I'm popping in today to share a quick #CarveDecember update. I already shared the stamp I created for the 15th in my post on the FlexCut Carving Tools. So, here are days 16-23:
The layered stamping technique you see in the tree stamps above is one that I'll be teaching at Stamp Camp in Australia in April! You can also find it in my book, Carve Stamp Play.
The sentence, "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs," is a pangram. A pangram is a sentence that uses every single letter of the alphabet at least once. The most famous one is, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Follow this link to a page that lists tons of pangrams -- including many in languages other than English!
And the full alphabet all together:
Not an easy carving job and I definitely needed the four days to get it done. Those little lines...blerg! And the shadowing got me confused a few times. Luckily I had marked everything pretty well, so I stopped trying to think and just started following the color coding I had left myself! In my experience, when it comes to stamp carving, good prepatory mark making makes for good stamps!
Hope you're still carving along. Check out the awesome stuff that other people are posting at the #CarveDecember hashtag!
It's not too late to create a few last minute greeting cards for Christmas, especially when you've got a ScanNCut on hand! Watch the video for the how-to:
And here is the card from the video:
You can change the sentiment and the central image to fit any holiday or occasion. In fact, that's one of the things that I like the most about having an electronic cutter. I can customize every project to fit the occasion or recipient! You can take the techniques I shared in the video and change the card up so many ways! For example, I started poking around in ScanNCut Canvas and I used the built-in fonts and designs, along with some of the designs from the Stamp Starter Kit, to create four variations of the card I created in the video:
You can see the bottom two designs don't even need the additional words! I encourage you to give this project a try with your own personal artistic flair!
Thanks for stopping by!
---
P.S. While I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut, it is a machine that I love and use!
Today I've got another installment of my "Exploring Art Supplies" series. On instagram I noticed that gwenaval was using the FlexCut cutters and talking about how much she loved them. From time to time I've looked at other cutters, but they can be very expensive (hundreds of dollars). This set was a little more than $50, so I decided to take the risk.
My building had a holiday party last week. The invitation included an optional cookie swap. I'm not a baker. At all. In any way. But I did want to meet people in my building and I figured that participating in a cookie swap was an easy way to do that.
It was not easy.
I give serious props to anyone who is a baker. It is hard work! And cookie decorating turned out to be a little more difficult than I anticipated. Steep learning curve. But I had fun on what turned out to be a three-day journey. Read all about it:
DAY ONE: Bake the Cookies
I scoured the internet looking for a sugar cookie recipe and finally decided that you can't go wrong by trusting Martha. Two observations about my personal wimpiness based on my adventures in baking:
I think I actually hurt my back rolling out dough. It is hot and sweaty work.
I received a stand mixer as a gift almost ten years ago. This is the first time I've ever used it (never had the space in NYC). Thank God I own a mixer because mixing dough by hand would have made me give up.
We were instructed to bring six dozen cookies to the swap. I was afraid I would mess some of them up, so I made 104 cookies.
Otherwise known as Adventures in Royal Icing! I used the recipe from the Wilton site and how-to instructions I found on YouTube. This was my favorite video:
O
I made the icing too thick at first...
...which made it very difficult to pipe and it dried all chunky and textured.
Then I tried to see if I could get away with not piping the outside...
...and as you can see, the answer is no. You must pipe. So, I did.
And then I flooded the cookies:
DAY THREE: Decorate the Cookies
The Royal Icing needed to dry overnight. So the next day I dragged out some clean never-before-used stencils (important when dealing with food) and some food color sprays. Unfortunately, I didn't like the results. The sprays weren't very intense in color and the images were softer than I wanted. So then I tried stamping with some gel food coloring. I tried clear stamps and unmounted rubber and finally settled on a set of wood mounted alphabet stamps. Again, these were brand new never-before-used stamps.
...in order to create a food safe stamp pad to use with the stamps!
I returned to the stenciling, but decided to go with the gel food coloring and a cosmetic wedge sponge in order to create more intense colors. I also decided to create some quick holiday stencils using my ScanNCut.
Once I had gotten control of the method of decorating, I started creating colorful cookies!
I chose the six dozen prettiest and loaded them into the biggest platter I own...
...and carried them over to the party. They were well received -- both attractive and delicious! The perfect combination!
I had a lot of fun during this cookie decorating adventure. And now I know why cookies are so expensive at bakeries! Definitely worth it!
Are you a baker? Any tips to share? I'd love to hear them!
If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here. All of the previous posts can be found archived here. There is a flickr group for sharing right here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post. Thanks!
Just a few shopping days left until Christmas! Today's Art Journal Every Day post is all about what to buy yourself or a fellow art journaler -- or maybe just e-mail this page to a certain someone in your life who wants to get you the perfect gift. ;)
I've chosen ten items that I love to use when I art journal. I hope you will love them too!
My friend Ronda turned me onto this one. When you're painting a face or working on something else that requires perspective, putting your journal on a tabletop easel can really help you get the results that you want. It has really helped me!
I've recently decided that not all deli paper is created equal. I've been using a box of a different brand than my usual and I don't like it as much. It's slightly more waxy and thinner than my usual, so it reacts to paint differently. I love the Kabnet Wax brand!
Whether you buy my designs for Art Foamies or other designs from their catalogue, I love using foam stamps with paint in my art journal. I've found that stamping across the crack in your journal is pretty easy with Art Foamies because they're flexible.
Golden Fluid Acrylics are my favorites to use in my art journal. However, shiny paint makes your pages stick together. Golden Matte Fluid Acrylics to the rescue!! They have all the same qualities as Golden Fluid Acrylics BUT they're matte! So no pages sticking together!!! Woot!
I use this set of number stamps (based on my hand carved designs) in my art journal every single day. In my opinion, they're the perfect size with just the right look. I usually use them with either my Days of the Week stamps or my Boxed Days of the Week stamps.
Stencils
You can never have enough stencils! Am I right?! I'm currently obsessed with my Messy Script Bit (pictured above).
This is the paper that I use as a blotter on my desk. It's fairly inexpensive. It's good quality. And when the paper is saturated with color and pattern, I cut it up and bind it into my junque journals.
After years of seeing other people's Raskog Carts loaded with art supplies online, I was delighted to have enough space in my new studio to buy two of them. So is it as great as I imagined? YES! I cannot believe the volume of paint and supplies that this little cart holds! I have one cart loaded with paint and brushes and mediums and a second one that is dedicated to art journaling -- full of markers and favorite stamps.
If you're lucky enough to live in the UK or Australia, you can easily get this amazing, beloved, best pen ever for art journaling. Those of us in America will have to pay international shipping. The site I've linked to charges about $15 shipping to the US, but you can buy a box of 10.
Please note that some links on this blog contain affiliate links and I receive a small percentage of those sales. Rest assured, I never recommend a product that I don't believe in. :)
