Check out the absolutely amazing giveaway on this blog: http://scrapwithstacy.blogspot.com

She's giving away all kinds of Tim Holtz products. Plus when you find her blog, you'll find some great inspiration there as well.

These are a few other projects I did for the AlphaStamps Design Team. Let me just quickly say that you know how when you go into a scrapbooking store or a Michaels or just a store where they carry too much of what you love. I swear Leslie over at AlphaStamps has a unique knack for selecting and selling the very best of the best products that come out every new season or every new CHA show.
She always has the best goodies on her site. You should definitely check it out when you get the chance.

Okay, so back to my other DT AlphaStamp samples. Leslie is going to be selling these awesome little gold frames (I think they will be on her site by this Friday). You can make ornaments for your house or for your Christmas trees with these, there are endless projects you can make with these little frames. I used some more angel images from AlphaStamps collage sheets and then decorated the frames with some German Scrap/Dresden, a little glitter glue and some metal/brass embellishments. When I made these frames I was thinking of ornaments for the tree. They turned out pretty darn cute don't you think?

The last two (although they actually show on this post as being first)are just a couple of ATCs I made, again with some of the AlphaStamps angel collage sheets as well. The backgrounds on the ATCs are obviously my design using metallic paints. The text is embossed and is on pop dots and it is from the AlphaStamps stamp set called "Angels We Have Heard on High". I also used German Scrap/Dresden for around the border of each ATC and also the Dresden Halo for behind each of the angels heads.

These were fun little projects for the up and coming holidays, they would also make great gifts or even great additions to a wrapped package. The holidays will be here before we know it. If you are looking for the right supplies........you know where to go.......AlphaStamps!!

This is a holiday slide mailer I made for the AlphaStamps Design Team. The Yahoo group is also doing an Angel Swap using some of these same materials.

Since I make slide mailers quite a bit I'm always looking for new ways to make their appearance look a bit different than the last one I made. This time I covered the whole front & back with modeling paste (the only part that wasn't covered was the double microscope slide indention on the inside). Once the modeling paste was dry on all sides I then took out some Rub-n-Buff in Antique Gold. (Sometimes I think that there are so many products out on the market these days, that you forget about certain ones that are really great to use.) I had not used the Rub-n-Buff for quite awhile and I was really happy with the outcome on this slide mailer. On the indention on the inside I cut the middle part out which separated it into two sections in order to make it one whole opening. I used the very beautiful stamp set by AlphaStamps called "Angels We Have Heard On High" for the background and then I cut out images from AlphaStamps collage sheets to put over that background. Added some German Scrap/Dresden, pearls and tinsel glitter by Martha Stewart to the inside. I then punched a couple holes in the slide mailer, added some eyelets and small binder rings, decorated the front panel and finally added some ribbon and brass embellishments and viola, I had a little slide mailer booklet.

These are a few "Halloween Candy Holders" that I made for Stampotique. The Stampotique Design Team has been gracious enough to ask me to be their very first Guest Designer. What a wonderful honor from an incredible group of talented women. Thank you so much to each one of you.

I used a small sized "Chinese take-out" box for the first candy holder, and for the second I just altered a white small gift bag.

For the take-out box I added beads to the handle and then I have images on both sides of the box. Pretty simple.

For the gift bag, I first sprayed it with Glimmer Mist in green, orange and a dark purple. Then I stamped my images on a separate sheet of cardstock and added them to the bag. Mostly what I did for the gift bag was to decorate it with doodles. In the past I've been a small time doodler, but most recently I've been watching some amazing artist's videos on YouTube and it really is quite intriguing how much doodles can decorate a piece of artwork. I mean you can keep going and going and going with your doodles and before you know it, those doodles have made a big difference on your piece of artwork. So I've been dabbling in that recently to see if I have any talent for the doodle?

YouTube is so amazing. Even just simply for the art videos you can watch on there to learn new techniques and tricks. As many of you know, I haven't had high speed Internet for all that long, so in the past I wasn't able to access YouTube, but OMG, it is so amazing all the art tutorial's you can watch on there. And people are so very generous with showing other artists how to do the different techniques and what not for artwork pieces. My gosh you could watch art videos all day long and learn so much. It's really wonderful!!

