Showing posts with label deepocean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deepocean. Show all posts

Friday, November 23, 2012

Bookmarks L: Retro Blooms

Fifty bookmarks, that's what the "L" in the title means. Well, a few more, because some are pairs or triples. That's a lot of bookmarks. It's still way fewer bookmarks than I've got books, though.

There's nothing particularly 50-ish about this bookmark, except perhaps the colors. I don't really have a good grasp on popular color combos from sixty years ago, but certainly the turquoise seems about right...

But that wasn't the inspiration for this bookmark. It was very simple: I had some new paper. I had a highly unseasonal stamp set. And after some mix-and-matching of the papers to get two that worked together, I had this bookmark. I like how the froggie is slotted on top of the sign -- it seems much more dynamic than simply putting the two pieces of paper next to each other.

I suppose it's somewhere around late spring in the Southern Hemisphere right now, so hey! It's not unseasonal for everyone.

I'm entering this seasonal-depending-on-your-hemisphere bookmark into the following challenges:

Supplies: (the tape is some of Target's printed paper tape)

Monday, October 15, 2012

Bookmarks XL (40): Asteriskflakes

I was so frustrated trying to make that dang vintagey bookmark work that somewhere during the process I stopped and made this: a nice simple stamped and embossed happy winter snowflakey thing with my brand new set of TPC Studio "Winter Activities" stamps. It was inky and blue and demanded no lace whatsoever. It made me happy.

The set comes with plenty of little snowflakes. They aren't intricate -- they're your basic six-pointed asterisk shape -- but I appreciate the quantity. I smooshed them as randomly as I could onto an acrylic block and inked and stamped them as a whole several times over the bookmark, using the block at different angles and often stamping over the edge. I think I achieved a much more random-but-good-coverage look this way than if I had been stamping with just one snowflake over and over again.

Skis and snowflakes and a dotty shimmery border. There's even an asterisk on her hat! What more could you ask for? (Okay, you could ask for a non-smudged snowflake on the upper right, but as this was made to get away from a fussy project, I was not going to fuss about it.)

I'm entering this bookmark into the following challenges:

Supplies:

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Bookmarks XXXVIII: Join the Dance

Look, I know we've seen this fairy a lot lately. She showed up in a Saturday State of the Stash post, and then again on my worktable.

Well, now she gets a post (and a bookmark) of her very own.

Now, one of the great things about this stamp is that she isn't at all seasonal. She'll look great among snowflakes, falling leaves, flowers, fruit, whatever you like. In this case, she's a autumnal fairy, joining the dance of the swirling fall leaves. (They are leaves, but not to scale, and stamped all over each other -- I was going more for the impression of a lot of leaves than a crisp image.)

She was stamped in Eggplant, which of course is quite purple, but on the orange background it seems to have lost most of the purple and become a sort of dark rust -- and it's not just the photo, it looks like that for real. I wonder if it actually changed color or it's just one of those optical illusions where your perception of color is affected by colors around it?

This bookmark is made of 100% scraps! The scrap on which I originally stamped the fairy is a remnant of Popsicles in the Park, the scrap of copper cardstock is left over from Copper & Chartreuse, and the shimmery red backing piece is the other half of the backing from To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

For the life of me I can't figure out what earlier project created the brown scraps, but you can see it on my desk yesterday: it definitely wasn't a full sheet of mat. Maybe I cut some off for a project and then decided it didn't work? So somewhere there should be another scrap, the other part of the paper...

I'm entering this bookmark into the following challenges:

Even though I haven't used any stamps from the companies kindly sponsoring all of these challenges -- well, if I've entered but not used your stamps, it means I haven't got any and would like to win some!

I'm also linking this up to DL.ART's October Linky Party.

Supplies: (the little strips of brown leafy paper are from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack, which doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere linkable)

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Bookmarks XXXIV: All Hallows Eve

I gotta keep better track of challenge rules. Three of the challenges that went into the design of this bookmark, I can't submit to because they have a low limit on the number of combined challenges. Normally, I note this down and plan around it. This time I did not.

To skip me rambling on about challenges I didn't even enter, you can click here to jump straight to the project picture and the challenges I did enter.

The first challenge that I used but won't be entering is Touch Twin Color Challenge #26, from which the color inspiration mainly came.

Touch Twin only allows five combined challenges. I like the color combination a lot, and the challenge doesn't end for a little less than a week, so I'll make something else to submit there.

The second challenge that I designed for but won't submit to is Frilly and Funkie: Fall into Fall, which asks us to use fall colors and also, of course, to be vintage-y in either a frilly or a "funkie" way. I don't know that I actually succeeded in making something they would consider "funkie", but I sure gave it a shot, smooshing colors around and attacking edges with my craft knife and generally stamping things over other things and all. I spritzed things on already-inked-up stamps and rubbed paper around in the pretty mess left on my craft sheet! I did not adhere odd bits of metal, but this is a bookmark, not a tag, and it has to fit in a closed book.

Frilly and Funkie allows only four combined challenges. As their rules quite reasonably explain, "We are hoping that you will make a card for our challenge, not use our challenge to fit a card that you have already made." What makes me sad is that I did make a project for their challenge: it was one of my primary motivators -- it just also happens to work for a bunch of other challenges that don't mind more combinations. (Shockingly, as it is fall in the northern hemisphere, lots of challenges involve fall colors right now.)

The third challenge that I incorporated but won't be submitting to is Tando Creative: Leaves and or Trees. I wanted to put a bare-branched tree in front of my moon, but that just didn't work out. In the end I resorted to stamping a leaf stamp a bunch of times on the bottom of the bookmark in several fall colors. It looks really neat, but you can't see it in the photo very well.

Tando Creative allows only five combined challenges. To be quite fair, this was a challenge that I was trying to fit in just because I could, so in this case the combination limit has served its purpose. Since the challenge ends in fewer than 24 hours I doubt I'll be making something else to submit. Oh well.

I do want to repeat that I do understand why these limits exist. They may not be the perfect solution if you don't want scattershot entries in your contest, but they are a nice clear easy-to-implement one, and that counts for a great deal. My complaints here are really a result of poor record-keeping on my part, and shouldn't reflect negatively on the challenges themselves.

Of course I just could have submitted it to these three challenges + the sketch challenge I used, but since part of the fun for me is combining as many challenges as I can, I decided not to.

I ended up making a sort of Halloween/Fall bookmark: colors mainly in red, purple, and gold, with a Halloween moon in the night sky and a bat sweeping through some branches. Once I thought of the moon I knew exactly which sketch I was going to use, too, because this week's Tuesday Morning Sketch (#165) has a great big round element in it.

And it is so beautifully bookmark-adaptable! I did not even have to flip it. The big circular element became the moon, of course. The banners became black branch silhouettes, and the collections of embellishments became a bat.

I am entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party.

Supplies: