My scrappin' life

I still do! a layout using WOW! embossing powders

 

Ahhhh, finally summer arrived in our part of the world! And isn't it lovely!?

I so much enjoy the sunshine and the warmth! Anne is studying for her exams in the garden, getting a nice tan. Doors and windows open all day, laundry hanging in the back yard, walking barefooted all day, Marlijn going to the swimming pool...

Anne and I just said to each other this morning, we wish it would go on like this until about october :)

The layout I'm sharing today was made for WOW! Embossing Powder. My husband and I are together for 26 years and in march we celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. 

Let me show you how I created this page. First I sprayed glimmer mist at the top of the paper and dragged the paint down the page using a bank card. I stamped the heart with Versamark and embossed it with WOW! Primary Ebony. 

After that I stamped the heart a second time on scrap paper and cut out the inner part with a craft knife. Now I could use it as a mask laying it on top of the embossed heart.

   

I put a piece of Punchanella on top of the mask and filled the dots with Versamark using a piece of blending foam. 

Then I took away the punchanella and the mask and embossed the dots with Suzy West Honey.

   

After that I put the mask back on top and sprayed the heart with glimmer mist. The embossed parts work as a resist. If I would have put a piece of kitchen paper on top after spraying the dots would have been totally clean. But I like how some of the glimmer mist pools in the lower parts of the embossed texture and wanted to keep it that way so I let it dry by air to get this specific look. 

   

To create the black letters on the tag I traced them with an embossing pen and then embossed them with WOW! Primary Ebony. 

   

To add the blue color on the edges of the heart I used a brush and glimmer mist.

Finally I placed a piece of torn scrap paper just below the top of the page and stamped along the top using the Vintage Wallpaper stamp set with Versamark and then embossed with WOW! Primary Ebony again.

The little stars were made using Punchanella and Stazon ink.

 

   

I hope you liked my little tutorial and found some inspiration to use WOW! on your own layouts!

 

PanPastel.... answer to the knocking of your soul

Years and years ago I bought some chalks to use on my scrapbookpages. I never really liked them and didn't use them much, just to color edges and maybe for some stenceling. I still have a box with 9 colors and it looks brand new. So when some of my friends started posting on their blogs about PanPastel and how excited they were about them I thought that they would be just like those chalks and not something for me to use.

Boy, was I wrong! They told me enthusiastic stories about PanPastel and said I had to try them, that I would LOVE them and that once I used them I would want to have them all... they were right!

So here is my first try on PanPastel and YESI LOVE them, and YES I want all the colors now :)

I fist covered a piece of cardstock with book paper and covered it with Gesso. Then I stamped text and images with black Stazon and added a thin layer of Gesso on top of that.

I sprayed at the top of the page with Glimmer Mist (Dragonfly and Key Lime Pie) and let the paint run down. After the paint was dry I added a tissue paper cirkel that was sprayed with Harvest Orange. I used Gel Medium to do that so the sprayed color smeared a little around the edges of the circle and stamped the coffee stain on top. The dot's around the circle are made using Punchanella and distress ink. Then I started adding color using PanPastel. I filled in all the white spaces and also layerd color on top of the glimmer mist and the orange circle.

I randlomly stamped with a texture stamp and Versamark and added more PanPastel which created the darker green texture. The pink dots were made using a stencil and PanPastel. The leafs and the little butterflies were also colored with PanPastel. After adding some Gesso to the poppies I colored them with yellow PanPastel.

PanPastel Colors used: 580.5 Turquoise, 680.5 Bright Yellow green, 430.5 Magenta, 250.5 Diarylide Yellow, 100.5 Titanium White.

What a great product to work with. These pastels are so smooth and the colors so rich and deep. And the special tools made it so easy to use them whether I wanted to color a big area or just a tiny little spot. I could mix them, layer them and erase them. This was only my first try but my mind is spinnig with ideas. I want to try them on different surfaces and combine them with different mediums. I want to learn what else I can do with them. I want, I want, I want.... the only thing I need right now is a little bit of time! :)

Go to the PanPastel website for product information, colors and tutorial videos. Click here or on the PanPastel logo in my side bar.

Have fun and remember to answer to the knocking of your soul! ;)

Art journal pages with WOW! embossing powder

Today Powder Puff Girls team blog post is up on the WOW! embossing powders blog and here is my project:

The background was a result of Nat and Julie's "Second Floor-challenge". The challenge was to use something from your stash that you had never used before. I had 2 boxes with effect salt lying around for about 2 years and never even opened them. I just splashed some Ecoline in my art journal and sprinkled salt in the wet ink to see what would happen. I wasn't to impressed with the effect at first and put the pages aside, moving on to something new.

