Oh, Goodies!

Some of my friends on Facebook might have read that I did a bit of a lightning visit to some of my favorite stores last Saturday. I was on the east side of the valley Saturday morning but I was taking a class on the west side in the afternoon. If I timed everything just right, I figured I could make all my stops.First stop Mystic Paper in Downtown Mesa. I'd received a call that the Tim Holtz Tissue tapes I'd ordered way back in February had arrived. Then Jennifer, the owner, posted these Pink Paisley brand tapes on the store blog. Tape! Tape! I couldn't wait!Here are the Tim Holtz tissue tapes. They come in packs of two, four different themes which I hope you can see on the packaging, "Marketplace," "Traveler, "Nostalgia," and "Symphony."

Speaking of packaging, I was happy to see that the recycling symbol was on the plastic as I took it off to photograph the tapes. I rarely find it as I remove it from mixed media/scrapbook supplies which create a lot of waste. On the other hand, the big pieces of plastic from these, didn't have the symbol, hmmm...Next stop: Frenzy Stamper in Downtown Scottsdale. Ms. Debbie blogged that the new Tim Holtz tapes and embossing folders had arrived. Although school is out and I have more time to stop by the store, I knew some of the designs would be sold out. I was right, but no worries, she'll re-order more.Again, these came in two-packs and pictured are the paper backing from the packaging. The embossing folders themselves didn't photograph well. There are eight sets, one was similar to some I already owned by another company so I passed.I wasn't looking for paper but Ms. Debbie showed me 3 new paper packs with rich, gorgeous colors. I'm not into the tea stained/sepia vintage look which the other two paper packs were rich with. Although he had a series of green papers in one of them that I still have in my head... As a pack, the baby pink/blue combo makes me a little nuts but on their own, these papers are beautiful. My photo doesn't come close to giving these papers justice.

With embossing folders and papers in hand, plus an m&m's or two under my belt, I was on my way to Creative Quest in old downtown Glendale for a Dina Wakley's "Graffiti of My life" workshop. They also had their shipment of Tim Holtz goodies and I was able to find the one set of his embossing folders that Frenzy was out of. Good timing.

It was a great workshop. Worked on some of the pages yesterday while at school and had the space to spread out. I'm taking another class with Dina this Friday night. It feels great to be creating again. Well, maybe I need to correct that. It feels great to be working with mixed media again. The gardening and clay work had taken over for awhile...
Marissa

Halloween Art

It's been 2 weeks since we gathered together to swap pages for the Halloween Swap. I didn't want to share my pages until I was able to put one of two books together and mail it off to my sister who had no idea she was going to get one of these for her birthday. Although I haven't heard from her yet, I'm sure the box has made it since being mailed last Tuesday.

Pictured above are the 33 or so pages of my "Dulce Recuerdo," (Sweet Memory), page.
This page was inspired by the sugar skulls that are exchanged during "Dia de los Muertos," (Day of the Dead), rituals at this time of year. I saw an image online of transparent skull shapes layered over one another and I wanted to do something similar.

The brightly colored skulls are die cut tissue paper. I didn't know I could cut tissue paper on a die cut machine but I hadn't heard you couldn't so I gave it a try and it worked. Good thing too because there's no way I would have cut all those skulls! The tissue skulls were layered onto tag board using PVA. Bleeding wasn't much of an issue.

I found a sugar skull image online to use as a starting point for my design. I traced the shape onto heavy vellum that'd I'd painted with a wash of pearlescent white. I'd been tempted to glue sugar or salt shaped skulls but was concerned about bugs. After all the work with the tissue skulls, I didn't want to cover them completely and the vellum was exactly where I remembered putting it. Yea! No major excavation was required in the studio.

The vellum skull was machine sewn onto the background. Each skull was individually decorated with Sharpie Paint markers. No two images were alike!
In order to make two books I made two pages for the swap. I was stumped for what to do for page two until I came across this sweet kitty. I am so a dog person but this cat was "the ONe" once I saw it.

The background is glued layers of black and white pages cut from old art magazines. A wash of blue/black acrylics were painted over the surface. The full moon is the same layers of magazine with an acrylic, white pearlescent wash and glued white mesh. It's sewn onto the background. Kitty is a cut b/w copy and the hat was cut from a discarded page from a book. Portfolios and markers were used on the hat. The title was colored with Portfolios and stapled in place.
33 pages made for some bulk everyone had different approaches for putting their book together. I used large binder rings, which usually drive me crazy because the books sag but I bought acrylic pages which would keep the book upright.

I stamped images from the new Tim Holtz unmounted Halloween stamps set on the acrylic pages.
The Vampire teeth card holder was bought at Pottery Barn. They were so hilarious, I had to buy them.
I sanded and then painted the binder rings with alcohol inks. Layers of ribbon were knotted onto the rings and then I added a little message to my sister using word and letter beads on colored safety pins.

The book is an absolute treasure! It's super tough to select a favorite page-there were soooooo many good ones. I'll share some of them this week as we count down to Halloween.