Technique Junkie August Treasure Hunt!

Welcome to my blog! How fantastic was Lisa's card?! She is such a talented artist - I am a huge fan of her work.

I know you've been treated to some awesome artwork so far. If you have landed here without starting at the Technique Junkie Newsletter blog, please make sure you begin your journey there. As you visit each of the TJ Design Team member's blogs, you will be collecting letters. When you've gathered all of your letters, you'll leave a comment on Pat Huntoon's blog. What are you playing for? The prize will be a TREASURE CHEST of goodies that will include the new cd, a couple of stamp sets and a package of shimmers! You have until 9:00 am on Friday, September 4 to enter the contest.

For this month's treasure hunt we are all featuring Bonus Techniques from the upcoming Technique Junkie Newsletter CD7. My card features the Bomber Jacket technique. In my opinion, this technique alone is worth the cost of the cd! It is just too cool for words.

I paired it with some wonderful papers from one of the Technique Junkies sponsors, Paper Temptress. I used one of their red card stock papers to layer my background to. For the main image, I used this wonderful stamp from the new Artistic Outpost Generation Redux stamp collection. It was stamped once on red card stock and then on manila. The pieces were fitted together for a nice two-toned look. Next, I took a piece of vellum from Paper Temptress and layered it with a German text piece to make a subdued background for the central image. If you've never been to Paper Temptress, make sure you take some time and visit. I guarantee you will not leave empty handed!

I hope you've enjoyed this stop on your journey. Your letter is:

Your next stop is Manna's blog, where she is displaying another one of her magnificent creations. Thanks so much for coming by and good luck!

Theme Thursday - Orange

I wasn't planning on making anything for this week's Theme Thursday challenge, but I had cleaned up a little bit in my studio and thought I deserved a little art time! I started making a tag using the wrinkle free distress technique. Then, I was looking through my scrap tin and came across a background I'd made a few months ago using a technique called Pigment Scrunch from the Feb/March issue of the Technique Junkie newsletter. Ooooh, it was so cool I abandoned my tag and decided to work with the piece I'd found.

It had a grungy look to begin with, so I did some spray painting using a stencil and a piece of Grungeboard waste. All stamps are from I Brake for Stamps.

Doesn't it look kind of like that Basic Grey paper from a few years ago?

Theme Thursday - Purple!

I didn't get a chance to make something for yesterday's Theme Thursday, but the Purple theme has been knocking around inside my head for the past day.

Some of my friends are going to get together tomorrow and play around with fusing tissue paper to felt. When I started making a sample to show them, I thought purple would be a perfect color to start with.

I first saw this technique in the Spring 2005 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. If you haven't tried this before - I highly recommend it! After I fused the tissue to the felt using fusible webbing, I painted and stamped it. The little girl image is from the new Oxford Impressions Wonderland stamp collection.

I may embellish this further - today I just wanted to get a sample done so everyone could see what we were going to be doing. I was pretty proud I managed to machine-stitch around that clock gear! ;-)

Tag Tuesday - Summer Flowers

This is a bit of an experiment that didn't turn out like I wanted it to. The theme for Tag Tuesday is Summer Flowers. This morning, Michelle Zindorf posted a tutorial where she used Prismacolors on black card stock. It is so stunning - I wanted to try it! No fancy colored pencils tho....I've never been big on coloring. I had a couple lying around (probably cast offs from my kid's old school supplies). I gave it my best shot, but it is absolutely nothing like hers! Guess I need some more practice......and maybe better pencils?

I added some homemade shimmer spray and thought it kinda came out looking like she was in a garden at nighttime. Use your imagination! ;-)

My flower stamp is from Starving Artistamps and the girl is from ARTchix (no longer available).

I Love Estate Sales!

I have been having a tough time the past couple of weeks. Dogs attacked and killed 10 of my chickens and three of my turkeys (horrible experience), my dad was in the hospital (he's home now, yay!). Just not a very good time lately. I needed something to make me happy! When I saw a friend of mine post something on Facebook about getting clock parts at an estate sale, I was like, d'oh! I totally forgotten there was an amazing sale this weekend.

My sweet husband volunteered to go with me to this sale which was about 30 minutes away, in Memphis. I wasn't really in the mood, but knew it was one of those chance of a lifetime kind of things......

I got a HUGE bin of clock gears. I also got a fantastic clock case - so many things could be done with this! My well-trained man found the box of bezels. There are tons! I can't tell you how hard I've looked for these on eBay, etc. Again, imagine all the altered things that could be done with them! Um....ignore that mess in the background.

Hitting the jackpot like this was just what I needed after all that stress. It was a great reminder that you can find joy in the smallest things....like a beautiful Sunday digging around in dirty boxes looking for treasure with the man you love. Best day of my life*!

*I am one of those people who has lots of 'Best day of my life' days. It doesn't take much to amuse me. :-)