Adding Stamped Images to Your Inked Backgrounds

Today I want to build on earlier posts where I explained how to make these colorful backgrounds.  Someone asked me what I do with these backgrounds,  so I decided I would walk you towards that end product one step at a time.  Today we are going to talk about adding stamped images to your inked backgrounds.

There is really nothing to it. I promise! I thought I had taken a photo of this inked background when I made it,  unfortunately I didn't check before I went crazy with the stamping, so this is about the closest thing you are going to see to a photo of the inked prettiness it was. 
I completed the background on an 11" x 14" sheet of Strathmore Bristol Smooth Surface - my go-to paper for inked backgrounds - and Dylusions Ink Sprays in Crushed Grape and Funky Fuchsia . 
Then I gathered my supplies: * a stamp that I like from Dylusions, * if you are using a non-mounted stamp, you will also need a clear stamp block - mine came from Dylusions (of course), and * an archival inkpad from Ranger.

(Yes, I am just noticing my skin looks terrible in this photo. I really don't have the plague, I promise!) Ink your stamp and place it face down onto your inked background - wherever you want it to go. Press down, then lift straight up.

For this particular project I wanted to cover most of the paper surface with stamped images. I did not care if they lined up or not, so I focused on stacking them one above the other.

I repeated the process until I had most of the surface covered.  My first stamps were a little darker than I wanted them,  so I stamped the image twice before I re-inked the stamp. This resulted in a mix of lighter and darker images, which I am really satisfied with. So you see, there is really nothing to getting stamped images onto your inked backgrounds.  Piece of cake! I promise! Now. On to my next step in the project. And I will try to take more pictures as I go along.  I promise :).

Butterfly Magic

Lately I have been working on backgrounds. Lots of backgrounds. They are such fun! This is what I'm working on today, the day after Thanksgiving. I passed up Black Friday shopping to stay home and make art. That's a good tradeoff anyday!

A few posts back, I showed you some backgrounds I'd been building. This is one of them. I started with an 11" x 14" sheet of Strathmore Bristol Smooth Surface paper and two colors of Dylusions Ink Sprays. This paper handles wet media very well. You get a little curling on the edges, which can be handled with painter's tape and a heat gun. Both of which I never remember. Anyway, this is what I started with today.

Next, I took this stencil from Joggles called Flight and placed it down on my background. I used a spritzer bottle of water and sprayed water onto the openings of the stencil.

Let that sit for about 15-20 seconds, then carefully lift off your stencil. Let the water sit on the surface another 15-20 seconds, then take a paper towel and blot the remaining wetness off the paper. You will notice the wetness lifted some of the color making those areas lighter. It won't work this way with all inks, I used Dylusions Ink Sprays and they work this way wonderfully.

A little blast from a heat gun with complete the drying process. Here is a close up of some of the butterflies. A totally different look for my background from what I started with.

Then I chose this butterfly to work with. 

Zentangle® is a really awesome art style that can be adapted to so many other types of art. I wanted to do something special with this butterfly. I started with the body and began drawing in some betweed. Perfect fit for a body.

From there I added a modified version of mooka for antennae, and started filling in a couple areas on the wings. Not any specific tangle pattern at this point, just filling in lines until I decided which direction to go in.

I went with a really loose version of Carole Ohl's tangle inapod, which I love. There are so many opportunities to use this pattern! And it works on wings!

And I kept adding patterns until I reached this point. You can see a bit more mooka at the top, then I used a version of Kathy Barringer's Up and Down, a little of Sandy Hunter's cruffle for the 'eyes' on the wings (I swear I'm obsessed with this tangle,) and finished with some auras and a little shading. I liked the butterfly at this point, but it still needed something. 

I was thinking it needed a little bling! A little sparkle! So I pulled out my At You Spica pens that come from Copic and got busy.

Sadly, I could not get my picture-taking-machine-AKAiphone to do justice to this color! The sparkly, shiny, glittery awesomeness that is the At You Spica pen is wonderful! Yellow, orange, red, pink (of course!), purple, and gold. So beautiful in real life. Not too shabby here. Now, on to the other butterflies before they all take flight and make a break for it. Unless they want some extra bling before they go :).

Hazardous-Reviews, Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Unfamiliar with Hazardous-Reviews? Well, that's something we hope to change. 