But they were still somewhere in the back of my mind and then i found the MM masking tape on the bottom of one of my drawers and I thought that might look good on those un-used salted pages.... and that's how these pages were born.

I used a dress doll shape from Basically Bare and covered the top part and the bottom part with Versamark (I did not color the cardboard shape) and embossed it with WOW! Clear gloss ultra high. I sprinkled tiny little glass beads in the heated embossing powder while it was still hot and fluid. Then I painted the skirt with acrylic paint and stamped on it with Versamark using the WOW! Vintage wallpaper stamp. I embossed it with WOW! Earthtone Honey regular. The stars behind the dress form where made using Punchanella and Versamark and then also embossed with WOW! Earthtone Honey regular.

Thank you for stopping by today! Hope you have a wonderful and creative weekend!

Intohimona Skräppäys 2012, Finland (long post, lots of photos!)

Hei!

Wow, I can't believe I was teaching in Finland at this very moment already a whole week ago!

Time flies! But finally I have some time to update my blog and show and tell how awome Finland was!

On friday morning I took the train to Schiphol airport where I met Marsha at noon. Unfortunatelly Revlie couldn't go and Marsha was so sweet to step in for her. Our flight to Helsinki left around 2pm. Our connecting flight to Jyväskylä had a little delay so we arrived there around 8pm.  Riikka and Minna picked us up from the airport and drove us to the Peurunka Spa Hotel, where we met Mira from Amelia Askartelu, who organized this event and invited us to come to teach.

We had a lovely dinner with Elina, ‘Creomi‘ and Riikka. The dessert was quite interesting. Dill marinated pineapple, raspberry sorbet and licorice… Uhmmm, what can I say... interesting! LOL!

On saturday I taught 2 workshops and Marsha one. I was surprised by how relaxed the Finnish girls were and how independend. No stress at all, although especially the masking workshop it quite intens with lots of information and techniques. Such a pleasure to teach here!

 


There was a wonderful buffet for lunch and dinner with lots of Finnish food. Things we had never had before but also some food I recognised from trips to Sweden and I loved. Yummy!

On Saturday evening after my last workshop we went to the Areena. This was a hall filled with tables where people could crop and around them several shops where the croppers could get their supplies. Great concept! I was so happy to discover a little shop specialized in Washi tape! It's called Teippitarha which means Tape Garden. But I thought it was Tape Heaven, LOL! The owner Janina shippes everywhere and she has these special envelopes that hold up to 10 rolls of tape and cost only 2 euro's to ship, so check out her website if you love washi tape too! :)

Riikka surprised us with some beautiful and delicious "typical Finnish" gifts in a lovely bag she made for us using fabric from a Finnish designer. 

This is a picture from her blog.

Marsha got the Jaffa one and me the green one. On my bag are prints from street views of Helsinki. When Marsha and I went into Helsinki on Monday morning we actually spotted the big wheel and we went into the market place of which there is  a print on the other side of the bag! So fun!

Here's a picture of all the lovely gifts we got from Päivi (Pamppa) & Kaarina the book about card techniques they wrote, from Kaarina issues of Ihana, the magazine she owns (she also interviewed us for an upcoming article :)), from Maiju a book she wrote (thank you Heini for all the translations! :)), also about card techniques, from Mira a set of punches, a t-shirt and a lovely magazine called Inzpira and everything else from Riikka. Thanks girls, it was a big surprise and very much appreciated! :)

On Sunday morning Marsha was teaching the first class, which was a long one, 4 hours. So that gave me the oppertunity to go outside, walk to the lake, enjoy the sunshine, the lovely surrounding and the quiet peacefulness! The wheater was beautiful and I sat on a bench for a while looking over the frozen lake, feeling the warm sun on my face.

After that I went back into the class room and sat at the table next to Marsha playing a little in my art journal while she was teaching.

After lunch it was time for me to teach again, this time Marsha and my workshop were overlapping.

After the workshops and cleaning up Minna drove us to Helsinki. I think it took us about 4 hours to get there. This gave us a chance to see a little bit more of beautiful Finland and a lovely sunset. Thank you Minna for driving us and telling us all kinds of things about Finland!

 

The next morning we got up early, had breakfast and then took the shuttle from the hotel to the airport where we put our suitcases in a locker. Then we took a taxi into Helsinki where we arrived around 9 am.

