Another Canvas

I did my first canvas class today and I think it went well. I like to encourage individual creativity with projects as much as I can. Everyone in the class did something different, it was great! In hind site I wish I had taken photos of everyone's artwork so I could display them here for you to see. They all turned out so beautifully even though the embossing powder seemed to be a bit finnicky and unreliable.



My canvas here is done with an acrylic painted background in the black and dark chocolate colours. We used a Heidi Swapp mask which I purchased through Lisa's Scrap Shack with very reasonable shipping expenses. We used Versamark over the mask, removed the mask, then applied clear thick embossing powder and melted it with a heat tool. The photo is of my sister-in-law and family which I mounted on the black and old olive paper. I used a small piece of patterned paper to make the little photo corner and used wide old olive grosgrain ribbon along with the wide chocolate satin ribbon and 1/4" black grosgrain ribbon as accents.


I like how it turned out, but I'm looking forward to playing around with different ways of decorating the canvas in the future. I've seen some very beautiful pieces out there and have a few ideas up my sleave, too.


If any of you have done canvas scrapping projects, I'd love to see what you've done and have you share any tips you may have. Feel free to leave a comment and a link to your photo if you have one!

COLOR INSPIRED

Color inspiration: from a Beth Moore video series on Daniel. Some of these colors are part of her set. You can find all sorts of color combination ideas everywhere you look!

Techniques: faux stitching using a paper piercer and white gel pen; faux silk by stamp on tissue paper first, then crumple tissue paper up, flatten it out and glue it to a piece of cardstock.

Stamps used: unfortunately, this set is retired. It's called "All I Have Seen". I used it for my last time on this card and gave the card and the set to a friend for her birthday. Happy Birthday, Gwen!

Supplies: textured Wild Wasabi cardstock, Pumkin Pie, Summer Sun, and Very Vanilla cardstock. 15/16th inch satin chocolate ribbon, sponge with Pumkin Pie ink and Wild Wasabi ink for the paper edges. SU white gel pen, paper piercer, mat pack, snail adhesive, stampin' dimensionals, crystal brad (crystal removed from its setting), aged copper hodgepodge buckle. Image is stamped with Certainly Celery and Wild Wasabi ink using the "rock and roll" technique.




I love how this card turned out. Thanks for looking.

Happy 21st!

My friend, Seana, turned 21 on January 1st. This is the card that I made for her. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SEANA!!

I saw a card with these colors together and really liked it (not really surprised that it includes old olive...hehe). The colors include: Rose Red, Taken with Teal, Old Olive and textured Basic Black paper with Pumkin Pie grosgrain ribbon. I didn't have any large number stamps or anything precut (chipboard would have been nice), so I traced numbers from a stamp set in the SU catalogue ("Big Deal Numbers" set) and carefully cut them out of textured basic black card stock. The Old Olive printed paper is from the retired Linen Prints from the last SU catalogue (sorry, not available to purchase anymore). I made the matching envelope out of the same double sided patterned paper with my 5-in-1 Envelope Template. I used my double rectangular hole punch for the holes in which I wove (is that a real word?) the ribbon through. The "Happy Birthday" is from the "It's Your Birthday" stamp set. The "st" is from the "Short Order Numbers" set. The numbers are raised from the page with stampin' dimensionals.

Photo on Canvas

I still don't have any new projects to put up for you, but I thought I could show you a project that I will be doing in an upcoming class.

This is an 8x10 canvas that I finished in a class at a scrapbook store in Abbotsford with my friend Melanie. It was fun to do and I really liked the result. The background is painted with acrylic paints. The word "cherish" is done in painted chipboard letters. A stencil was used to help make the reversed image that we embossed with a clear, thick, embossing powder. If you look a little closer, you'll see that a bit of paint was also used on the edges of the photo.


The canvas project for my class will look quite different from this one, but I will be using some of the techniques (embossing, matting the photo, acrylic paint for the background). Once I come up with a finished product to show you, I'll definitely put it up on my blog.

By the way, those are my kids in the photo. The picture was taken in the fall of 2006 by a wonderful friend (Thank you again, Lindsay). Isaac will be 4 in March and Serena will be 2 in February.

I have a little tip for you that I learned after doing this canvas project. Many of us often print our photos ourselves with our home printers and photo paper. One thing I have discovered is that if any moisture gets on your picture, the colour on the photo will run/smudge, so you have to put your photo in a frame or a page protected scrapbook. I wanted to protect future projects like this from any moisture, so...I tried clear embossing the entire photo surface - it worked! And it added a cool look to the photo without compromising the colours and clarity of the image. You just need to be careful not to overheat the photo paper as it will melt. Of course, you still will want to protect projects like this from moisture (don't display it in the bathroom) as well as direct sunlight as it might cause fading.

Lower Prices for 2008

Many of you are already aware of this, but in case you haven't heard the good news...

Stampin' Up! has reduced the new 2008 catalogue prices by 7%!! They are trying to reflect the increased value of the Canadian dollar. Unfortuneately, due to the higher cost to them for doing business in Canada, they are still not able to match the US prices. They have also reduced the first level hostess amount to $200 from $225, so you can earn hostess sets and free product a little bit easier! I expect a few more adjustments to be made with the next catalogue in the way of the hostess levels.

Also, I only just noticed that the new catalogue has brought back the 12x12 individual colour packs of paper! Select colours were removed from the last catalogue and made for some unhappy customers, so they were able to fix their mistake. I'm pretty happy with that as I do use a lot of the same colour of paper for workshop and class projects.

Sorry that I haven't put up any projects lately. I will soon, I promise.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!