Balzer Designs

Around Here: July 2019

Hello, friends!  Here's a little bit about life right now:

What are you wearing?

Dresses!! It has been in the 90s+ around here and so I have been looooving dresses.

What have you bought?

This has not been a big shopping month.  We are trying to save our money for the house and the baby.  Most of what I've bought is food...

Man, I love food! This is breakfast at Cafe Landwer.

What are you reading?

I finished "Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows" at the beginning of the month and it has stayed with me.

I bought it in an airport book store because the title was so compelling.  It was really well written.

And speaking of reading, I also shared my kindle confession on instagram last week:

Current art crush?

Polina Oshu or oshupatterns on instagram.

I love this video because I was shocked by the scale of the books:

I love this video because I had always assumed these patterns were made with paint (wrong!):

Aren't these fabulous?!  Her work makes me want to grab a little notebook and make patterns!  I love following artists who inspire me to be creative, don't you?

So, there you have it!  That's the scoop on life around here at the moment. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Art Journal Every Day: More September 2018 Pages

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.  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, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here. 

Today I am sharing some more pages from September 2018.  I really love this series of art journal pages. They feel like the best version of my kind of art journaling.  Looking at them made me want to think about what I was doing at the time.  How did I feel?  How were the things going on in my life influencing these pages?  Reading the journaling, it seems like I was in a really happy and excited place.  Perhaps that's the key to my artistic success?

This page might look familiar to you. I shared a video of creating the center triangle almost a year ago:

I almost always looooove the black pages in my journal.  It makes me think that I should do more of them!

This "believe" is the very first cut I made with my ScanNCut DX.  I was skeptical that the AutoBlade was going to work and then blown away when it did!  

I love this large doodle.  My white pen of choice is the poster paint Sharpie, which they no longer make. So, I've been using Sakura's gelly roll and it does a great job. But, it's not permanent.  So you can wash it away with the swipe of a wet paintbrush.

This page is a collection of gelli prints with some hand cutting on the right side.

You can see where the paint peeled away when the journal was closed. C'est la vie.  I probably closed the journal before it was 100% dry.

I realize that hand cutting isn't for everyone, but I really enjoy it and find it meditative.  If you want the how-to, you can watch this video I made about the process:

And here is the other side of that cut page:

I love everything about this cut page -- the pattern, the black, the colored pages behind it.  Love!

You can see that this page is a bit shorter than the others around it. I printed the face directly into my art journal using a gelatin plate.  Then I trimmed the white parts of the page off (it had borders because my gelatin plate was smaller than the original page).

The text in the face is from a stencil and the little dashes are from an Art Foamie.

Hope you enjoyed this peek into my art journal! Thanks for stopping by!

Grafix Food Safe Craft Plastic **Giveaway**

The lovely ladies at Grafix (an awesome woman-run company that makes every kind of plastic you could want) sent me some of their brand new food safe craft plastic to play with.  Watch the video to see what I made:

Here's the run-down on what to expect from this new product:

• Grafix NEW Food Safe Craft Plastic is available in two thicknesses .005 and .0075. Sheet packs of 4 and 25 in sizes of 12×12”, 12×24”, 18×24”, and 24×36”.
• This film cuts cleanly for die-cuts, to be used as a stencil for sugar craft and coffee drinks.
• This archival film can be turned in to a box to display a sweet treat or used as a wrap for cakes, mousse and/or pastries.
• An ideal FDA approved film that is both heat and tear resistant for confectionary work.
• Even use as a transfer sheet for chocolate cut-outs or embossing.
• A flexible, easy to clean and reusable film.
• For more information visit https://www.grafixarts.com/products/craft-plastic-film/

And here are the cookies:

Now, here's the best part.  Grafix is giving one lucky winner TWO 25 sheet packs of 12x12" food safe craft plastic -- one in .005 and the other .0075.  One pack for the winner and one to share with a friend! (Contest open to US residents ONLY.)

If you'd like to win, leave a comment on this post sharing what you would make with Grafix's food safe craft plastic!  Leave your comment by midnight (EST) on August 3, 2019.  (I am also running a giveaway on my instagram and facebook pages, so two more chances to win if you join in over there!)

Thanks for stopping by!

ScanNCut Technique Tutorials

Are you wondering how to use the 12x24 Cutting Mat with the ScanNCut DX?  Watch this video to learn how easy it is to switch back and forth between 12x12 and 12x24:

Wondering what you can make with the 12x24 mat?  How about these giant marquee letters I made using my 12x24 mat!?

Pretty cool, right?

I get asked all the time about curving text.  In 2016, I shared a video showing how you could do it, letter-by-letter.  I've come up with another method -- this time using a word processing program! 

It's a quick and easy technique that takes advantage of the scanner in the ScanNCut.  Watch the video for the how-to:

The scanner in the ScanNCut truly allows you to let your creativity soar!

Finally, I wanted to share how easy it is to take digital brush script and turn it into a cut file.

I take my tablet with me every time I travel. It's like having an entire art studio in my laptop bag!  I love it!  It's wonderful to be able to translate those digital drawings and doodles into beautiful custom cut files using CanvasWorkspace Online as a bridge!

I hope you will give these techniques a try!

Thanks for stopping by!

---

P.S. I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut.  It is a machine that I love and use.  All projects and opinions are my own.

Product Registration: https://www.brother-usa.com/registermybrother/
Brother Customer Support: https://www.brother-usa.com/support/

Quilting on a Serger?!

You guys, I found this video a few days ago and I am *obsessed* with it!

A quilt you can make in one-hour?! I don't like her particular fabric choices, but I loooooove the concept.

Now, it looks super easy in the video, but is it?  The answer is: yes!  How do I know?  Well, knowing that I was going to be demo-ing a serger on HSN yesterday, I asked the good folks at Brother if it would be okay for us to do a demo that incorporated this idea.  They said, yes, and so I did!

We picked out some cute fabrics and made this teeny tiny version on air (and without an iron).

If you want, you can see a video of me making the quilt on air -- just start the video around the 6 minute mark:

I'm super excited to take this idea home and try it on my own serger.  I think some smaller pieces might mean a quilt that takes a few hours to finish, instead of just one hour. But, I think it will be fun to experiment and see what I can come up with!

Let me know if you have any "quilting with a serger" tips!  I'd love to know!