What a lovely oppertunity, that we had some time before our flight at 2pm to get to see a bit of Helsinki. The wheater was wonderful again. We first went to Tuomiokirkko, the Catherdral of Helsinki and were surprised to see how sober it was inside. Then we went to the Kauppatori (market square) which was not complete yet, to early in the morning I guess. So we went into the Market Hall that is right next to the sea side. Wen we opened the doors we didn't know that it was a market hall, we just were curious because we recognised the building from my bag. Such a nice surprise. A lot of food, typical Finnish food like Reindeer, Moose, a lot of fish, Finnish bakery and even bear! Bear? Are you kidding, really? Yep! And it only costs 160 euro per kilo, lol!

After that we went back into the center and had coffee with cake at Fazer's. Mmmmmmm!!!! Particularly Fazer's classic chocolate (Fazerin Sininen maitosuklaa) is famous throughout Finland!

Then we walked to the train station, a beautiful old building, did some fun shopping on our way there and then took a bus back to the airport. We arrived just in time to check in for our flight back home.

After a good flight we arrived at Schiphol airport from where took the train home. Marsha got of after 45 minutes and I continued for another 2 hours and 15 minutes to arrive in Groningen where Erik and Marlijn were waiting to pick me up.

What a wonderful weekend it was, but how good it also was to come home!!

Huge Kiitos to Riikka, Mira, Minna and all the lovely ladies that made this happen! I really, really hope to go back one day to teach in your wonderful country!

And thank you Marsha, for all the fun and for being such a great travel companion and room mate!

Have a lovely weekend!

 

Creative Jump Start Summit 2012 - my video

Yesterday I told you what I did to jump start my creativity. There's a lot of ways to do that and in January you had the chance to sign up for the Creative Jump Start Summit 2012. During that monthh you got links to videos made by an awesome bunch of artists that showed you really cool ideas and ways to get going. My friend  Nat Kalbach who organized this all asked me to join in and share with you what works for me. And I was very happy to do that! So today I want to share with you the little video I made.

It's simple and not long. You won't hear me talking in it or actually see me doing anything but I think it might help you a little to jump start your creativity whenever you feel like your mojo is gone or you just need a starting point to get going.

Enjoy!

 

 

Hope you liked it!

Welcome to the "Art of Layers" Blog Hop! Giving away Ronda Palazzari's book!

What a happy day it is!!

My sweet and amazingly talented friend Ronda Palazzari is having her book "Art of Layers" officially released today!

An awesome book filled with techniques using paper, paints, fibers, stamps and much much more... and ohhh the yummy colors this girl uses!! Love it!

To celebrate the release of the book Ronda asked me to participate in this fabulous blog hop. All participants are giving away one copy of "Art of Layers" authographed by Ronda.

This is F&W media’s description of the book:

“Basic scrapbooking has you place photos and embellishments on cardstock or patterned paper - easy and...well, basic. The next step for most scrapbookers is layering. But trying to get that rich, interesting layered look can be very intimidating. Where do you even start? "Art of Layers" teaches scrapbookers and beginning mixed media artists just how easy it is to get to that layered look in any papercrafting project. Author Ronda Palazzari teaches readers 50+ techniques that will serve as tools to pull out whenever a layered look is desired. The chapters allow the reader to build their skills, from paper techniques they won't be afraid to try adding fabric, embellishments, and stamping to finally giving spray inks, paints and gesso a try.” 

 

Now who doesn't want to be the lucky winner of that???

 All you have to do is leave a message on this post and I will pick one winner! The deadline to comment is Sunday Night 8 pm EDT (Midnight Amsterdam time).

Ronda has send me this wonderful layout featured in the stamping section of the book to share with you:

Don't you just love the colors and all the layers? You will find more projects from the book on all participating blogs, make sure you don't miss them!

If you came here blog hopping you where at Lisa Dickinson blog before arriving here. Your next visit will be Ali Edwards!

If you came here directly and found out right here, right now about this blog hop, make sure to check out all the other blogs too. Here's the list of all participants:

Ronda Palazzari

Emily Pitts

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Lisa Pace

Nathalie Kalbach

Kelly Purkey

Dina Wakley

Amy Tangerine

Lisa Dickinson

Birgit Koopsen <<< (You are here :))

Ali Edwards

Have fun and good luck!!!

 

 

Workshops @ Scrap4fun, September 14 & 15!

In September, on friday 14th and saturday 15th, I will be at Scrap4fun.nl again to teach 2 colorful workshops!

For the Love of Masking and a Dream canvas.

