Guest Artist: Kathy Greene, Angel Kat Creations

Lavender Gold by Kathy Greene, Angel Kat Creations

Yipee! My first ATC arrived in the mail last week, much earlier than I expected! This one is “LavenderGold” by artist Kathy Greene of Angel Kat Creations. Kathy is currently a stay at home mom with five kids and three grandkids, and lives with husband Steve in Pendleton, SC, USA. Kathy enjoys paper crafts, crochet, knitting, cross stitch, plastic canvas, and needlepoint, to name a few.

Now this ATC is so pretty — it reminds me of a fresh, dew-filled Easter morning when everything’s in bloom. I just love the colors! Too bad I couldn’t capture the gold butterflies very well in the photo. I’ll have to work on that.

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy this ATC, even if it’s just the picture. I’m lucky because I got the real thing! Thanks again, Kathy!

Tags: Art Cards, Artist Trading Cards, Artists, ATCs, Crafts, Paper Crafts

Ink-Painted Cat Tags

Cat Tags

Remember the free online course I enrolled in? One of my assignments was to make an ink-painted flower. It’s basically using the ink from your stamp pad to paint paper. The assignment called for painting a flower cut from a page of text, but also encouraged the use of other shapes. I decided to make a set of tags featuring cats, a text background and ink painting.

Here are the general steps on how to make the cat tags:

• Cut out a tag shape from card stock. An old business card with two corners cut off works nicely too.
• Cover the tag with printed paper (use a page from a book, magazine, or old office correspondence), and trim any excess paper.
• Color the paper with your choice of medium. I used stamp pad ink, but you can get great results too with a watercolor wash, watercolor pencils, or even tea or fruit juice — as long as the text shows through the color. Let the paper dry thoroughly.
• Now the fun part: Add any additional backgrounds such as a strip of decorative paper, a piece of decorative tape, or a cutout paper flower.
• Glue the cat pictures in place.
• Next, use a felt marker to write your sentiment on a piece of paper: Hello! Thanks! Relax! I used a computer printer to print the text on vellum for a soft, blurry effect. Cut out the text and stick it on the tag. Almost there.
• Punch a hole at the end of the tag, add a binder hole reinforcer, or a punched flower with a hole in the middle.
• Tie a piece of ribbon through the hole. Voila!

PS:  My cat Picart modeled for the Relax! tag.

Tags: Animals, Cats, Collage, Crafts, Inkjet Printer, Paper Crafts, Vellum

Celtic bookplate

Celtic bookplate, gouache and gel ink on parchment

Here’s a copy of the bookplate I actually use. The original was done in gouache and gel ink on parchment paper at a much larger size (slightly smaller than an A4 sheet), and was scanned for printing at a reduced size. The first batch was output with a color laser on plain copy paper; succeeding batches were done on a color inkjet on sticker paper.

Note that the zoomorph — the graphical letter E — isn’t an original design. I downloaded it ages ago from some site I no longer remember, but if you do recognize where it’s from, please drop me a line so I can credit the website. Thanks!

Tags: Bookplates, Celtic, Crafts, Gel Pens, Gouache

The Mandatory Welcome Message

Hi! Welcome to my own little corner of cyberspace. Here’s where I share my passion about crafts — mostly paper crafts such as parchment crafts, paper pricking, quilling, card making, scrapbooking and book arts, but also rubber stamping, cross stitching, artist trading cards (ATCs), mixed media arts, and a whole lot of craft experiments!

I hope to fill up this site soon with my latest “Evil Experiments” — I mean, my latest projects — as well some crafting tips, product updates, and book reviews, to name a few, so please drop by every now and then, and make yourself at home!

Tags: Crafts