata

This tutorial will show you a few techniques with a really versatile material, bleeding art paper.  It is like tissue you stuff in a gift bag, but when it gets wet, the color bleeds all over the place.  I will show you three different uses.

1.  Here is some bleeding art tissue.  You will also need a sprayer for water, thick paper, matte gel, and optional liquid frisket.


First way to use the bleeding art tissue:

2 .  First use liquid frisket to mask off any areas you don't want ink going.  Frisket is great.  It is like a liquid rubber that will go on similar to paint and then peel off once the ink is dry, leaving the plain surface underneath. 


3.  Spread frisket on with a sponge.


4.  Once frisket dries, rip bleeding art paper into pieces.  Then, spritz the paper with water, and lay the pieces down.  Also, spritz some water on top.


5.  You can then use a heat gun to dry the water, or leave it overnight depending on what you need to do.  But when you peel off the paper it leaves a nice watercolor effect.


Second way to use the bleeding art tissue:

6.  You can also apply bleeding art paper with gel medium.  I like to do it over top a graphic paper because it is somewhat translucent. 


7.  I ripped long strips here so that it would look like grassy hills.


8.  Apply the gel medium to the base paper, then, place the bleeding art tissue on top.  As you do it, you want to crunch it up a bit so that it creates texture.  Keep putting gel medium in places you need to adhere the tissue.


9.  Once it dries, use some ink rubbed on to emphasize the texture.  You can also use something like InkaGold.  Whatever will rub on and pick up the wrinkles.


 10.  Here's how it looks when it is done.


Third way to use the bleeding art tissue:

11.  Finally, peel off liquid frisket to reveal the paper below.  Here I didn't want the blue going into the sun.  So, I masked it off.


12.  Paint with gel medium over the area you want to pick up color.  This time, you place the bleeding art tissue down but you do not let it dry.  Don't wait too long or it will be stuck to the paper!  I like to crinkle the paper so that there are white "veins" left without color.


13.  Here is what the finish product looks like.  I used this third method on the sun.


14.  And here is how all three look together.   


Bleeding art tissue is fun and you can really get creative with how to use it!  Have fun!


Stunning Aubrie - I'm inspired to give this a try myself.  Hope you are too!

Don't forget this month's challenge - details in the left sidebar.  Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.















Sunday 1 June 2014

It's June on ARTastic ...

Welcome to our challenge this month - gosh are we really nearly half way through this year?  Again we had some lovely entries last month so many thanks for your continued support.  Don't forget to pop back on the 15th when we announce our May winners and offer you some more wonderful team inspiration.

This month we are being a little light-hearted with our choice of inspiration.  Every year I like to introduce one artwork that represents the rural Australian landscape - it might be a modern landscape or a more nostalgic look at a time gone by.  This month I am sure you will appreciate this gem and I certainly look forward to seeing how you might be inspired by it.

This month we have two main sponsors - each offering a $15 voucher to their stores.

 Julie from Time to Create



and Donna from Mystical Scrapbooks


and of course every month we also offer a prize pack totally by random draw.



and now onto our challenge ....  introducing Max Mannix with The Jam Session.

Criteria is  to use distressing on your work.

Hint - think colonial Australia, country pubs, shady veranda's, musical instruments, watching bands, weatherboard houses, lanky boys and faithful dogs!

A little about Max Mannix.

Max Mannix is an Australian artist who paints stories or ‘yarns’, based on his years growing up in Victorian country towns and working on cattle stations in the Queensland outback. These experiences and the colourful characters along the way have provided Max with an endless flow of inspiration for his artwork, depicting Australian country life in a light-hearted vein with keen insight and gentle humour. Max is a highly collectable and published artist, whose work is exhibited in one-man and group shows and owned by private and corporate collections around the world. Max’s work is predominantly painted in oil on specially prepared canvas board, but he also uses acrylics and pen and inks as well as creating etchings and figurative sculpture.The Mannix Studio Gallery is located in, ‘The Sandstone Church’, at the front of his residential property in Kenthurst, New South Wales.

http://www.maxmannix.com/

and now onto some terrific pages from our creative design team.  I'd also like to make mention that this will be team member Kylie's last month with us as she completes her term and moves onto other pursuits.  Thank you for being part of ARTastic Kylie and sharing your talent with us.  While we might be bid a sad farewell to Kylie we will be welcoming the lovely Wendy O'Keeffe to the team this month.  Wendy will join us with her first layout on the 15th.

 As I didn't have anything Australian colonial or even pub or get-together related that I thought  would fit I went outside the box a little :)


I was inspired by the timber side wall and window of the hotel and the colours in the artwork.



It was the feeling of outdoor activity that inspired me to make a page with holiday photos for my niece's album and I loved the colours on the inspiration picture so I tried to use the same on the LO and did both paper distressing and colour distressing on the paper edges.



I love distressing, it adds dimension to the page with not much effort. I distress on most layouts. I have a little stressing tool but before that I used the blades of a small sissors. For this page I distressed the white edging paper from my photos then inked them with brown to soften the edges. The rest of the papers, including the tags, I left the white edging distressing gives. For my colours for this layout I was inspired by the warm, earthy, rustic colours.


One of my favourite techniques for creating unique papers is Extreme Distressing.
I enjoy that each time the paper is created exclusively to support the theme that I have in mind for my layout.

A visit to my blog will have you wanting to be extreme too....with your distressing that is!


I have been sanding the cardstock used behind the photo.


Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on June 30th, 2014. We'd love to see your new paper, digital, or off the page entries.  Please no back-dated submissions.  You may combine with a sketch and/or colour/technique challenge and international entries are always welcome.   Remember we are Australian based so you need to allow for the different time zones - if in doubt check our clock.  

Please pop back on the 8th for The ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you this month by our extremely talented and very arty team member, Aubrie Wancata.  I am sure she will inspire you.