Both workshops will be taught at both days, the canvas workshop in the moning (9.30-12.30) and the masking workshop in the afternoon (13.00-17.00).

You can book the workshops separately.

Happy weekend!

Spring is in the air!

At least yesterday it was! The sun was shining, the birds were whistling, the rabbit and the guinea pig were running and jumping through the garden and the temperature went up to about 15*C (59*F).

The kids came from school with their coats under the straps on the back of their bikes (pfff, it's so hot, LOL!). Marlijn and her friends played outside all afternoon, made their own parfume out of water and daisies.

Yeah, spring is in the air and it makes me all happy!

Materials used: Gesso, Glimmer Mist, black permanent pen, white pen, book paper, sticker letters, punchanella, distress ink, Indian ink. white acrylic paint.

Wishing you a happy spring time too! :)

 

Love canvas with WOW! embossing powder

Hi there!

Today I want to share with you a little love canvas I created for the WOW! embossing powder CHA booth.

I first covered the canvas with tags, a doily and pieces of book paper. On top I put a thin layer of Gesso leaving some parts of book print uncovered. On those parts I stamped with bubble wrap and Versamark and embossed it with WOW! clear gloss regular. This keeps the book print visible and creates a resist for the Tattered Angels glimmer mist that I sprayed on top.

I layered a piece of Punchenella (Sequin waste) as a mask in the left upper corner and filled a couple of spots with Versamark and then embossed it with WOW! Metallic Silver regular.

After spraying the whole canvas with glimmer mist I took a little piece of cardstock, used my crop-a-dile to punch out a couple of little holes and layered it on the canvas. I filled in the holes with Versamark, removed the cardstock mask and embossed the little circles with Suzy West Whirly Pop regular.

A heart cut from book paper was sprayed with glimmer mist. I put a piece of Punchenella on top and filled it with Versamark and embossed it with Suzy West Presidio Purple regular.

I stamped some swirls (from the WOW! Build a Butterfly stamp set) in the right lower corner and embossed them with Suzy West Bay Area Blue regular.

All 4 sides of the canvas where covered with Versamark going to the front of the canvas in some places and then embossed with WOW! Metallic Silver Regular.

The canvas was completed with rub-ons and crystal angel wings.

I hope this inspires you to use embossing powders in you mixed-media projects and art-journals!

Enjoy!

Ready for ScrapMe Vienna!

Yes, I'm ready! Suitcases packed, boarding pass printed, everything ready,,,

Tomorrow morning Erik and Marlijn will bring me to Amsterdam airport (it's spring vacation), my plane will leave at 11.45h :)

Looking forward to a fun weekend teaching with my sweet friend Nat!

But before I leave I HAVE to do a post. Two days ago my hubby tells me it's about time I blog, the last post is from february 13. Are you kidding? LOL!

But he is right, so let me share some Tattered Angels projects today that I created for the TA booth at CHA.

The first one is a layout created with Canvas Corp products.

The clock face was first stamped with a screen and Island Spring glaze and then sprayed with Sprout Chalkboard.

The flower was sprayed with Pop Rocks and Cupid glimmer mist and then covered with a layer of Pixie Dust glam. For the paper and tag I used Pop Rocks, Cupid and Turqoise. The doilies behind the clock face were first lightly covered with Pixie Dust glam and then sprayed with Pop Rocks.

The canvas (12×12) was made with Plain Jane products. In case you don’t know, Plain Jane is a range of 3 new paint products that have been revealed at CHA, These are plain products which means as much as similar to the already existing products only without the glimmer. Tattered Angels has now Simply Sheer which can be compared with Glimmer Mist, Stained Glass which can be compared with Glam and Baseboard which can becompared with Chalkboard.

Used on this project are Stained Glass Yellow and Red, Baseboard Red Rocks and Simply Sheer Pink, Light Blue, Teal and Shade. For the stems and the leaves i used Sprout Chalkboard.

I first applied tags to the canvas and covered everything with Gesso, then I used a screen and the Yellow Stained Glass to stamp on the tags. After the stained glass had dried I sprayed the canvas with the Simply Sheer and the Baseboard.

I sprayed Canvas Corp Tissue paper with Simply Sheer, stamped on it and then cut out circles in different sizes to create the flowers. The metal buttons in the center of the flowers are colored with Stained Glass.

I used book paper sprayed with Sprout Chalkboard for the stems and the leaves. I added some extra color to them by rubbing them with a Olive green distress ink pad.

Finally I added rubons and cut out stamped letters to finish the canvas.

That's it for now! Wishing you all a wonderful and creative weekend ahead!