Hazardous-Reviews is a website/movie review blog written and managed by my son, Jason Hendon.  He reviews various genres of movies, including movies in theatres, on Redbox, and Netflix. 

Today, Hazardous-Reviews has posted a critique of Catching Fire, giving it a 5 out of 5 stars. I've only seen him do that one time before. Click on the link here to read his review.

Love These Colors!

This has been keeping me busy over the past couple days. A few posts back, I showed you some backgrounds I've been working on. This is the first one I've tangled up. Here are some detail shots:

I love this tangle of Sandra Strait's called Urchin. That's exactly what it looks like. I added that ruffle around the outside and tried to make it look like it's flowing in the water.

I was hoping these little pipe-thingies could represent some coral.

And I had to incorporate some of Michele Beauchamp's new tangle mak-rah-mee.

I really like the way mak-rah-mee flows.

These tangles just work so well together, and I love the colors! Time to move on to another background now and get busy!
May you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Guest Artist Nancy Wigley

Today I want to share some artistic backgrounds from Nancy Wigley. Nancy is a Facebook friend I met through my The Creator's Leaf page. She has been following my artisitic endeavors for a while now, which led to Nancy giving the inks and sprays a try out of her own. 

To make this beautiful blue background you see above, Nancy used Dylusions Ink Spray's London Blue on 100 lb. Strathmore Bristol Board. She first sprayed water onto the board, then spritzed the London Blue on top. Then Nancy added more water, finding that she could use the water to manipulate where the color went. (In the process, she also sprayed her fingers blue, as well as a box sitting on her work surface.)  To get the cool designs you see, Nancy placed a stencil over the wet surface, and spritzed more London Blue through the stencil.  I love the way it turned out! This one is my favorite!

For this one, Nancy used Dylusions Ink Sprays Fresh Lime and Pure Sunshine (two of my favorites!) Using the same paper, Nancy sprayed the inks onto a dry board, then used water to move the colors around. She blotted the excess water with kleenex, then spritzed ink onto a stamp and stamped images onto the wet paper. I really like the way this one turned out also!

This one is Nancy's favorite! She used the same paper, Dylusions Ink Spray Postbox Red, and Heidi Swapp's Mint Green Color Shine Spray. Again, she layed down the color first, then moved it with water, blotting with a kleenex. That green color shine spray has some fantastic sparkle in it, that unfortunately does not typically photograph. 

Nancy offers a tip of taping down your watercolor paper to your work surface. Leaving it taped down until the paper dries helps minimize paper warping. 

Nancy, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful backgrounds! These inks are so much fun to work with, and you got some really super results! I can not wait to see what you use these for!

Making Backgrounds

Today I wanted to take a break from tangling and just start some backgrounds. I had some new product I wanted to try out, so that's what I did. What you see above is a spread in my art journal. The background is complete and ready for me to start adding either journaling, ephemera, pictures, or tangles. That would be a decision for another day. Today was all about playing with colors and trying this new ink spray.

Here is what I used. The pages in this Dylusions Creative Journal are 8" x 5". I love the larger size Dylusions Journal. This smaller version I am a bit disappointed in. It doesn't hold up to wet media as well as its larger version.

For color, I tried these new (to me) Heidi Swapp Color Shine sprays. I remember Heidi from my old scrapbook days. Based on the name alone, I bought these three bottles of color.

Here is my process. Open your journal up to a clean spread. I like to place a couple sheets of computer paper/scrap paper under the flaps to protect my work surface from ink. Any time I work with inks or sprays, I cover my work surface with a craft sheet from Ranger. It's a surface that wipes clean every time, no matter what product you use. I have also at times just covered my table with butcher paper. That works well, too.

For color I used amethyst, teal, and pink. I spritzed the colors onto dry paper and let it sit and dry for a moment. I notice my amethyst looks blotchy in the top left hand corner. I had some problems with the spray coming out of the bottle in a big blob at first. Lesson learned. Practice on scrap first. The other two bottles worked great!

Next I used these cool masks from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. I placed the mask down on one corner and spritzed color over it. 

When I lifted the mask, this is what I had. Of course there was ink on the face of the mask. I don't like to waste product, so I flipped the mask over and placed it down on the adjacent page, pressed down so the ink would adhere to the page, and lifted the mask away.

