Using other mediums in my "watercolor" album

Because of limited space in my area I ditched

a lot of other mediums I had but

thankfully I didn't ditch the gelatoes.

Mind you, I didn't use them much before but they

are small enough to tuck them in somewhere and in

binge watching Missy Whidden (who's u-tube as hacked

and finally restored) uses gelatoes quite liberally

so therefore I had to be a copy cat.

Love the results.

Bold and fun, though if I need them softer, gesso to the rescue.

 Back to watercolors here, but I did purchase a new

stencial prior to all the stores closing down and

I love the "fireworks".

 AND then I had also kept a small stash of mists.

Mostly Studio Calico Mr. Huey

and THAT was to spray and let run.

AND THEN, I remember stickles from Studio G.

They were really popular back in the day and sort of

went out of vogue but I had some silver and

doesn't it look really cool.

 And picked up this cute butterfly stamp in the same

shopping spree and love how they're

watercolored randomly around the page.

They'll be easy if fussy cutting is on the agenda.

 This is kind of a stencil fail. 

It was too watery and leaked about but I learned

about "pencil" lines and one does not need to be

an artist to slap some pencil marks around.

AND there's always gesso to cover up and get a do-over.

Or just plop a photo there.

 AND then, I decided that the cover needed to be jazzed up.

Enter dylusions.

It's loud and psychedelic.

And then the title - I embraced my inner Lisa Fonseca

(check her out on u-tube) she handcuts everything.

From scratch.

Sigh.

She can handcut perfect alphas like nobody's business

without drawing them out first.

I drew out my letters first - and I love how they

work with the wildness.

I do not remember the mfg for the other dodads on there

except for the bird - that is a fussy cut stamp.

I'm likin' the bigger size because the TN is kinda restrictive

so we'll see how this one rolls.

Birthday card for a friend

I love these big, huge sunflowers, again my pal

Holli's stamp that I made a few of

and you will be seeing again, is so pretty.

Who doesn't love a sunflower and when was

it not a good idea to use a sunflower.

Anywhere.

I stamped the sunflower in black on some

really textured cardstock.

I mucked around using gelatoes to give it 

more color and shadows.

 The inside is kinda of plain here but

I did more and tucked it in the envelope and

licked the flap.

So if you'll use your imagination,

 I splattered brown gelato about and

stamped an adorable old-timey bunny peeking

out from behind the sign on cream

colored cardstock.

It's really cute.
You should see it. 

Recollections, Prima stamp, gelatoes.

Adding ephemera to your page

I do love keeping ephemera although

tickets are really not the same anymore as

they can be printed now and aren't as snappy as

the used to be, however, you can see the

price, it has a date, and pretty much

does a lot of the journaling for you.

It's also neat that peeps down the line can see

what you were up to.

I did cut the tickets down from 8.5x11 paper they were

printed on and then of course the wrist bands

that really don't match anything on the page and I'm 

okay with that.

My DH knows that items like these are to be saved - and

he does it well since he tends to be the keeper of said items.

 The background was created with gelatos (the first page I got

WAY too carried away and had to start again).

I'm okay with the gelatos BUT  I don't feel mine are as amazing

as Wilna's or Adele's therefore the majority

has been covered up.

 Well dang now the "title" can't be seen well here

but IRL it's okay. I struggled with 3 styles of alphas

in several different places. Sigh.

But aren't those Heidi Swapp hearts peeking out adorable?

We attended the Blues Seafood Festival with our

friends with the express intent in seeing

Beth Hart - she is an amazing singer and performer.

She's sort of like Janis Joplin on steriods only Beth can 

actually sing. I discovered her lovely self

when she did several albums with Joe Bonnamassa

and we all know how I feel about him.

Best Blues guitarist ever.

I was actually impressed with my bad self getting photos

of a concert that turned out decent.

I really would've liked to smack some people's heads

out of the way though.

Just sayin....

