Altered Playing Card Challenge - Winners Post

Hello all, thanks once again for coming back to the blog. Today I am going to announce the winner of the big give-a-way and also go over my storage idea for this entire deck.

First I want to thank those that followed along each week, weather you finished your deck or not, I appreciate everyone who followed along. Here are the links for each week just in case your finishing up.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17
Week 18
Week 19
Week 20
Week 21
Week 22
Week 23
Week 24
Week 25
Week 26
Week 27

and our Facebook group

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

I decided use an Artist Trading Block (by Eileen Hull) to hold my entire deck, it was the perfect size, there are several sizes of this block but for this I'm using the largest, you can find it HERE

I used the black Matboard for my box and I'm going to decorate white paper for each side

Here are what my squares look like for my sides

My process was to paint the backgrounds and then stencil and doodle on each square. I used Dina Wakley's paints 

For my hearts, I used gelli print backgrounds and drew hearts and cut them out, I also used torn gelli prints

I pasted each decorated square to each side of my artist trading block

I cut the lid off, the altered playing cards will stick out the top, which is what I want, this way I can flip through them. Here is what my box looks like

The feet are mini dominos glued together two high

Front View

However you decide to display yours, I'm sure it will work for you.

I hope you have had a great time playing in this challenge and hopefully you finished your set. If not, keep going! 

And now for the winner of our giveaway

I put all the names in a hat and had my daughter draw one. I added some names from my Facebook group as well, people that don't blog but have followed along each week

AND THE WINNER IS............

Susan K.....

SusanKMarch 23, 2015 at 6:50 AM

Great look on the last 2 playing cards of the deck! Off to see what I can do with mine....

Congrats Susan, email me with your address or message me on Facebook. Either way, I will send your prize out asap! YAY!

Some of you have expressed that you want me to do the jokers so next week, I will do the jokers and those will be the last. Come back next week to see those

Once again, thanks so much for following along!!

Stampotique Challenge 187 - Use Neon

Hello all and welcome back to another week and another challenge over at Stampotique's Designer Challenge Blog

I think this week's challenge is going to be tons of fun. Astrid is our host and she has picked the theme "Neon"

Here is what she says about this challenge:

"At first I was a bit afraid of these intense colors, but after using them I really love them. They give your work such a nice 'pop'. I challenge you to use at least one Neon color. Can't wait to see your eye popping work "

I love bright bold color so Neon is right up my alley...

I decided to work with an artist trading block this week. If you haven't heard of these they are all the rage and are by Sizzix and Eileen Hull, they are a lot of fun to work with

Here is a photo of all the sides, I used quite a variety of Stampotique stamps on this project

I am going to use this artist trading block as a holder for some of my smaller color sprays on my craft station

I think with the bright colors and bold design it will be great inspiration for me. 

For this ATB I used Stampotique Stamps:

4 Dwarfy Gnomes - By Kira Nichols

Feline and Artiste Block By Roc Nicholas

Agatha Star - By Magda Polakow

I sure hope you will come by the Designer's Challenge Blog and join us this week, you might even win a 30.00 gift certificate to the online store.

Team ATB and 100 Proof Press Blog Hop!!!

Welcome back to the blog, I'm here to announce the Team Artist Trading Block Blog Hop with 100 Proof Press Design team. 

We are having a "Block" hop together this entire month to showcase Artist Trading Blocks and 100 Proof Press stamps and I'm so excited!

I chose to use stamps:

Sleeping Fairy Girl

Dragonfly

Mocker Swallowtail

Monarch Butterfly

Side Butterfly

If you know me, you know I love butterflies and 100 Proof Press has so many beautiful butterfly stamps and so this is the direction I went.

To begin I used Tim Holtz butterfly tissue paper and cover three artist trading blocks  (I will need three of them for this)

I used the smallest size ATB for this project

I then sprayed each section (both sides) with a mix of Dylusions and also Adirondak color wash

I set those aside to dry completely

I then stamped all of my images onto white card stock and heat embossed each

My sleeping fairy girl comes with a banner under her and I ended up cutting that off

I colored each of my images with Copic markers and also added a tiny bit of distress ink to make it more subtle

I fussy cut out each image

Back to my blocks......

I used my first block as a "stand" for my project and I created two triangular shapes and hot glued them together so they would stand up

I also used Tim Holtz Honeycomb Framework Die to create a back to my stand

I then took two other ATBs and cut the tops off and hot glued them together

Top View

Side View

I then stacked these two on top of my triangle stand and glued them together

I added some Tim Holtz tattered flowers with button centers and some foliage (sorry forgot to take photos on this)

I used some foliage that I got on sale at JoAnn's and glued the butterflies to them in order to stick them into my boxes

Here is my finished project, I love the way it came out!!

This will make for a wonderful centerpiece on my kitchen table. The Butterflies are so beautiful.

Come on over to the 100 Proof Press blog and check out other projects from their design team and team ATB

Get some ideas and explore the creativity.

Important Links:

Team ATB Blog

The Artists on the Block Facebook Page

100 Proof Press Blog

100 Proof Press Store

100 Proof Press Facebook Page

All About the Gals Artist Trading Block

I have always loved the stamps by Dina Wakley they are so fun and her quotes are so thoughtful. I have a lot of Dina's stamps and I just don't use them enough.

I figured for my ATB inspiration team post this time I would do something with my Dina Wakley stamps 

I started out with this crazy gelli print that I had laying around, I used acrylic paints and sticky back canvas to create this print so I figured if I worked with it I could just stick it on the ATB once I'm done, how easy is that?!

