Birthday Blessings

 Three cards today, one made at 4 AM when I wasn't sleeping anyway. The first one is a gelli print. I put blues and a bit of green on the plate on top of a stencil, took off the stencil, and pulled the print. I loved it, didn't think it needed any more layers. The Birthday Blessings was from playing around with the Cricut that Loretta gave me, and I was experimenting to see the sizes. I cut out a whole page of these in different sizes, because I love the sentiment for birthdays, and have used it before on cards. Loretta's birthday is coming up, but since I can't send it to her, I'll have to figure out who to send it to. 

The second one is a piece of card stock I used to clean the brayer while gelli printing! I loved the colors, added a touch of yellow with bubble wrap, some stamping, and some glitter. It was fun. I never use glitter, but somehow ended up with glitter embossing powder, I think I got it in a thrift store box. But I was just laughing and glittering away... and now I'll have glitter in the craft room forever. 

The last one is a marble print scrap from a long time ago. You take a box, put a small amount of ink in it, several marbles, and fasten a piece of card stock in it, then tilt the box around until you get the effect you want. Sometimes just little lines like this, or use more ink and it has thicker lines. It's fun. I remember doing a bunch awhile ago, but I was clearing out my scrap box and there it was. 

I'm getting there, using up scraps, clearing out extra stuff. Thinking of my mother in law especially today, since her birthday was in September, and there are strangely no other birthdays in September in our family.  Every other month has at least one. So I'm sure I'll figure out who to send them to. 

Still super smoky here, we're in the red zone, that's second highest. I've been glad for masks, since I've even been wearing them in the yard. 

It feels so good to create. Yesterday I was in a lot of pain, couldn't sleep last night so I made cards! I have decided to just not get anxious if I can't sleep, just go ahead and get up and craft. Why not? Well today it meant I was up from 3 to 7 and then slept from 7 until noon. I don't like that. BUT.... for now, it is what it is. I know there are plenty of people out there in the same boat.

Painting Play

Playing for a little while. Hard to see the color in a picture. This was totally an experiment, I am still learning how to use a gelli plate, and this was the first time I grabbed dark paper. I love gelli printing, because it's unpredictable, you never know how it will turn out, and if you don't like it, just put on another layer!! The birds are a thermofax screen from Terri Stegmiller. 

The first try with a Gelli plate

I got my Gelli plate awhile ago, but hadn't gotten around to trying it out. Today I ran across the

Biocolor paints, and decided that would work. What I discovered is Yes and No.

The first one I tried looked like mud. I was disappointed, for sure, but hey you can't be perfect on the first try. The only thing I have done so far is watch several videos. I love the abstracts you can do-- I already have stencils from my art journaling with inks so it just seemed like a natural progression. Then I remembered the thermofax screens that just came in the mail, and thought maybe it would work to spark it up.











Yes it did! I love it, and will make it into a card.


Then I got bold with purple and teal. I used the comb tool that came with the biocolor. Lovely.













Then I tried some masks. Apparently Biocolor is too flowing to use with masks, they just stuck on the paper and tore when I tried to get them off. Also, there were no distinct edges.

I think Biocolor is great, I love its plasticity. I think it will be good for backgrounds on the Gelli plate, and doing other biocolor-ish things... but not good for stencils and masks.

So off to the store for some paint. What I have is pretty dried out. The Artsy Adventure continues.