Thriving Art

Hostess; Darnell    Darnell  has been running her famous NBUS challenges for three weeks now.  This is the last one and what a twist she through in this week........bubble wrap.....HA! She can be a shifty character when Hammy is out and about.......but I digress (somewhat) For this NBUS challenge I chose a NBUS bicycle die that my friend Patty (one of my Paint Pals) gave to me a couple weeks ago.  I cut it out in a mirrored fuchsia card stock and used a black alcohol marker to paint the tires and seat.  The background is markers smeared on an acrylic block, spritzed with water, then smashed onto the die cut frame. ( I love this technique for backgrounds).  I inked up some small bubble wrap and gave the bike a path to ride on.  I thought the basket needed some flowers, so I found some NBUS tiny flower and leaf stamps .......I was wondering what I was going to use such a small flower stamp for......... *grin* All are mounted on a bl...

    Happy September! Darnell has, once again, set up the NBUS (never been used schtuff) challenge.  I am running rather late since it ends on Sept. 5, but I so wanted to play with this heart die that I've had for months................and it came from Darnell!! ( Pssst, Darnell......it works fantastic ) I sat down to play with it, going back and forth on how I wanted to use it.  Love this little die, even if inlaying it consists of all those tiny pieces.  The BIG plus is that it also makes a fantastic stencil! I wanted to use the primary colors, since that is also the challenge over at the Inkspitational Blog .  I used the die cut as a stencil for the red, yellow and blue hearts..........then die cut into the card at the bottom.  Using some mirrored gold and double sided tape on the back ( this holds all those little pieces in place as I move it), I die cut the heart again.  Now comes the tricky part:  Using tweezers I pulled ea...

We all have them, some of us have hoards of them..........markers!!  Water based markers, alcohol markers, cheap ones and expensive ones and the list can even continue further. They were really the rage, years ago, just to color  a stamped image.  Now they have taken us down the artist road with all the colors for blending, and classes on HOW to blend to get those luscious shaded images.   I went back to a time to when using your marker to actually color the stamp was the thing to do.  All things old are becoming "new" again.....*grin*     I chose this delicate vine of flowers stamp, most people prefer to use a solid image, but I really like this stamp and have had it for years.  For those who have not tried this, it is rather simple........color your image with a water base marker.....now, we used to "huff" the stamp......huff??? Just means to give it a good moist breath of air.  I use a small misting bottle of water...