Anyway the paper is the Paper Studio and Recollections

cardstock backing it with some gelatos and

Studio Calico thrown in.

Pastel watercolor palette.

And there it is - watercolors on watercolor paper.

Although in full disclosure - the yellow is some yellow from

the excess I squirted out when I was doing my bible

journaling page.

I muted it a tad with some gesso.

 Not knowing what to do with it I took some inspiration from

Ashli over at Purple Mailbox and whacked some up into pieces.

I did have to ponder it some on where to go from there.

 I lined the strips up and on the square ones I punched out

a butterfly and flower and used the positive and negative space.

I also decided to highlight some areas with watercolor because Ashli made 

it look really easy. And I can honestly say - her easy is very deceiving.

I tried the coral and found it looked welll....

dumb.

So I decided grey - Ashli highlights quite a using a soft grey.

Well my grey was anything but soft.

And wasn't I baffled.

 Therefore I got a mess going on and there's really no going back since

I used so much water the paper was tearing and I needed an emergency fix.

Therefore, I punched more flowers and glued them over the
rips and tears and

that sort of worked, I also decided that some

gelatoes were needed and I grabbed my onion bag for some texture.

WELL...the gelato picked up the excess from the onion bag

and that lovely teal I was using turned dark - because that's what happens

when you don't clean your onion bag.

It was exciting that the texture hid the rips and tears quite well.

 I do have to admit the darker version works and I totally embraced it,

because the alternative was to start all over again.

 I did splatter the watercolors around the page and that helped

hide some of the other sins going on.

 Tossing in some sequins helped hide quite a few sins

by putting them out there so to speak.

And it all came together rather nicely. There's a piece of

light pink toile behind the bow that's casting all sorts of shadows.

It perfectly reflects Annie's sturdy but dainty little legs doing ballerina moves.

And those tiny feet - ya just want to bite them.

Love how it turned out - I have more of that pastel paper leftover

so I'll need to think of more ways to use it.
I also have a huge pack of watercolor paper ready to go.

I used recollections 8.5x11 cardstock with some punches,
studio calico alphas and sequins

and gelato and watercolors.

Remember the gelato and watercolor play where

Playing had it moments?

Well to refresh your memory go here and

you'll find 3 of them didn't quite make the cut.

However, not one to be defeated, I dug them out of the trash,

 whitewashed and watercolored once again

and gave them another shot.

The bike and chandelier are a couple of stamps. 

The bike was original to the "brown" one and if you'll remember I put the stamp

on the mount backwards and ened up with a black blob.
Stamping correctly has its pluses.

The chandelier replaces the houses I previously stamped -
you remember that I had no clue

what to do with because really it needed more
and I wasn't sure (and still aren't) what more is....

The pink one had my lame handwriting which I did with a sharpie
 that only took a few hundred coats of heavy white paint to cover up.

I decided to go with a stencil and modeling paste to add the butterfiles
which look pretty cool and would've looked cooler
had I thought and researched more about the coloring in part.

I have since found out that I could have colored the modeling paste
instead of using the white and trying to paint them
really really carefully.
Love utube.

So stay tuned.

Because I'm as baffled about what to do with these as you are.


My laptop is in the shop please join me as
I "tap my toe" impatiently for its return.

Mat-Background papers created with gelatoes

This background paper was created when my pal

Holli and I were messing around with gelatos way back when

I had my knee surgery which was April 2013.

Wow. :|

Those painted pages actually got lost in the immense amount of papers 

I acquired over the years

and after I did that major purge - wa-la.

Found it!

Better late than never.

And there are more where that came from.

 So I whacked down the 8.5x11 custom made paper to use as mats

and background paper.

 ooo ooo and peaking out from that leaf is my homemade washi tape.

I also worked in "totes magotes" saying that came in my kit -
with a bunch of other creative and sayings and
honestly, I should be getting points for that because seriously -
those words need to be outlawed - LOL! 

