Traveler's Journal with Cathy Potosky

Happy September everyone! I'm not saying fall yet, a few more days of summer is okay with me now that it's not 35 degrees here.

My project is a travelers journal, using the Eileen Hull die. This one is going to a friend with some inserts I created.

I started by spraying my cover (and my desk, phone etc) with Dylusions sprays and a Prima Bloom colour for the shimmer. When that was dry I stenciled in white and hickory smoke using a couple of TH stencils. I found a piece of canvas in my stash, stenciled that in Dylusions paint to add a pocket on the inside of my cover. I moved all those aside to dry.

I pulled out my SRTC chipboard pieces and got them ready for the cover. I used the small and medium size from the  Dandelion Seed Stems set. I embossed the flower part with Emerald Creek Soft Fallen Snow and did the stems with Finnabair Wax in Emerald.

Using the Dylusions Calypso Teal I painted my Barbed Wire Heart Frame and prepped my butterfly from the Butterfly Swirl Combo and covered it with mixed media medium, waited for it to be tacky then foiled it in blue.

Now that all my pieces were ready and dry, I could put all my items on my journal.

I attached my dandelion pieces first because I wanted them to be my focal point. I then added a few rub ons, a couple of stamped images and I set a little brad into melted embossing powder.

I love the dandelions. And the sparkle from the Soft Fallen Snow was just the right touch. On my inside pocket I attached my barbed wire heart with Glossy Accents so it would hold well on the fabric.

On the back cover I attached a glassine envelope to hold little bits in. I wanted the tab to stay "closed" so I attached my foiled butterfly to it. Pretty touch and just enough to keep the flap down.

And one last close up, my dandelions! 

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Dandelion Seed Stems

- Barbed Wire Heart Frame

- Butterfly Swirl Combo

Other Supplies Used:

- Emerald Creek Embossing Powder: Soft Fallen Snow Embossing Powder, Baked Texture - Patina Oxide Embossing Powder and Brads

- Dylusions: Dylusions Spray - Lemon Zest, Pure Sunshine, Squeezed Orange, Vibrant Turquoise & Fresh Lime and Dylusions Paint - Calypso Teal

- Rebekah Meier Mixed Media Medium and Three Tags Stencil

- Artful Maven November Stamp Set

- Tim Holtz for Ranger Ink: Distress Paint - Hickory Smoke and Picket Fence

- Tim Holtz Ideaology: Glassine Envelopes, Canvas Substrate, Quote Chips, Mini Motivational Stamp Set and Rub Ons

- Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous: Wildflowers Layering Stencil and Swirls Layering Stencil

- Ranger Ink: Foil - Vintage

Thank you all for stopping by and make sure you head over to get your chipboard pieces for your next project!

- Cathy

3D Canister with Cathy Potosky

Happy August everyone! Yes, you read that right, it says August! Where is the summer going? Cathy here with my newest project today.

A storage container that will jazz up your creative space! I used the Eileen Hull Canister Die as my base for the amazing vintage sewing pieces from SRTC.

I cut out my pieces, used double sided tape (Be Creative Tape) to put them together and then painted my base colours of Distress Paint in Vintage Photo and Ground Espresso.

While that was drying I coloured my dress form from the Wire Dress Form Kit with Distress Oxide Inks and stained white lace with Distress Spray Stain.

I cut pieces of the TH Ecetera Paper Stash for the 4 sides, the paper has old patterns and rulers on it. On the lighter paper I embossed the whole piece with Baked Texture in Vintage Beeswax and edged all pieces with Ground Espresso.

My SRTC Dressmaker Mix pieces were embossed with a number of Emerald Creek powders (all listed below) and my Mini Wooden Rulers were sponged with Distress Ink.

Then it was time to put all the pieces together! I think this may be one of my favourite projects!

Here are a few close ups of the dress form. I added the necklace using tiny beads I had in my stash.

The legs on my container are old wooden spools I had and then embossed with Baked Texture Patina Oxide.

Southern Ridge Trading Company Products Used:

- Wire Dress Form Set

- Dress Maker Mix

- Mini Wooden Rulers

Other Supplies Used:

- Seth Apter Baked Texture Embossing Powder: Patina Oxide, Ancient Amber and Vintage Beeswax

- Emerald Creek Embossing Powder: Hammered Metal, Charred Gold, Salted Raven, Burnt Copper Leaves

- Tim Holtz for Ranger Ink: Distress Paint - Vintage Photo & Ground Espresso, Distress Oxides- Walnut Stain, Tea Dye, Seedless Preserves, Old Paper & Stormy Sky and Distress Spray - Peeled Paint, Antiqued Bronze, Tea Dye, Broken China and Milled Lavender

- Tim Holtz Ideaology: Etcetera Paper 

- Eileen Hull for Sizzix: Canister Die

Thanks for stopping buy and make sure you check out all the gorgeous vintage images that Southern Ridge Trading Company offers!

- Cathy

Halloween Scrapbook Album with Karen Bearse

Before Karen Bearse takes you through her fabulously spooky Halloween project, Karen and I would like to thank Karen for all of her fabulous and inspiring work during her time on our Design Team. It has been a true pleasure working with you and we wish you all the best on your future successes! You'll want to make sure to follow Karen on her blog to see what she is up to. Now back to Karen and her spooky Halloween project.

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Karen Bearse here today with my last post for Southern Ridge Trading Co. I have loved being on this team!! I want to thank my team mates especially Katelyn Grosart the DT lead & Karen Beaupre the very generous owner. I will miss these talented ladies but will check in from time to time. I feel the need to focus on other endeavours, but you will still see me around the block!

First I have a creepy Halloween Scrapbook Album for you. I made a similar book way back in 2001 or so. The idea was to do a scrapbook spread every year chronicling our Halloween costumes. This book starts in 1996 with my oldest son’s first Halloween. I have the years up to 2010 where my book kind of stalled out. Time to create part 2 the sequel. The goal is to play with this book and fill in the missing years & carry on from there.

I decided to once again use Eileen Hull’s Journal die but this time in a different way. As most of our Halloween pics tend to be landscape, it will give me room to use bigger photos. First I cut out 2 journal pieces from mat board, lined up & punched the middle hole. Next I cut off the top spine piece leaving me with only 1 row of holes. I used these to add rings so I can add pages as the years go by.

The top pieces were decorated using Distress Oxide, stamped then heat embossed. I have years of Halloween paper hoarded so I brought a bunch out to use on this project. I went with this black & silver spider web paper as the background.

Placing dies & the chipboard piece gave me an idea of how much room I had & where my embellishments should go. I took a photo so I could re-assemble after the pieces were cut & coloured.

Placing dies & the chipboard piece gave me an idea of how much room I had & where my embellishments should go. I took a photo so I could re-assemble after the pieces were cut & coloured.

The cool raven was cut out twice and layered to give him some strength then doodled on. He was adhered with pop dots to give a bit of depth. My ghost was cut out of a piece of white embossed on white paper, misted with Glimmer Mist in Silver for a bit of shimmer.

The cool chippie title was painted using Finnabair art alchemy acrylic paint. Hard to see in photos but in real life there is a great shimmer & metallic finish. Once it was dry the title was a bit dark & did not show up well so I doodled that as well with a white paint pen.

Time for finishing touches! I took my word band and added paint so the letters would show up better, and some hemp. I added orange rings now all I need is to add some pages. I hope you enjoyed my Halloween tutorial & I encourage you to make a book, it is a lot of fun to look back on all the years of Halloween! Thanks again for all the fun playing with Southern Ridge Trading Co.

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Halloween Header

Other Supplies Used:

- Eileen Hull by Sizzix: Journal Die

- Tattered Angels: Tinsel Town (G.Glam) and Silver (G.Mist)

- Tombow: Mono Liquid Glue

- Tim Holtz by Sizzix: Feather & Ravens and Village Graveyard

- Tim Holtz Stamps by Stampers Anonymous

- Tim Holtz Idea-ology by Advantus: Word Band 

- Emerald Creek Craft Supplies: Onyx Frost Embossing Powder

- Ranger Ink: Emboss It Dabber

- Finnabair Acrylic Paint by Prima Marketing: Metallic - Dark Forest, Fresh Orange and Silver Spoon, Opal Magic - Pink, Blue and Sparks: Iris Potion

- Karen

Haida Tribal Tattoo Art Journal with Karen Bearse

I have a page today that is inspired by Haida Tribal Art & a wee history lesson that is hopefully a bit accurate. A few years ago my husband got a tattoo embracing the art of the Haida or Pacific Northwest Coast Native Indians. If you are interested in the story behind the tattoo check out my blog here. The definition is …

Hai·daˈhīdə/noun: Haida; plural Haida or Haidas

1. A member of any of the tribes of North American Indians inhabiting the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, and Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Amazingly the Haida people settled 8,000 years ago- I have a hard time wrapping my brain around that one!

