Wow, the holiday season is in full swing and somehow I'm so far behind, I'm not sure I'll ever catch up. That's okay, though. There's another holiday season rolling around next year. Maybe I'll be ready for that one.

This is an ATC I did for an Art for the Creative Mind swap. The theme was "For whom the bell tolls" and my first instinct was to pull out my copper sheeting. I've had this stuff for a few years, but rarely have come up with a use for it. This made me happy.

This is on encaustic board because those wings are heavy. I did a direct to paper (or board in this case) technique with distress inks. Two colors of green, no clue which two. I painted glue over it, and because the distress inks are water soluble, they lifted, which was the whole point. I put tissue over the whole thing and scrunched it. When it dried, I did more inking over the ridges of the tissue, added some copper embossing powder and used my heat gun.

The copper was Big Shot embossed, then I used liver of sulfur to blacken it, swiping the black off the tops of the embossing. Glue it all together, punched out an image from Altered Pages, used copper embossing powder around the edges of it. That's it. Very easy. It was a good swap. I do have to say, I think it was a shame to cover up that background. It was really neat.

Doing a real quick post because someone on one of my groups asked about tinting an image and this is the best example I have of doing that. This is a black and white stamped image. I used a stippling brush and distress inks. I hit the brush to the ink pad, then stippled it on the image, different colors in different areas. The baby's dress is Old Paper. The faces were done in Tea Stain.

As you can see, this looks like an old photo with the barest hint of color.  It was stamped with black Stazon ink on white glossy paper.

I should have something new later today. I owe a blog post to Altered Pages.

One of my latest projects, altered mouse traps. Thanks to TG from Art for the Creative Mind, who comes up with all these interesting swaps.

Basically, I took two mouse traps, got rid of some of the hardware (the parts that you use to set the trap to kill mode) and painted them with Lumiere paint in a purple color - and those who know me will know why I don't list the actual name of the paint. Because I don't remember it.

After painting it, I just attached some really cool flower and bird's nests to the top, emu feathers to the bottom, and then on top of those I glued bird images from an Altered Pages collage sheet, and the words from a sticker collection (also available at Altered Pages).  Some pretty fibers at the top and voila! Altered mouse traps.

It's been awhile. I don't know why it takes me so long between blog posts. I've been creating like crazy, making all sorts of interesting things. Like this jar for a Kids at Play jar swap.

I took an old salsa jar, dropped some beads and sparkly things in the bottom, then poured pouring medium in and let it dry. Pouring medium is an acrylic medium that is used to make acrylic paints pourable, but it dries clear so it was the perfect solution for capturing these little items and locking them in place.

Then I glued two little girls (cut out from collage sheets from AlteredPages.com ) to stems I saved from silk flowers I'd used for something else. I did the same with some little plastic princess buttons I'd gotten. Stars, a gown, a crown, a clear slipper.  I used E6000 glue, which grabs fast and dries quick. When it was all dried, I used a drop of glue and anchored each of the stems inside an alphabet bead and then to the bottom of the jar.

I poured a little glue down the inside back of the jar and put more sparklies in the glue to dry. I used my Big Shot and a Nestability to cut out a cover for the top of the jar, embossed it, then added two word magnets that say "Once upon a time" and "In the castle". There is a little castle button in between. Here is the lid:

I had a lot of fun with this. I love jar fairies, and this was jar fairy with a twist. I really had no clue I was going to make such a frilly, princess themed jar until I found the words for the top of the jar. Then I knew exactly what I was going to do with it.

Today I'm making sand bowls, something I found on Pinterest. Definitely a learning process. Mod Podge and sand mixed into a cement paste and poured over the outside of an upside down bowl. I think I'm going to have to spackle more sand mix on them when they dry because the sand kept running and there are going to be holes. I'll post a picture when they dry to show you how they turned out. If they turn out.

The next week, I will be on a houseboat with five other amazing women, but after that, I promise to post more often. Every two months isn't often enough.

I have been busy lately. I finished a kit for Altered Pages. The Butterfly pins are something I threw together for Spring. I am so ready for the sun to shine here, and those little flowers brought a smile to my face. If you visit my blog and like to work with collage sheets, go visit Altered Pages. They have many collage sheets, but they have a lot of other stuff that you can use to make your own art. And I'm on the design team. *shameless self-promotion*

On to the ATCs I recently made.

These were done for an ATC swap, Words of Wisdom. They're titled Stop and Smell the Flowers. I used Twinkling H20s for the background of each, painting a purple, a blue, and a aquamarine on randomly then placing plastic wrap over it to dry. When I peeled the plastic wrap off, I stamped some flourishes in purple and tel. The paper flowers were something I made from book pages. Very simple. I had a tutorial, but I'm not sure of the link. If someone sees this and knows the link, please share in the comments. It was very easy to make them. The other one, I stamped with Memento ink then used Twinkling H20s to color them in.

Add a little bling and you've got two very serene ATCs that really are a great reminder that we all need to stop and smell the flowers.