Bizarre Holidays ATCs: February

I think the wacky, unusual holidays are fun to celebrate.  For over a year now I've been participating in monthly bizarrre, wacky holiday trades on ATCsForAll and now I've started playing in the same swap over at SwapBot too.  I don't need an excuse - love making these!  In addition to the one I showed in my last post, I made these for February.

These images are from Vera Lane Studio.  I can't get enough of these - so fun and cute without being over-the-top cute.

I splurged and bought a big box of watercolor crayons recently.  I used them on these ATCs.  I think I'll be playing with them a LOT.  I had to choose this holiday because I'm a wee bit of a coffee addict.  :)

After my dad passed away, we found a box of stamps that he must have collected when he was a wee lad.  I nabbed it to use in my art and that's where these stamps came from (except the butterfly).

I always seem to gravitate to Umbrella Day for the February holidays.  Maybe it's because it's my sister's birthday or maybe it's because I live in Seattle!  This first one is made from a gelli print that I had in my stash.  I also used my watercolor crayons again.

For this umbrella card, I whipped out the raindrop stamp set that I've had forever but hardly ever use.  I think it helped that the last few days have been excessively rainy around here.  I used my Distress markers to color the umbrella.

Pretty pleased with myself that February isn't even here yet and my cards are done.  Woot woot!

12 "Tags" of 2016 - January

Hello!  Another year of Tim Holtz's 12 tags series - woo hoo!  Dare I hope that I can get one done each month?  I do...I dare.  I'm doing ATCs instead, but otherwise I'll do my darndest to play along and use Tim's techniques where possible.

Here's January:

Here's Tim's:

Yeah, I know.  I'm asking you to use your imagination again.  I did a fake chalkboard technique (embossed with white ink on black cardstock and then rubbed chalk all over it - best I could do). But I did use the embossed and distressed metal technique.

My ATC is for a February Bizarre Holidays swap.  Hope they like it!

Pink & Red & Hearts

It's creeping upon us...Valentines' Day is just a few weeks away.  Enter the pink, red, hearts business.  I am so not mushy, but I channeled all the mushy love stuff I could garner to create a couple of projects for challenges this week.

The first one is a bit of mail art that I created for the SDC Pink and Red Challenge.  I've got a box full of envies from a defunct company that are just begging to be arted up.  I whipped out my Distress inks, stencils and stamps and got busy.  Isn't Heart Boy a sweetie?

My second project stayed within the whole pink and red theme (I wasn't sure I liked the envie at first, but some tweeking made me happy) and also incorporates a heart candy box for the Wicked Wednesday Hearts Challenge.  Love these birds.  I really tried to resist all the Crazy Bird hype but eventually I just caved and took the plunge.  ;)  (Damn you and your fun stamps, Tim!)

That's it for today.  Cheers!

Mail Art Mania

2016 has started out as The Year of the Envelope for me.  I have spent most of my creative time decorating envelopes to mail art in rather than creating the art itself.  Ha!  Where's the logic in THAT?  Whatcha' gonna do?  When The Muse speaks, I must listen.  Here's a peek at some of my envies:

Looks like I need to go make some enclosable art now.  Have a great day!

Stampotique ATC day

I had a little fun this morning making some ATCs.

The first one, A Boy & His Dog, is for the SDC tree challenge this week.

The next batch is for the Stampotique ATC trade this month with a "Two" theme (to celebrate the group's 2nd anniversary).  

In my blog wanderings this morning I ran across Fiona's post showing her fab-o art journal pages.  Totally copied her for this.  Hope she takes it as a compliment!

Happy  Friday!

Recycled Christmas Wrapping Paper

I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon some pretty cool art groups that are a great source of inspiration for me.  One of them has a monthly swap theme that varies widely in the media used, finished project type and definitely addresses (literally from all around the globe).  For January we were asked to create two ATCs using gift wrap left over from the holiday festivities.  I knew this was coming up and randomly grabbed some shiny red metallic snowflake paper.

Initially I was hoping to stay away from something too Christmasy but not too sure I was successful at that.  I pulled out my reindeer die (which sat collecting dust since December of 2014), partially used doily, embossing folder which I haven't used in ages, pine branch die cuts leftover from another project, old book and hymnal pages, etc.  My word for 2016 is declutter (I can almost hear the hubs laughing hysterically...whatever) ;)  so I'm feeling pretty spiffy that I repurposed or rediscovered a lot of things for this challenge.  (I'll 'fess.   The shiny stars are new, but it's Tim Holtz's fault because I saw him do something cool with them recently.)

Woot woot!  Bring it on 2016!