Laura Rumble - Crafter

Another post I found hiding in my drafts folder...  I'm ashamed to say this was written in January 2016 but I didn't hit the publish button! I was asked by the wonderful Jessica Brogan , leader of the Card Deck Swap , to put together a tutorial for the ATC's I sent in a previous swap.  Here is what I put together... To make these shaker ATC’s you will need some sort of background, a transparent material and some small ‘shaky’ pieces.    I have used a watercolour background cut down to ATC size, and a playing card.   You could use patterned paper, mixed media artwork, magazine pages, book pages, fabric... the list is endless.     I’ve used netting/tulle, vellum and a glassine bag for the shaker fronts.   You could also try scrapbook page protectors, thick plastic packaging and acetate.    I’ve used sequins, beads and punched shapes as my shaky bits – anything small and relatively thin will work... try buttons, woo...

Sequin confetti, of course!  Hi, I'm here today with a bunch of ATC's.  I am taking part in a swap you see... 52 cards themed 'Love, Kindness and Hope' and in return, I get 52 cards from all over the world made by different artists. I start with a master board - a big piece of watercolour paper that will eventually be cut down to size.  I made three sheets with different colours using mainly Shimmerz sprays in different finishes.  I added some stencilling with Dazzlerz paste for some texture. Next, I moved on to the fun bit - filling up 52 little glassine bags with sequin confetti.  I won't list all of the sequin mixes I used as there are far too many!  You can find them all here ! I printed out the phrase "throw kindness around like confetti" and trimmed them down to small slips of paper.  I have all my elements ready now so I set up my sewing machine.  I picked a background, a glassine bag of confetti and a sentiment sl...

Hello!  I'm here today to share some recent ATC’s… They are part of a deck of cards for Jessica Brogan's swap .  ATC’s – or artists trading cards – are usually small pieces of art (64mm x 89mm) swapped between artists.  Rather than working on a small scale to begin with I work on a larger sheet to make my mixed media backgrounds.  For me this is just playing with watercolours or Shimmerz, acrylics, modelling pastes etc until something starts to form.  Then when I get an idea, I follow it! This batch of cards use quite a few SpiegelMom Scraps products.  In the background I have used some Shimmerz colourings and dazzlerz .  My feature embellishment on some of the cards are the gorgeous Birds of a Feather Felties is Aqua/Blues and Green/Rust.  And of course I cannot make anything without using sequins – I’ve used some from green machine and some from lucky charm . Thanks so much for stopping by today!

On my desk today... A tripod and light, a deck of mixed media cards with a nature and found poetry theme, my beloved colour swatch moleskine.  I have swatched out all my colours in all mediums - best thing ever! You can find details of the deck swap here if you are interested - 10 places left... Thanks for stopping by, see you at your desk! Linking at WOYWW

I've been working on a couple of swaps recently.  I'll tell you about Jessica Brogan 's Card Deck Swap first, as there is still time for you to sign up and join in!  You can find the details here but my summary is; You alter a deck of playing cards.  You put some inspiring words on each card.  You post them to USA.  Shuffling happens.  You get sent a 52 different cards made by different people from all over the world. Here are a few of mine.  I went with the sequin/shaker trend. As you can see most of mine are slightly different but in the past I have made 52 of the same design. I have parcelled mine deck up ready to be posted and at the end of October my swaps should arrive with me... not sure I can wait that long!!  You have until the end of September to join in and post your cards off - will you join me? Thanks for stopping by!

I think I've mentioned a few times that I have been working on a deck of cards.  Well, they are now finished and have hopefully been safely delivered to America. You can see I have made batches of backgrounds.  If you stick a group of cards to a 12x12 sheet of paper you can paint 12-15 cards as one. This time I tried a grungy look by scraping some of paint off and revealing the cards. You can find out about the swap at jessicaleighbrogan.com/cardswap/ or join the facebook group - you are probably too late for this swap but join us for the next one?  :) Another goal from this swap was to use more of my handwriting and rely less on printed text. I'm really pleased with the two pastel cards at the bottom of this last photo.  I used my handwriting book - The Scrapbookers Handwriting Workshop by Crystal Jeffrey Rieger - and really enjoyed it.  The concentration it takes to write properly instead of my usual scrawl is immense and really knacke...

