Remember When

This week Simon Says Stamp and Show a childhood memory. Critter Sketch challenges us to use a circle and distressing. Tuesday Throwdown also challenges us to use distressing. These challenges worked hand in hand and this is the card I created.  The circle is obvious. The childhood memories are reading to my younger brothers and sisters and swinging on the swing. There is a lot of distressing from the distress inked edges, the sanded core'dinations background, and the torn paper frame around the image. The image of the children is from Rogue Redhead Designs. The sentiments are from Artistic Outpost Playtime.

Compendium of Curiosities Challenge 29

This week the Compendium of Curiosities challenge comes from p. 50 of Tim's book. We are doing weathered wood grunge. Ever since Tim used the rickety house during the 12 Tags of Christmas, I have looked at it in a very different way. I no longer see it as only a haunted house. For this challenge I used the rickety house. I reversed the cut. It's embossed with the brick texture fade. I painted it with a white dabber and once it was sanded, I used Vintage photo distress ink. The art in the windows comes from Suze Weinberg and I used fragments over the art. The background is from Tim's paper stack.

CHAPTER 1: Changing Form/Feb 2011 Challenge--Week 1

"Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.

It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. `Come, there's half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another!"

-- Chapter 5, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Well, just like Alice we have been through quite a few changes! But our familiar Alice challenges have arrived safely in at their new home, The Altered Alice blog, although in a new monthly form.

To reflect all these changes, the challenge is to make something that features a dress form, OR to make something that changes in form! While it is not required that your project include Alice in Wonderland, we do encourage it. If your project features Wonderland you will get two chances in the prize drawing instead of one, and what a prize it is!

STAMPOTIQUE ORIGINALS is sponsoring our first challenge with a generous $30 gift certificate, and their fabulous design team is going to play along!

Here is my project to inspire you:

My first project as Design Team member is a dimensional one. The idea came about as a combination of items just fell in place. The modified shadow box was made from a kit from Club Scrap. It was the monthly project from a few months ago, which I never got a chance to work on. The paper dolls were a gift to me from my sister who knows I love Alice. Combining these items, my Alice image stamps and sentiments, and some related ephemera, I created an Alice lover's wall hanging. How does this relate to the challenge? There are images of Alice in various sizes, and the whole idea of paper dolls is to change the clothing. Most of the ephemera relates to Alice changing in size. What is hard to see from the photos is the contents of the shadow box area. Inside, there is an image of the Mad Hatter in the background, a glass bottle with the "Drink Me" tag, and a crown.

Now let me explain how this new monthly challenge works:

1st Sunday of the month: The new challenge will be posted with the link tool, and a few of the design team samples will be posted.

2nd Sunday: Additional design team samples will be posted.

3rd Sunday: The last of the design team samples will be posted.

Last Sunday of the month: A winner will be announced and some of your projects may be given an "honorable mention".

We are starting a week early with the February challenge because we didn't want to leave you with a gap, so we will spread the design team samples over four weeks and the winner will be announced on February 27th. You have a whole month to submit your creations, so we are hoping that a lot more of you will decide to play along!

Enter your links on The Altered Alice before 8 p.m. EST (GMT - 5) on Friday, February 25th. A winner will be announced on Sunday, February 27th. Check back at The Altered Alice each Sunday between now and then for more inspiration!

Bloggers Challenge Friday

This week Bloggers Challenge was birthday cards. I created this card based on another challenge to create a card using something with an A or B. Well, Alice - butterflies -  and birthday all fit the criteria. The background, although scanning faint, is a paint stamped diamond pattern. Alice and the fawn are painted with Creative Inspirations paints and the butterflies are covered with sepia accents.
Can't wait to see what everyone else has done.
Now for a shameless plug--my first posting as Design Team member on The Altered Alice challenge site will be Sunday. Hope to see you there too.

Cling Pearls

Last week's Try That Technique was to use the Cling Pearls technique from the Oct/Nov 2007 Technique Junkies newsletter. To create the background I used blue and a bit of purple pearl ex. I have to admit that it's a messy technique. To fix the pearl ex I had to use an acrylic sealer spray since my old faithful Workable Fixative wasn't strong enough. Luckily I used some of my favorite colors since I was wearing them for a while. The frame is the window die cut from Heartfelt Creations cut from gold metallic paper. The image is from Stampland. Isn't she elegant!

Three New Artistic Outpost Releases

Artistic Outpost has three new collections just to get your creativity going. Ephemeral Backgrounds, Think and Wonder, and Songbirds are available both unmounted and mounted and pre-trimmed.

Ephemeral Backgrounds:  Multiple vintage images to accompany all of our images. This set includes postcard snippets, sheet music, and antique ledger large 3.75 x 5" stamps.

Think and Wonder:  Beautiful collages, adorable children adorn this collection. Featuring some of our favorite quotes by Dr. Seuss.

Songbirds:  You will find so many beautiful uses for this unique vintage set of stamps. Elegant and musically inspired images featuring vintage bird illustrations.

Aren't these wonderful images and fun backgrounds. Here are a few cards I created using the new stamp sheets.

Image and Sentiment from Think and Wonder

Images from Songbirds and Ephemera Backgrounds.

Images from Ephemera Backgrounds with a few from Songbirds.

Be sure to check out the galleries featuring the beautiful cards, tags, and mixed media projects by our super talented design team.

Gerrie Johnnic - Lisa Somerville - Judy Hayes -  Lynn Stevens  - Stephanie Severin - Suzanne Czosek 

To celebrate these releases, we are offering 15% off your entire purchase. Now through February 14th, use coupon code January2011 at checkout, and you will receive 15% off all items.

KSS Monday

This week my KSS Monday card is a combination of my new Multi Step Invisible Snowman set of stamps, the Friday sketch challenge from Connie and the Tuesday Pantry challenge (embossing folders) from Makiko. I took the liberty of turning the sketch on its side so I could add the sentiment. Have you visited the KSS forum lately? There are daily challenges from the Crew members and lots of valuable information. Visit the gallery there for inspiration and ideas.

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you will visit the other Design Team Members to see what wonderful creations they have made.

Angela • Connie • Julie • Lisa • Lynn • Makiko • Maria

Color recipes: (All inks are Adirondack unless noted)
Hat -- 1 lake mist, 2 slate, 3 smokey grey (Versafine), 4 Jet Black
Scarf -- 1 watermelon, 2 cranberry
Pipe -- 1 latte, 2 caramel, 3 espresso
Eyes and Mouth -- 1 slate, 2 jet black
Carrot -- 1 peach bellini, 2 sunset orange, 3 rust
Buttons -- 1 sail boat blue, 2 denim