This is how it turned out. Spritzing over the mask above, gives softer focus. Flipping the mask over and pressing the ink straight onto the page in the shape of the flower gives more texture.

I did the same thing here with a star mask . . .

. . . then flipped the mask over and pressed it down onto the middle of the left page. This is what my two pages looked like at that point.

To finish it out, I used a couple stamps and placed some random images. This is what I ended up with today. 
I have to say again I was disappointed with this particular journal. The colors bled right through to the back side of the pages, rendering those pages useless for light colors - without a coating of gesso. 
The inks are not what I am used to, but I think I like them. They are more subtle than the Dylusions Ink Sprays. What they lack in brightness, they make up for with loads of glitz and glamour. Shiney and fantastic! 
Now I plan on going back in with my microns and copics and tangling some awesomeness onto these two pages. I'll show those to you soon!

Diva Challenge #145

Today I felt like playing with some color. This is one of those blown out rings I showed you how to create two posts back. It just screamed sea urchin to me and thankfully I was perusing Sandy Steen Bartholomew's book Totally Tangled and came across this tangle by Sandra Strait - called urchin! It fits perfectly with the circles and I love the way it turned out.

This week's Diva Challenge is to use the new official tangle quib. That's the up and down part of the above tangle. It is very similar in nature to Michele Beauchamp's mak-rah-mee tangle, so I combined the two. It almost reminds me of jelly fish and a couple octopi. I love the flowy nature of both tangles and I am definitely going to play some more with both of these! 

To get involved in the Diva Challenge, head on over to Laura's page - I Am the Diva here and check it out! 

A Little Christmas Fun

Having a little Christmas fun here today. Recently, a friend of mine sent me a pinterest link to some beautiful ornaments. I just knew a had to give it a go, so today I made three of them. That one above is one of mine. Thank you for the pin, Sandy!

So, what you need to do is head out to your local Wal-Mart (or Wal-Mart wannabee) and get you some of these sweet little ornaments! They have both glass and shatterproof. I opted for the shatterproof because our house is tiled and we have cats that like to climb the Christmas tree.

I paid 88¢ for each ornament. The first thing you need to do is remove the clips, so you can get to the inside of the ornament. All the color is going to be inside, which is a good thing if your cats or dogs or babies or hamsters or guine . . . you get the idea . . .  get ahold of your ornament. All the color is inside, so they can't get hurt if they chew on these.

Gather up supplies, which are not all shown in this photo. Sorry. I meant to take another photo and I forgot. I placed a towel on my work surface. (I didn't get any ink on my towel at all, but my iphone screen may never be the same. It's a good thing I love pink!) I pulled out my favorite colors of Ranger Alcohol Inks. The one ingredient you don't see pictured is a can of compressed air.

Photos are a little lacking in these next few steps, so just hang in there with me. The alcohol ink dries so fast, it was hard to get photos while I was working. 
Pick out 2-3 colors that work well together and get your can of air ready. Drip a stream of alcohol ink inside the ornament. It can go straight to the bottom, or along a side. It doesn't matter. 
Then, while it is still wet, blast inside the ornament with the air to spread the color around. My can has a little plastic stick to poke into the nozzle. Use it. You can place the stick right into the opening of the ornament and pretty much blow air anywhere you want. It makes a lot of noise, so don't be alarmed. 
Keep adding colors till you are happy with what you get. And they literally dry within seconds, so keep it moving. This is a quick project!

This is the bottom of the first one I made. I love that feathering you see in the middle. I'd like to tell you I intended for it to turn out that way, but honestly it all goes so fast - what you get, is what you get.

There's some more of that awesome, intentional feathering.

I really love this one. Those darks lines are overlaps of color. You can compare it to muddying the waters when you use too much overlapping watercolor, except here - I think it works.

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alice hendon

And once again - my favorite! This project was so easy. I already had everything except the ornaments.

• clear ornaments,
• Ranger Alcohol Inks,
• Compressed air.

And that is literally all you need. I didn't even need my towel! And the whole project took less than 5 minutes to make three ornaments. Now that I know it works, I will probably go buy more ornaments and make some more! Once again, thanks, Sandy!