The transparency fruits were fun to work with, using Zots
to adhere them down. Zots are very sticky
and if you rub them in you can barely see them
through the transparency or
if you creatively layer something else over it
- same result or just don't worry about seeing the adhesive. 

I did build this page without any photo in mind.
After which I did find the perfect photo in my iphone downloads.

How spot on was that.

I even worked in that wooden thing from Studio Calico

and I'm thinking points for that too.

Actually it is a pretty cool element- and while it has dimension
it really doesn't make the page "too fat".

I did have issues with the photo strip - I kept trying to find photos to

fit on the strip and after pulling my hair out during the search

I decided that it could be used for journaling- doh!
Amelia loves her fresh picked apples!

Studio Calico, Kaiser Craft, Thickers, gelatoes, homemade enamel dots.

#scrapbooking

Gelatos and Watercolors play

"Twas a lovely Saturday night for playing around;

the rain was coming down and DH had

the TV blaring, so I put in my earbuds, turned on Pandora

tuning into the Blues and decided to grab a nice glass of wine

(which could explain alot).

I broke out the gelatos and some leftover special papers I had

and went to town.

I didn't record the drawing of the lines, nor having to figure out

how much water and what brush to use because you probably know more

than I do at this point and it would've interrupted the 

creative process (snort).

Actually I didn't think of doing an actual blog post

of my adventures until way later.

 The above result come out pretty good.

But did I stop there?

Noooooo.....

Where's the fun in that.

 For some reason I decided that I wanted to make squares

and of course used the black gelato. :|

I should've really thought that through a bit more.

 Since that went so well

 I decided to break out the watercolors and play around.

Seriously, how bad can that work out.

 And the watercolors didn't turn out that bad.

In my head I was working my way toward doing "printables" but

not on the computer - because PSE and LR baffle me and I

wasn't quite sure of Word so......and I really wanted to get messy

and use my stuff so........

I decided to go live.

Being quite the multi-tasker I took another look at the gelato paper 

while the watercolors were drying. I wanted

to see if I could salvage anything and decided to smear

more gelato and water about to see if I could make 

it any better because seriously could it really get any worse.

I mean what are the odds of that.

 Setting the gelato paper aside 

the watercolor paper dried quite nicely and

I just whacked them up with scissors.

And then tried to figure out what I was going to do.

Since I can't draw a stick figure I decided that stamps were

the way to go.

(I experienced a moment of panic when I couldn't find my

favorite sets, as I had moved them to a different

container for the crop a few weeks ago).

However, after bugging a few people I figured out what happend

and got back to work.

The odds were 

Four out of seven- not bad.

I tried writing on one of squares- however, when under pressure

to write really cool - I caved....

therefore a blob of white paint took care of that.

I have no idea what happened to the brown one - oh yeah

the bycicle stamp I used - inside out/turned the wrong way

on the block so you can imagine my surprise when I 

saw it was a bigblackblob on the paper - 

and there was noooooo fixin' that one either.

And the houses just looked plain dumb and I had no idea 

where to go with that in that moment so

 I just set them aside to see that once dry, and if in the

light of day and the lack of wine and blues, 

they may or may not be salvageable.

I know you're on the edge of your seat in anticipation of 

where these are gonna go, so............

I'll keep you posted.

Scrappin' with scraps

Every now and then I get overwhelmed by all the hacked up

half-used papers in my "hacked up half-used paper basket.

All these awesome papers whacked up in the name 

of creativity.

That happened the other day.

Therefore I grabbed some white cardstock (on which I'm running sadly low-although

I have about 10 lbs of all colors of the rainbow cardstock lying around) 

because white is white and said to go with everything.

I also grabbed other stuff in the box - but not being really picky about any of it.

Instead of just laying it out - I adhered it as I went.

GASP!