First up is my desk ... Hmm.  Perhaps the less said the better!  I really should have a sort out but I fancy desking instead! Next I want to share my card deck swaps (deskers don't have to stay for this bit but I reckon you'd enjoy joining in with us, which is why I'm including it in this post) You can read about the swap here on Jessica's blog and sign up here .  Basically, we take a deck of cards, add paint and/or paper, then add a positive sentiment to each card.  Post them to Jessica who shuffles them and sends back 52 different cards from different artists (yes, you are an artist!) from all over the world. These few are ones I have picked out to display first.  I'll swap them round after a few weeks.  Do you like my domino pegs?  :) Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you'll at least consider joining us for the card swap - it's like a super sized ATC swap, and all WOYWW er's know they are fun! See you at your desk x

My desk this week looks like this... A reel of my ribbon , a pile of triangles... There is evidence someone has been playing with my dymo... ...and I might know their name! And a bucket of half made mixed media cards with positive messages for a deck swap... Actually, I'll give you all the address to check out the swap as some of the WOYWWers may like to join us...  carddeckswap.com Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you at your desk :)

I've been trying some Found Poetry.  Explained as simply as possible - random words cut from any printed source put together in a different order. I thought this would be really hard and something that I wouldn't enjoy at all... However, it is amazingly freeing, amusing and just so much fun! I'm doing it for a swap... details here .  It is the brainchild of the rather wonderful Jessica Brogan , and in return for your 12 cards, you will receive 12 cards from all over the world in many different styles and designs and colours and some new friends.  Join us, won't you?

I am very fortunate to have found the wonderful Jessica Brogan's card deck swap.  I joined in the latest mini swap with the theme of 'Permission to...'  You can read all about it here . Altering the cards was the easy part for me.  So easy that I got carried away in the creating and forgot to take any photos.  There was paint and there was washi and there was fun :) Then came the journalling and I was struggling (yeah, I know, no surprise there!)  I wanted my 'permissions' to be meaningful to me and not just empty words, and it took a lot of thinking.  Of course here I had lots of time to spare and part way through took a photo... I seem to have deleted my photos of the finished cards... either that or I have "put them somewhere safe"!  Boo!  However they have been sent off to USA, shuffled and sent off around the world.  I can share with you the cards that I received in return... An eclectic mix from all over the world....

Today is all about one Lady... Lovely Mandy has stepped down from CR duties for health reasons.  We all miss her and Maja came up with the idea that we would all make Mandy something and send them to her, to arrive at the same time, and hopefully bring some smiles. I decided on some altered playing cards.  I glued them to a sheet of card, gessoed and stenciled some pearl meduim over them... I had intentions of doing step by step photos but I got consumed in art and forgot!  In between photos I added rubber stamping, ink, paint and sprays.  Here they are drying about half way through the process. I then searched for inspirational quotes and words - nothing heavy (hopefully!) but things that we need to hear about being kind to ourselves - and printed them out.  I added some white seam binding and coloured lace for some texture.  A bit of doodling with a black pen and I was done.  Here are a few with a close up...

We've been having browsing problems with our internet, it's hugely frustrating.  I have a backlog of posts!  I didn't get to join in with Friday Smiles last week as the internet would not bring up any BlogSpot pages.  So here is last weeks Friday Smiles ... Little pink and purple smiles from the garden in a cute little jug displayed on the shelf with my deck swap cards.  If you've not joined in before ahve a go this week, if nothing else you'll get to see Annie's munchkins' 'selfie'   :D

I've finished off and packaged up my altered deck of cards for Jessica's swap.  (The general info is; you alter a deck of playing cards, put an inspirational quote on each card, send them to Jessica, Jessica sorts through them all and sends you 52 different cards from all of the decks - that's one unique piece of art with an inspiring quote for each week of the year!) Playing cards and ATC's are the same size so essentially it is a massive ATC swap. I photographed them and packaged them up without looking at the photos I had taken.  They aren't the best photos I've taken but hopefully you will get the gist... Here is what I created: This is one of my favourites in terms of the background and embellishment with sequins. Some quotes were used multiple times but the cards all ended up individual Another one I like a lot.  The purple splodges (that is a technical art term) were taking ages to dry so I wiped them off and loved the...