If you're not typically a doodler, I really urge you to give it a try. It really can make a difference. And of course I would suggest black felt pen and white paint pen, those are the best in my opinion for doodling.

This is for the current Stampotique "Vintage" challenge. Vintage is by far my most favorite look in mixed media, and I know I could have done a better job here in making it look a lot more vintage, but this is what I came up with. At least the TV is pretty vintage/retro.

I really like swapping the little heads of these girl stamps to the big heads, I like how that looks.

Stay Tuned..........

This is yet another submission for the Bi-Weekly Stampotique challenges. The theme this go around was "Birthday", which is coincidental especially since my birthday is tomorrow (Monday 9/20).

But I'm not thrilled with this submission either. I didn't like my last one and now I don't like this one, I'm having a bad art making few weeks.

Do you ever see magazine photos or advertisements and the first thing you do is associate it with art and how you could incorporate that image or a similar image or color into your art? That's what I did when I saw this cover on this catalog. The color of the eggplant is so vibrant and it just jumped out at me, don't you think the color is amazing?

Here are the Twinkling H2O's I was talking about and how I keep them. I just wanted you to see so you could understand what I was talking about in the last post.

These are some more background sheets I've been preparing for future projects. These are all cut down to 6x6, however, when I made them they were 12x12. I call these my "finger painting with Twinkling H20's." I'll explain that in case anyone else wants to give it a try. You know the large trays you can buy for working with glitter and other tiny substances and once you're done using those substances you use the funnel that is built into the tray to put the glitter back into it's jar? Well that is where I keep my small jars of Twinkling H20's. The whole tray is filled with them and the tops have long been thrown away (however when I'm not using them I do cover them with a cardboard piece so no dust can get into them.) Whenever I want to use my Twinkling H20's I take that tray to the sink and I top each color off with water. I then let them sit for about a half an hour so that they can mix with the water and get nice and juicy. The last time I did this, I was wearing a pair of gloves and I decided instead of using a paintbrush, I would dip my finger in each container and then swip my finger on some blank acrylic paper. So after dipping in several different colors and wiping it on the paper, I then used a mister bottle to mist the colors so they would expand and brighten. What you see here is the end result of me doing that and just moving the colors around the paper with my gloved hand. I was pretty happy with the end result.

These are two of the 12x12 sheets I recently made to use as background paper for future projects. I really want to make a journal, but I have yet to jump into that arena head first yet. It's a little intimidating and I want mine to be different than other journals, even in the smallest of ways. I don't want mine to look like anyone else's.

This was something I whipped up real quick for the latest Stampotique Design Challenge. It didn't really turn out like I had envisioned, but at least I got it done within the 2 week time frame this challenge. The last two challenges I've been too late for.

I painted the girl completely with Twinkling H2Os. When I started this I used some pink paper with foil highlights, but there was something about the paper that wasn't working for me. I then did several dry brush strokes with white gesso across the paper and now I like how it turned out. But I don't like the banner with the "Dangerously Sweet" sign, I think I should have chosen one or the other. Oh well......what's done is done.

This is for the latest Stampotique Design Challenge. The theme is "WINGS". Tonight is actually the last night I can get it in. I've missed the last two challenges as it is, so I really wanted to do this one. Better late than never.

Welcome and thank you to my three new Blog followers. F.Y.I. I will try to respond to as many comments as I can, but honestly I sometimes fall short. I do hope you find some inspiration when looking at my work or at the very least, some pleasure.

Happy Tuesday to everyone!!

I'm sad, today I lost one of my followers. I don't know about the rest of you, but I actually feel a certain obligation to my followers. I want to give them something worthwhile to look at and also I'm very honored in having them follow my blog. I guess whoever it was, they no longer found me interesting. I'm sorry to whoever you were, I haven't been posting as much as I should. You will be missed.

These are some ATCs I made for a swap at ArtChix Studio. However I missed the mail off deadline and now I think I just get to post them on my blog.

This is just a quick little card I made for the most recent Stampotique Design Challenge.