All Taped Up!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Tape it Up".  I've been hoarding my paper tapes, keeping them in waiting for this challenge to come up!  I decided that I would recycle an empty cardboard box and make it into a money-box.

All the tapes I've used here are from Cavallini, and one of the great things about them is that all the designs have a common cream background running through them, which means that when you lay them side-by-side they look as if they're all one design.  Obviously, when you know that paper tape has been used, you can spot each one, but looking at it on my desk in front of me, you would never get that they are stripes of separate designs, they just co-ordinate together so well!  An added bonus is the fact that they come in great little tins, which you can find another use for once you've used up all the tape!

I'm a big fan of paper tape (or tissue tape, or washi tape, or gaffer tape, whatever you want to call it!).  There are so many colours, designs and patterns easily available now, gone are the days when you'd have to find importers of Japanese products to get your hands on some.  They are very forgiving to work with, if you don't get it straight you can just peel it off and apply it again until you get it right.  They're a great way of quickly adding pattern to a project, and work a treat if you need to brighten up a tired picture frame, decorate a notebook cover or make a quick card.  I guess I'm just a washi tape fan-boy! lol

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Tray Bon!

I know, I know, that title is a really cheesy pun! lol Cut me some slack, we're all allowed one every now and then, as long as we don't make a habit of it. Come to think of it, I often have cheesy puns as my post titles, so it's a little late for you to start complaining about it now! :)

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "No Rules". I've had this vintage printer's tray for quite some time now, it was a gift from a friend (thank you Andrea!).  A similar effect can be achieved using the Tim Holtz Configurations printers tray.

I'm not really quite sure why, but when I started this piece I really hadn't taken on board quite how much work it was going to involve!  28 or so individual panels to create is quite a task!

I won't go into detail on all the panels, but a few highlights...

The subway sign was embossed on black card with the Tim Holtz Subway embossing folder, then I sponged white paint onto it to highlight the lettering.  Some of the panels were covered with tissue tape, others were from the Retro Grunge, Kraft Resist and Lost and Found paper stacks.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Born, never asked

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Spritz, Sprays and Stencils". How to explain my entry this week without typing a mini-novel that will bore you to tears? I'll try to make it brief!

I have been a huge fan of multimedia artist Laurie Anderson for over 25 years. I have seen her perform more times than I can remember, I have a signed copy of her career retrospective and she was even the subject of my final degree dissertation back in my college days. I'm sure that many (if not most) of you won't be familar with her work, it's definitely more "arty" than mainstream. She sings on some albums, tells stories on others and is a gifted violinist. Above all she is the queen of digital technology, frequently inventing the instruments she uses in her music. My piece this week is inspired by her track "Born, Never Asked", which I love for her emotive violin playing. If you'd like to give it a listen it can be found here.

I started out by making 2 stencils for this piece - the first was a block of numbers, used in the centre panel in the bottom row. The second was the lyrics of the song that inspired the piece, which are:

It was a large room, full of people. All kinds. And they had all arrived at the same building at more or less the same time. And they were all free. And they were all asking themselves the same question: What is behind that curtain?

I used that stencil in the top-left and centre-right panels. Oh, by the way, while we're talking about making your own stencils, it's an activity that definitely has it's pros and cons! Yes, you have a unique stencil of your own design that is perfectly suited to the project you're working on, and once made, you can use time and again. However, and it's a big "however", be prepared to spend hours picking tiny pieces of plastic out of the stencil and then even longer finding them in your hair, on your clothes, in your mouth and even in your food!

Ok, a quick skip through what I did on each panel, starting top left and working left to right.

• Coloured with blended Distress Inks, stamped with letters stamp and stencilled with text, both brown Distress Ink (I forget which brown). The hand was moulded from paper clay and coloured with Promarkers.
  
• Letter blocks paper from Tim Holtz's Lost and Found stack.
  
• Stamped the hand and coloured it with Promarkers. Edged the tile with brown Distress Ink (same edging on all panels).
  
• Coloured the tile with blue Distress Stain. Splattered blue and red Distress Stain on my craft mat and pressed the tile onto it then stamped the ticket.
  
• Photo from the Lost and Found stack.
  
• Covered the tile with Tissue Tape then painted it with green Claudine Hellmuth paint. Stencilled the text with red C.H. paint.
  
• Background is text blocks from Lost and Found stack. Coloured the base of a grunge block with brown Distress Ink then stamped dates image on it. Coloured the grunge T with black Distress Ink and fixed them both in place.
  
• Coloured tile with blended orange and yellow Distress Ink then stamped numbers grid on it. Stencilled numbers with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink.
  
• Coloured the tile with Peacock Feathers Distress Ink and stamped the dots with Dusty Concord Distress Ink. Used a black Distress Marker to edge the main details on the man stamp then stamped it on Kraft Resist paper. Inked it and stamped again on white card. Cut out the man's face and fixed it to the Kraft Resist image then fixed both onto the tile.
  
• Finally I fixed all the tiles together with the Tiny Attacher and mounted them onto black card.
  

Looking back at it now, it's clear to me that I was also playing around with ideas of scale - big hand/small hand, big numbers/small numbers, big text/small text. I confess that I wasn't aware of it while I was doing it, it must have been subconscious, lol I have a running joke with a friend of mine, any time we look at someone's art, whether it be in a gallery or on a blog, one of us, at some point, will say "Do you see what they're doing? They're playing with ideas of scale!". It's quite possible that that was rattling around somewhere in my head during the making of this piece.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com
Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)