This gelli print was really ugly, so I layered more and more and even some more on top of it, lol. I figured I better stop with this. It doesn't look like much here but once I cut it down it's going to be fabulous

I used my Eileen Hull Artist Trading Block Die and Black Mat Board to create my base for my block

I also cut my pieces of the gelli print to size so they would fit on each side of my block

So for my pieces of the sticky back canvas I picked which stamps I wanted to use and stamped them with Black Archival inks. 

I used tissue paper to stamp my sentiments because they are small and the stick back canvas has some texture to it and I really didn't want to lose the boldness of the letters if I stamped it directly onto my canvas. 

Once the sentiments were stamped I simply cut them out and adhered them onto my canvas with gel medium

The tissue paper disappears into the background

I added stamps and a few die cuts here and there and then doodled on each side

I also did a bit of sewing and once it was all done I simply pulled off the backing and stuck my canvas onto the ATB

I love how easy this was

For my Bird, I made two, one I stamped directly onto the canvas and the other one I used tissue paper, because I wanted my bird to be visible from all sides of the block I need to reverse the image and I did that with the tissue paper.

This way I could glue them together, back to back

Here is my finished block

TOP

FRONT

SIDE

SIDE

BACK 

Thanks for coming by and please stop by The Artists On The Block Website to check out more inspiration from the team!

Also, Check out Eileen Hull's Art With Heart Challenge, there is a new one each month and we'd love for you to join in on the fun! There is a fabulous prize from Sizzix as well.

Mixed Media Clock - An Artist Trading Block Project

Hello all and thanks for coming by the blog today.

I'm so excited to share this project with you.

Have you ever had a project in your head and have been wanting to put it in the "works" for awhile? Well that's exactly what this project is all about for me. I've had this in my head for some time and have finally made it.

I have put together a tutorial for this project so I hope you don't mind all the photos

For this project I had this clock that I bought at a thrift store many moons ago, it's purpose was just to hang it in my craft room and I had always planned to re-purpose it at some point. 

After I made the inspiration team for Artist Trading Blocks I got an awesome idea to use Eileen Hull's Artist Trading blocks and for this project I used the smallest of the sizes which measure about 1.5" x 1.5" 

I began by wrapping the clock hands with painters tape, I couldn't figure out how to remove the clock mechanism so I just wrapped the hands up to protect them

I then applied a layer of gesso over the clock face,

setting this aside to dry, after it was dry I applied a second layer

While the clock face was drying I began by cutting out my ATBs using Eileen's ATB Die and White Matboard

Since it takes two cuts to create one block I had to cut out 24 of these

 I laid all of these out on the floor over some freezer paper and applied some Goosebumps Clear Texture spray here and there, I didn't spray it I opened the bottled and dabbed it on

I let that thoroughly dry.... once dry I applied Adirondak Ink over the top with a distress tool, as you can see the Goosebumps acts as a resist for the Adirondak ink

I then used a Dylusions stencil and some color wash to spray a pattern onto each piece of the ATBs

I figured I could do 3 pieces at a time

Here is how they looked

Once that was done and they were dry I put them all together using my hot glue gun (watch your fingers, I burned mine a few times LOL)

After my blocks were all put together I used Tim's stamp set called Random Quotes and Adirondak ink to stamp words on each side of my ATBs

I then took Wendy Vecchi Archival ink in the color Potting Soil to edge the sides and corners of each block, I also added some black paint onto of that on each side. (I didn't take a photo of this sorry)

Back to my clock face... I didn't take a photo of this step but I used white Wendy Vecchi embossing paste and a Stencil Girl Seth Apter stencil to create some texture

I also used heavy gel medium to add some dry wall tape to the faces surface as well

Using several different colors of Tim Holtz distress paints, I used a paintbrush and applied the paint, I then took my finger and spread it out more to blend it (I ended up not using the green)

Once again I took that same Dylusions stencil and archival ink and inked here and there along the clock face. I also used that same Tim Holtz stamp to stamp the words and I used black marker and white gel pen and went over some places from the stenciled portion

Now it's really coming together

I had cut out some stems from Tim's Garden Greens die and some movers and shapers butterflies from distress paper and edged them with archival ink

I adhered some of these onto my clock face. They had to be flat in order for the clock hands to be able to go around the center of the clock so I glued them down flat

The sentiment came from that same Tim Holtz Random Quotes stamp set

I used black card stock and Tim's two die sets here to create my numbers for each block. I had to use the Artist set because two large numbers wouldn't fit for 10 and 12 on the clock so I cut out some smaller numbers.

I then glued each block onto my clock face using my glue gun

Oh, I had to cut my clock hands smaller too because they were way too long for the artist trading blocks, they wouldn't have turned if I didn't 

I used my trusty Tim Holtz scissors for that step and they worked like a charm, cut right through the hands, you can't even tell I had to cut them

Here is some photos of my finished clock and IT WORKS TOO!! 

I had so much fun making this clock, I'm so glad that I got it out of my head and into real life haha!

I am entering this clock into a few challenges too...

1. Eileen Hull's Art With Heart  where the theme is "Fall Back", what a perfect challenge for this clock!! I encourage you to go check out the challenge and take part, there is a wonderful prize package from Eileen and Sizzix too.

2. Eclectic Paperie - Their challenge this month is "Fall" and one lucky winner will win a 25.00 gift card to their store! 

3. Simon Says Stamp Wednesdays Challenge - Their challenge is to use a stamp for Stamptember!! and as always they are giving away a 50.00 voucher to one lucky winner

4. last but certainly not least, I'm entering this into the Inspiration Emporium challenge, their challenge is "Fall is In The Air" WOOT! I encourage you to go over and check out their challenge. You could win 50.00 to spend at Inspiration Emporium. How cool!

Last but not least make sure to come by The Artist On The Block website to see more inspiring projects from the wonderful design team!!

CHEERS!!