3 May 2010 - my girlfriends and I jumped in the car and headed to Newtown for a much anticipated day of art with the amazing Heidi Swapp and Wendy Segner, Owner of Tattered Angels, all the way from the USA. We were in for an intense day of Glimmer Mists, Glimmer Mists and more Mists.
For those not familiar with this amazing little bottle, it's a few ounces of shimmering magic sprayed quite liberally onto various surfaces, leaving behind the most beautiful glimmer. Be warned, it's extremely messy in the most delightful way and terribly addictive.
From 9 - 6pm, we produced three albums. One being a technique ring binder, taught by Wendy. Incredible to think there are so many variations to using the Glimmer Mists. Next, tutored by Heidi, we created an amazing flip album (images of mine, you'll see below) and lastly, a very brightly mini album, no glimmer mists involved, but introducing us to the House of 3 from Tattered Angels, which turns out to be templates you can download and print, rather than having to create everything from scratch. Personally, this one wasn't my cup of tea. Too many bright colours, pastel pinks and blues and too 'cutsie' for me. I'm also a girl who likes to create from scratch and the ideas being mine. Howwever I can understand the appeal to some as it's a time saver and extremely useful for those who find it hard starting out with a blank canvas or have lost their mojo. Nevertheless it was still enjoyable to assemble.
Now the real fun was my album below. A huge project in itself. During the course of the workshop I only managed to finish my front and back covers and spray the backgrounds of about 4 inner pages. Arriving home on Monday night, I felt possessed and unpacked all my supplies straight onto the dining room table, pulled out my Pink isting Mat. Sadly here I had no choice as Heidi loves pink, so most Tattered Angle products are pink. I come across this quite often in the craft that I love. Manufacturers assume that because it's geared towards woman, that we all love pink !!! mmmmmmmm So I do possess a few pink items here and there. And it so does not go with my general decor of green and brown, but what can you do ... :)
So here I am, exhausted but wired from a fantastic day and I don't quite want it to end yet, I'm also reluctant to pack my art supplies away as I know once I do that, I'll never finish this album and it'll go into my box of unfinished projects. 'm determined to finish this thing if it kills me, and that it almost did. Every night for 6 nights, after arriving home from work at 9am, I went straight to my table and began spraying again till about 2am every morning. OMG was it worth it. It's a retty damn good feeling holding a finished project in your hands.
Bear with me while I take you on a little written journey in creating my album. As usual, photo's really don't do it true juctice, but the end results and colour were exceptional. If you've never used Glimmer Mists before, I'd encourage you to purchase at least one bottle and play. You can create the most stunning backtrounds, it works fabulous on texture paste to highlight the detail, colours fabric too and works to a degree on metal.
To get started, we were given a raw flip album. Below is my plain white front cover, notice there's already a resist pattern. Naturally this will work amazing with the mist to create a resist technique.
And now the fun part. We're advised to use gloves as the mists are extremely messy and stain. Me, I like to feel everything I'm working on with my hands. So no gloves for me. What's a little green and blue stained hands ??? Good thing I have no external meetings this week, so it was only me looking at horrible stained hands, fingers and nails.
So we got to work on the cover. Starting by absolutely saturating it in about 3 colours of mists. And I mean literally soakign the cover so that the ink was dripping off. Here's where all that paper towel came in handy as well. This was put aside to dry. Once dried, I sprayed another layer here and there to create some depth, so dark in certain areas. Left then to dry some more then the excess brayered off.
Once the mists had dried completely, Tattered Angels provided us with the newest addition to the Tattered Angels family, recently released, called Glimmer GLAZE; a water soluble paint that adheres to metal, fabric, acrylic, wood, paper and vellum and it creates amazing depth to underlying colours of Mists. The glaze I used on my cover was "Cowboy'. I especially loved the way it subtly tones down the glimmer of the mists and in its place, creates a rich deep surface. Incredible stuff.
A close up of the accessories added to my cover. The heart, key and wings provided by Tattered Angels. Part of their 'Tattered Trinkets' range.
Just for those who are not 'art' inclined. Below is what we started out with. A blank creme album. Nothing exciting. I always like to see a before and after to get a visual of the incredible pages you can create with different mediums, accessories and a whole lot of imagination.
Below is my first double page spread.
A close up of the left page. A very basic page in itself in terms of themy background. I used one of the Tattered Angels Screens from the 'Fanciful' range (shown below), to create the image on the background. I wanted a simple page to introduce the title of our workshop with Heidi and Wendy. While you can see the patterns very clearly, but the words 'Mistified' are acrylic letters. Each letter has an individual pattern etched into it. Very elegant, which I thought was true to our day and Tattered Angels.
A single shot of my right page containing a photo of my girlfriends, my partners in art. Left is myself, Karen Bergan, then the talented Heidi Swapp from Tattered Angels, Nikki Cross, Kelly Padman and last but not least, Wendy Segner, owner of Tattered Angels. The gold frame you see is an acrylic overlay provided by Heidi for this particular album.
As this was a flip album, you had a double facing page as well as two pages that flipped upwards. This is a spread of my 4 pages. The right side with the green pattern was created by laying down a large piece of lace, then spraying glimmer mist over the entire page, left for a little while, then removed. The page set aside to dry. In the end, you're left with a gorgeous pattern on the page. I've then stamped a swirl detail stamp around the edge to create a border. The stamp from Stampers Anonymous. I've left these two pages blank purposely. I really love the pattern left behind from the lace and dont want to ruin it with embelishments. So for now until I can come up with an appropriate way to finish off this page, they'll remain blank.
My next double page spread. In the middle I've stamped a Tattered Angels stamp in the 'Compass' range. Shown below. Cut it in half and adhered a half to each page, then outlined with black bling.
The quote on the right is one of my favourites. The stamp from Stampers Anonymous "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday lives'.
My next large spread. Alot of detail here, but this one involved several layers of glimmer mist to create a deep rich blue colour, using Midnight Blue and Turquoise Blue. Would you believe I went through one a a half bottles of each colour to make this album.
Below is aclose up of the top left page. The tag is from the Tattered Angels range. The butterfly is a Martha Stewart punch. And let me first say, I'm not a butterly person, in fact I'm not a cutsie anything when it comes to my art, but my girlfriends convinced me to purchase this thing, not for the life of me knowing what I was gonna do with a damn butterfly in my collection. Well aren't I glad I did as it just seemd apt for this album theme. I've punched out the butterfly on blue cardstock,then covered competely in Dimensional Magic, left to dry and this gave it a goof 'stiffness'. I've only adhered the center part, allowing the wings to be lifted off the tag.
The wings are Tim Holtz 'Grungeboard' range. I was curious how the Glimmer Mists would adhere to the grundgeboard and the affect. Can't say I'm disappointed. In fact, the grundgeboard turned out better than I imagined. The mists work beautifully on it. Even though I used several colours of blue and a bit of turquoise, in the end, there was a distinct bit of silver shining through. A very interesting effect. Not sure where the silver came from. but lovely nevertheless.
My next double page layout, my favourite colour, not quite complete as you can see. The top pages, I lay down a Glimmer Screen (stencil), and sprayed with blues and greens. Once dried, I outlined the pattern with Dimensional Magic. Not quite sure how to finish these two, so they'll remain as is for now.
A close up of the bottom left page. The photo on the page, if you zoom in, you'll see sheets and sheets of paper towel. A complete kaleidescope of colour. One thing about using Glimmer Mists is the amount of paper towels you go through, soaking it all up and the constant brayering. But nothing goes to waste, once dried, these become the most incredible background 'papers'.
Below is what a page looks like after it's been completely saturated in Glimmer Mists. The longer you leave the mist on, the darker the page.
After a page has dried, and any excess liquied brayered off, you're left with a beautiful glimmer and every now and then, some colours leaves behind a lovely silver shine.
And last, but not least, my back pages. Here I decided to use Tim Holtz' Grungeboard. I'm at the stage with my art where I'm trying to get through my current supplies and trying very hard to resist the urge to ppurchase more and more and more, even though I don't need it. Those that are in my boat, certainly know it's not about needing, but WANTING :) and simply because you can !!
these look amazing ruth! love the colours you used...
Posted by: Bevlea | 20 May 2010 at 21:04
wonderfully spectacular!
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