Music Canvas Project with Princess TJ Part 1

I painted some small canvases recently and my daughter, TJ, wanted to have a go too. So I taught her a few techniques and she wowed me with her creative ideas. I'm going to have to try some of those ideas out myself soon. I took step by step photos to share the techniques with you, and she is very happy to share her creative process with you too. She used Acrylic Paints on a 5x7 canvas.

Today I'm going to show you how she prepared the base of her painting.

First she coated the canvas with bright pink paint.
Next she thinned some purple paint with water and brushed it over two areas of her canvas
Then she used a tissue to "rag off" some of the wet purple paint.

Once the purple paint was dry TJ chose some stencils from my stash and sponged blue paint through them. We don't have any sponges but find the children's craft pompoms really useful for this technique. Both stencils are from The Crafter's Workshop and the first one was designed by Julie of Balzer Designs. When sponging make sure you don't put too much paint on the "sponge".

To finish the base TJ placed some very watery paint on one corner and tipped the canvas to allow the paint to drip. She moved the canvas around while the paint dripped to make a wiggly line.

This was left to dry and few days of playing with toys etc before she picked it up again to add her focal image. Be sure to come back for Part 2 in a few days.

Blessings to you all from Angela and Princess TJ.

Creating Repeating Patterns in Craft Artist.

Sometimes when I’m digital scrapbooking or hybrid crafting (using my printed digital supplies in traditional paper crafting) I want to use a patterned paper that isn’t included in my stash. Often I’m inspired by an embellishment or stamp in the kit and use it to create a repeating pattern from to add to a paper. Sometimes I use custom shapes cropped to one of the papers in the kit for polka dot patterns etc.

Items used in these examples are from the Scrap Art Studio Color Play 9 Collection.

There are a number of ways to create repeating patterns in Craft Artist and Digital Scrapbook Artist each with their own pros and cons, however only one of those methods is included in the free cut down version Craft Artist Compact. Today I’m going to show you how to create your patterns using that method. This method is the slowest, but you have more control over the results.

For this tutorial I’m going to create the anchor pattern using Courtney’s Anchor Sticker and one of Giny’s Linen Papers from Color Play 9.

· Place a background paper in the background layer.
· Place the anchor sticker on the next layer and resize it to about ½ inch tall.
· Move the anchor to the top left corner.

· Copy the anchor and paste it so you have 14 anchors in a row along the top of the paper. Don’t worry about getting them even; we’ll do that in a moment.
· Place the 14th anchor in the top right corner.

· Select all the anchors.
· Click on the align tab at the bottom right-hand corner of Craft Artist.

· Click Align Vertical Centre.

· Click Horizontal Distribute.

· Group the anchors together.

· Copy this group and paste the copies down the page.
· Align the rows of anchors using Align Horizontal Centre and Vertical Distribute.

· Select and copy all the anchors.
· Create a new layer.
· Paste a copy of the anchors on this new layer.
· Move them so they lie in-between the other anchors on the page.

· Delete any anchors overlapping the edges (you will need to ungroup the rows to do that).

Finally, to ensure the pattern is fully centred on your page.
· Select everything on layer 1.
· Group together.
· Align centrally on the page using Align Vertical Centre and Align Horizontal Centre.
· Repeat with layer 2.

Have fun turning the plain papers in your stash into patterned papers using embellishments and/or custom shapes.

Blessings to you all from Angela

Laminated Place Mats

We got a new, bigger kitchen table. It's a lot bigger than we anticipated so the old table cloth is far too small. I quickly put together some place mats to use instead. They are very easy to make.

These ones are hybrid. one of the benefits of doing them like this is I can run off as many duplicates as I like quiet quickly.

My Supplies:

• The Music In Me by Green Eyed Lady Designs
• Sheets of coloured paper that go with the kitchen curtains (Size A4)
• Laminator Sheets and Laminator.

I set-up my software page to the size of my paper (metric A4). I used the white textured/brush printed papers for the base and layered up stamps and paper elements to create a collage. As the finished piece will be sandwiched between the laminator sheets I made the drop shadows very slight and small.

I printed them out onto coloured papers. If I ever change my curtains I could reprint these on different paper to match. Once the ink was dry I laminated them.

To make it more fun for the children, they have all made their own place mat using traditional paper crafting with colouring pages, digital stamps, stickers and collage etc. After the paint/ink/glue had finished drying I laminated them so they can proudly use their masterpieces at every meal time.

Manic

Sorry, there's not been any posts recently, life's been manic. I have some step by step photos etc sitting in my to write folder, so hopefully normal service will resume shortly.

If you want to submit a guest tutorial, hint/tip, or step by step project I'd really love to hear from you. Thank you.

Blessings all from Angela

Rub-on Patterns

Hello everyone, I hope you are having a good week. When I was playing in my art journal yesterday I was looking for a way to add a pattern to my page for a special background and remembered the old brass rubbings we did when I was a kid in school.

I pulled out my stash of Fiskar's Texture Plates, placed one under my page and rubbed ver it with a wax crayon.

Easy isn't it? Dig out those crayons and have some fun.

Blessings from Angela

Using Arty Photo Masks in Craft Artist

When I’m digi-scrapping I really enjoy using arty photomasks. These masks have uneven edges and semi-transparent areas giving the layout a really arty feel. To use these masks you need to have the full version of Craft Artist - Craft Artist Professional version 1 or higher. The masks tool is disabled in the free cut-down version.

For this tutorial I’m using the Past Reflections Bundle by Courtney’s Digiscrapin. It includes 4 amazing arty photo masks to play with.

1. Place the photo mask on a new layer

This lovely arty mask has swirls and splats around the edge, and some areas have dotty semi-transparency.

2. Place your photo in a layer immediately underneath the layer with the mask on it.
3. Position and resize your photo so it is how you want it.

4. On the layers tab, click on the mask icon for the layer with the mask on it to turn the layer into a mask layer.

Only areas of the photo covered by the mask can now be seen, and these include the swirly bits. The photo is even semi-transparent in the same places as the mask.

Here is my finished layout.

Happy scrapping from Angela

Ideas for Adding Patterns to Buttons

I can't really justify buying many of the new fabulous patterned buttons for paper crafting when I've so many plain ones still taking up half a draw, so I had a go at altering them using alcohol markers and acrylic paints. Altering plain buttons in this way does allow me to match my buttons up to a particular project as i don't always have the perfect colour at hand.

Alcohol Based Markers
I use Letraset Tria Markers as I like the versatility of the three different sized nibs. Adding colour to buttons using the markers is really easy

Pros:

• Quick and easy to draw patterns on the buttons
• Dries fast
• Colours blend well with the button colour
• Lovely translucent patterns
• Clean and simple, can easily do one button at need

Cons:

• Can only work on pale coloured buttons
• Can't create patterns with contrasting colour to the button

Acrylic Paints

Pros:

• Can use white or pale colours on dark buttons
• Nice bold and bright designs
• great for doing large batches of buttons

Cons:

• Detailed and fine patterns need a steady hand and practice
• Takes a while to dry
• Can be messy, and not worth all the clean up time for just one or two buttons.