Then I decided that my sadly and often forgotten to be used grey gelato (and most all 6 gelatoes

I'm in possession of) was applied around and about. 

I decided grey was blah! and how about some orange mist.

That turned sort of muddy.

I then yanked out the watercolors so I could make things run.

As you can see the direction of where I was going with page is in the paint running.

And I changed my mind on the orientation.

GASP! again.

And it wasn't because of the photo as I didn't have one in mind yet.

However, when I did choose one.

Magically it all worked out.

I could say I planned it - but it would be a lie.

Studio Calico, bazzil c/s, simple stories, authentique.

A straw and a lift

My pal April and I were cyberscraping and she chose the page we should lift. She got it from pintrest and I traced it back to this blog; Teacher Jessy's blog. 

I took liberties of course to make it my own. I broke out the gelatos and went to town. I love the background which is a Studio Calico geometric pattern. I pulled out some old Basic Grey tags from all their collections -not worrying too much about colors since all BG's collections work together and the gelato colors I picked were sort of neutral. I love the whimsey of the straw and the pop of color. It brings your eye right to the title and photo and also the emblishment to the left of it. I believe I jacked the straw idea from Ashli over at Purplemailbox - she used one awhile ago.

I had to plant a flower over to the side because somehow I managed to put an inky fingerprint over there and there was no covering or cleaning it up.

Miss Amelia came to Florida to visit me and of course lil miss was photographed much to her annoyance I'm sure. She shouldn't be too traumatized since she's still being photographed. This is totally a flash from the past and she needs to visit again.

Parents optional :)

I'm having a gold rush totally unintentionally

At the same time I'm having a transparency gala as well.

This is page 1.

Not only that I have some Wilna action going on behind the golden doily.

Gelatoes. She added them to some tissue type paper, matched them to her mists and then toned them down with water.

I didn't do most of that.

The white cardstock has some embossed bumps on it and I spread the gelatoes on and then found some mists that sort of matched. And then I was stumped because it looked odd - to me.  The white c/s is 7.5x7.5 and is backed with some baby paper that I've had forever. It doesn't look like baby paper there.

I found the Hambly transparency while I was looking for something else, and it worked on half of the page, introducing the gold.

WELL...

The gold doily from the Studio Calico kit became a great mat and hid most of the gelatoes. And that's ok. AND then I found I had only ONE golden butterfly. Before I got to the golden doily, having the transparency on there without covering up edge made me crazy so I whipped out some of rick rack from Creative Cafe.  (I'm really using some stash up here-go me).  I'm glad now that I used white because it sort of fades into the background now. The sticko's alphas were perfect. I have never used them before and I like them better than thickers because they don't fly off and stick everywhere but your page). These babies are polite they want until you take them off the backing - oooohh & aaahhh. However since I have A LOT of thickers to use up I won't be going crazy on the stickos.

I found some more golden Hambly paper and made a little tag for writing down the names of all the cousins on the couch. OOOOO that would've been a great title too. I'll have to remember that.

A laugh is a smile that bursts

I played on this page with some gelatoes and in real life it looks very girly. I was looking for a girly photo to go with.

That's me in curlers and a homemade flannel housecoat in a behind the scenes look at getting ready for the prom back in 1972 so it doesn't get any more girly than that.

I used my water pen and smeared the gelatoes around on wax paper and then smeared them on the page. I even smooshed the remaining gelatoes from the wax paper onto the page. Love the way the gelatoes came out. I also painted the butterflies using the same gelatoes.

Using my Dear Lizzy labels as a title and some leftover papers as mats from my Studio Calico kits made the photo a perfect pick and that photo has been rolling about in the wayback box for a really, really long time. Recollections pearls and some burlap to add some texture as well as gossimer-looking ribbon.

(I sewed back then and made that housecoat. Made a lot of them actually-got my money's worth from that pattern) I also made my prom dress and there is a photo of it somewhere in the wayback box.

She said/He said Hello love....

