ATC Book

I LOVE Pinterest. The amount of inspiration I got from pins is mindbogglingly amazing! All the things that can be done, from upcycling wooden pallets for furniture to marbeling ribbon and canvases, to name only a few, I have done the marbeling, and my sofa is made from timber pallets and an old matress (which is brilliant when you have 4 young children that drag food and drink all over the place), with sheets that can be changed and washed in a jiffy!

I also have gotten a lot of ideas for ATC making. One of which was for an ATC book. The original Pinterest pin was about APCs (altered playing cards) and it was not a tutorial, just showing the finished accordion style folded booklet. But it really really got me thinking. 

I am doing a monthly ATC trade over on Atcsforall.com. The original trade agreement was for 2:2 cards, with the design being up to whatever the artist feels like. It has however evolved into something much more from here, I sent her a few 9 card polyptychs (?) since then, she got me hooked on rolos and made me an awesome canvas, too. We just try our best to make this trade something special. 

So for our November trade I decided to make my partner an ATC booklet. I used my trusted inktense pencils for the background, but also my new Promarkers and Sharpies for colour pop. I had no pretty jump rings at my disposal so I had to make my own from sturdy wire, but I think it worked out fine. On the back of the cards I wrote her a letter, but I am not going to show that here...

Rolos again

I was trading some Rolos over on atcsforall.com, and instead of my usual inktense pencils I used lots and lots of markers. Using the markersalso seems to change my normal drawing style, maybe because I draw with the marker first and then do the outlines. With my inktense pencils it is the other way around.

The next one shows how a zia (zentangle inspired art) Rolo can already look fab (in my opinion) with only 3 different tangles used. Since I started using the markers and since I did inktober I also seem to prefer having only 2 to 3 tangles in a piece. This prevents overcrowding and allows each tangle to be shown off more effectively.

Little recycle project

I was browsing You Tube the other day and I found this amazing video of a lady recycling Tetra Pak milk cartons into an organiser with drawers! Here is the link, I hope it works 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O0ohBz6RbRY

I waited a few days to let the idea settle and then I could resist no longer... and I also had a small stash of Tetra Paks built up. My milk cartons are more square than the ones she uses in the video but I used them anyway, and I did not have the really thick cardboard she uses to make her drawers, I made mine with more milk cartons.

I am not sure if I will make more of them, if I do I will actually go into the shed and look for my hot glue gun, the pva I used took ages to dry on the cartons and nothing sticks well to the coated inside (I guess that is why they coat it, doh...). 

Anyway, enough talk, now is the time for some pics, I also took a picture of the back, as proof I really used the Tetra Paks.

Green man overload

I noticed today I had not posted anything in a few days and so I decided it was about time for me to share a bit more art with you.

I am currently taking part in a Green man swap, and for those of you that are not familiar with the green man: it's a man's face with loads of green foliage around it and sprouting from his nostrils and mouth. 

I signed up for the swap even though I can not draw faces at all. I wanted to push my limits a bit, and also I knew I could hide parts I could not get right behind some big leaves. In my mind they all were supposed to look different from each other and I even got brave enough in the process to show off some mouths...

Some marbelling

The other day one of my kids asked me if I could do some art with him. I had started planning out a little something I wanted to do with them and so we took the opportunity and got out our old and manky looking set of Dominoes and some nail polish.

I had saves some small plastic containers and we filled them with water. Now you can put drops of polish onto the water and they will spread out. Just keep dropping the polish into the centre so you get some rings. Next you take some toothpicks and drag the ring edges into one another to create the marbeled effect. Last you dip the object to be marbeled into the spot you like best (slowly and carefully) and take off any nailpolish that is still on the surface with a Q-Tip, that saves on clean up time. And thats it already, as easy as pie. 

Watch out, though, the varnish dries quickly as soon as it hits the water and you might carefully have to remove the outer rings of "skin" so you can do the marbeling with the toothpick.

DO IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA!!!

Here are the results we got :

My oldest sons Dominoes, he did most of it all by himself! (I am so proud!)

Next up are my second sons Dominoes, he is a bit younger and asked me to give him a bit of a hand. (I am so proud of him, too!)

And mine, I only got to do mine after the boys had gone to bed...

Now I just have to find something I could do with them. Maybe I will make a little Dominoe book...

Rolos

The last few days were madly busy for me and my family. Last week the boys were off school for mid term break and so this week we had to get back to business as usual. Unfortunately the mid term break had the side effect that now my twins won't sleep during the day anymore, resulting in cranky twins and an exhausted mom in the evening. 

But I am still stealing my daily art time. I will not be able to show all my creations just yet, as some are for birthday babes over on atcsforall.com, and some are for personal trades were my partners have not yet received my cards. 

But what I can show you are some of my new index cards for my (very small) rolo collection. I had been asking around, how other people organise their rolos, and some have no order and just twist their circular Rolodex holder every now and then. While another person sorts them by artist and has artist specific indexcards for her trading partners. That is a fantastic idea I think and so I started making some index cards. 

Also I started getting cosy with my permanent markers I purchased a while ago to paint some canvas shoes. This has opened up some interesting design possibilities for me and also forces me to use a different style than with my comfy Inktense pencils. But see for yourself. 

Rolodex holder

I have now posted a lot of Rolodex cards over the last month, and I am a little embarassed to admit that I used to store them all together in a Yogi Tea Classic cardbord box for teabags. All of my Rolos, the knes for my Tangle index and the cards send to me by other artists. The box smells nice thiugh, like cinnamon. But it was time for something new and I waited until I could not stop myself any longer. I went into a shoe store and asked them for a tiny empty shoe box, the kind they sell babies first shoes in. I took it home and started to think about how to build the rails for the Rolos, I wanted them to fit not too snug so I could still flip them easily enough. What I ended up using were 2 pairs of glued together swizzle sticks (I love that word) and some folded card, like so...

Yes, I also went ahead and made my own index cards from coloured card.

And because the box itself did look a bit boring I decided to move out of my comfort zone and use some papers and ribbon I had in my stash and fancy it up a bit with a huge bow...

and back...

Don't ask what the paper collection is, I bought it at a reduced price and it has lots of decoupage pages. I have never done decoupage but since this is a Valentines day set I might use them for Valentines day...

As you can see all my index cards fit in nicely, but something was still missing (see that ugly white box at the lower bottom?). I started asking myself how on earth would I ever really be able to decide on which patterns to use in my tangles? With the sheer amount I tend to play it safe and do some very nice ones over and over and over again. So I decided to make myself a random tangle pattern generator...

And fit it into that ugly free space at the bottom of the box...

That is the main part of the Rolodex card holder done, but what to do with the lid? A few month back I had altered a little book for an awesome girl in Texas (you know who you are ;) ) and I had practised on an old pocket diary. Now I had the problem that the old obsolete diary had become too interesting to just chuck it out and now finally its day had come. I mounted it onto the top of my shoe box lid, stuck some more fancy paper and ribbon around it, and even fixated the pages with part of the roll that held the ribbon. Now I can display new cards on the top and rotate them around on a regular basis.

I might work in a few more embellishments around the edge of the altered diary, but I still have not found the right object to put there. Maybe if I find a nice twig in the garden......