Underneath the pp and photo is a hot mess of 

gelatoes and mists.

The page was inspired by Wilna that does In the Mood

to Scrap on 2peas using mixed media

She also uses a mood board where she gets her inspiration from.

Of course, I didn't do that.

I just willy-nilly started to toss mist and

gelatoes about.

And wa-la a blob

 - that of course I didn't photo

because I was too busy trying figure out how to cover it up.

I didn't have a photo planned when I started

tossing and really no paper direction either.

I just started pulling from my huge collection of scraps.

I finally got to use the she said/he said card I got from somewhere.

Anyone know????

And pear/pair get it. Snort. 

Loved the big flowers from Josephine Kimberling and cut 

the big blue one in half.

And the Studio Calico stamps from this month's kit.

The b&w striped paper came from Hobby Lobby - Paper studio

its really a light paper so I backed it with some white bazzil. 

The rest of the pp's: creative imagination, basic grey.

Sweet child of mine

Guns & Roses title - This is actually the only song of theirs I really liked. Obviously not a fan of AxelRose. But that's ok I'm not above snitching a title of theirs when need be.

The iphone photo was originally in color and I decided to play with B&W - not because there were clashy colors but because the pixels seemed to be smoother in B&W.

And it also worked better with the papers I picked out. I found this paper from Hobby Lobby by the Paper Studio. Its really flimsy so I backed it with some black bazzil. I broke out my new Heidi Swapp mist and played around. I started by sprinkling mist with the mister, but then I decided to mimic some others who slap mist on with a round paintbrush. I sortofkindof got the same effect they did.

I need more practice flinging.

I picked out bits and pieces of Bo Bunny and Authentique and whacked a journaling card in half. I found a place for my Studio Calico rubons (don't they make you swoon) and layered them and some wood do-dads. I tried gelatoes on the flower but it really didn't work so I broke out the watercolors. I also used some Pebbles (from SC Kit) stickers. to balance out that corner and slapped some feathers and a butterfly.

And then the title which took some brainstorming with April. After several lame tries (and I mean lame).  Wa-la. Then had to figure out how to get it on there. I had forgotten how much I love the labler and it was perfect.

The photo in color. It's sweet either way.

But I'm partial to b&w.

How about you?

New Powderoom....

Took a bit of license on the spelling. I had no more R's and ran out of room.

I decided that my beautiful bathroom makeover,

that was a long time coming, deserves a special page.

I love how it turned out. 

Got to use my vintage stuff from a Swirly Doo kit.

And remember those goofy carnations from Prima? Used a bunch of them too.

I had a ton of primas all in their pretty bottles and I got this

genius idea to dump them all in one big super satchel.

Of course all the flowers are scattered throughout and it took awhile to find them all.

Explain to my why I did it again.

I even used my gelatos for the background.

It came out sort of pink.

And I love that I finally worked in that birdbath.

And the birds. 

oooooooooooooooooo

Hello.....

I have been stalking videos of 

IN the mood to scrap.... by Janna Werner over at 2 Peas.

I happen to be in possession of some gelatoes

and guidance is always a plus with a new product,

especially one in my possession.

Its the video done on June 4th Art to Layout.

She uses a mood board.

I used her.
I love finding new techniques and styles.
I seem to be fickle or searching.
I'm leaning toward fickle.
It's an enhanced blonde thing.

 bwahahahaa!

So the pinky/red and yellow are my gelato colors.

It didn't quite come out the way her's did.

I think I need to play more.

Actually we both covered a lot of it up.

Shocking I know.

She also did a lot of layering.

And so did I.

Great way to use those pesky scraps up.

Her's is a bit more softer. 

Mine alas, is not.

Love this photo - mama and Quintin.

I left mama lots of journaling space.

And there's my clever title.
I know you're impressed.

Hey I liked the stamp and it actually works.

I love white c/s - it makes me swoon.

I need to use it more.