Colour me thrilled that SRTC has tribal chippies & Emerald Creek has Haida stamps! My husband’s tattoo is an example of things I want to document in my art journal. I did do some research on the pieces I used on my page. SRTC has this wonderful dreamcatcher chippie. While the Ojibwe (or Chippewa) Tribe are credited as the originators of this symbol, many other tribes have also adopted it throughout time. As there are Haida Dreamcatcher images I assume that they also embraced this symbol although I could not find confirmation online.

This is one of the images that I did find online, the art is by Eric Parnell.  Eric is part of the Eagle clan with the Haida Nation. For the sake of flexibility in art I will use symbols that remind me personally of living in Vancouver BC, being Canadian and loving the art of the Haida. Now on with the show!

I felt an urgent & resolute need to pull out my Distress Oxides (DO). I just did a tutorial on my blog making a passport book & the cover is one of my favourite techniques. I thought I would re-create it in a different way. Smoosh different DO directly on your craft sheet, spritz with water & dab tag into the colours. Dry & repeat multiple times until the tag has a happy amount of coverage. The key is to dry between layers to build up colour & move your tag around to build different colours on top of each other. Once dry emboss using an embossing folder. I found it was better to emboss the tag after I coloured it. Use a small amount of paint & a hard piece of foam to hit the high points. Let dry.

Cover the tag with Distress Mica Spray & while wet sprinkle UTEE (ultra-thick embossing powder) liberally. Tip tag to let excess UTEE fall off onto a piece of paper, pour back into the jar. Heat set tag until all the crystals are melted. The result is a shimmery, glossy, colourful tag of brilliance!

For the dreamcatcher multiple colours of emboss powder were used. You will notice in the above picture the feather on the left was coloured in Winter’s Mistake to start with but in the final picture I switched it to Northern Lights. Simply cover original with embossing dabber and add new colour on top, this is a great way to tweak your project. I also stamp, heat embossed the Sun using Onyx Frost, on a piece of dictionary paper & cut it out.

Emerald Creek has come out with beautiful gemstones which are perfect for this project. Cover the entire center of the dreamcatcher in Glossy Accent & then simply place the gemstones. Set aside to dry.

For the flag & the feather I pulled out my brand new Dina Wakley Scribble Sticks. The flag was simply coloured like a crayon & covered in UTEE as above. The feather I coloured and added water to create a soft water colour look. The sticks were also used to highlight my dictionary definitions in the same way. They work great as a watercolour.

The rest was a matter of assembly & adding some little touches like random stamping of the sun on the dictionary paper with DO Broken China. Using the above DO technique to colour my #4. Adding a bead & hemp to the dreamcatcher.

For more on the history of the Haida check out this blog Wisdom of The Elders

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Dream Catcher

- Wood Feathers

- Fall Leaves

Other Supplies Used:

- Eileen Hull Sunburst Embossing Folder by Sizzix

- Emerald Creek Craft Supplies: Sun Mask Stamp, Gemstones, Northern Lights Embossing Powder, Onyx Frost Embossing Powder, Silvester-Kracher Embossing Powder, Charred Gold Embossing Powder and Salted Navy Embossing Powder

- Ranger Ink: Distress Oxides Ink, UTEE, Embossing Dabber, Distress Mica Spray - Antique Bronze, Glossy Acccents, Mixed Media Tag and Archival Ink

- Dina Wakley for Ranger Ink: Scribble Sticks

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, please leave me any comments or questions below or check out my blog for more projects karenbearse.blogspot.com Have a great inky day!

- Karen

Colourful Puppy Art Journal Page with Karen Bearse

Karen Bearse with a post for you today on my ongoing art journal book, with a colourful puppy page. The little guy in the photo is a wee puppy named Clovis. I am his new puppy snuggler, letting him out every day and spending time playing with him while his Mommy & Daddy are at work. I wanted to document this new development in my journal and a photo is a great way to do it.

I also wanted to show you a quick and easy way to colour the SRTC chippies. I used Color Blends, a unique ink system that is quick, easy & mess free.

The inks have a foam dabber head that release the ink helping to keep your hands clean. It took me seconds to simply swipe colour onto the chip pieces. These wood die cuts are etched so ideally using a translucent layer of colour that does not interfere with the patterns is important.

After applying the ink with the applicator, I added a bit of water with a brush to the ink to just tint the paw. Distressing the edges with the foam applicator was easy, as was controlling a light layer. If a darker layer is desired simply push more ink into the foam. For the tag I just rubbed the colours Bay & Stop, overlapped a bit to get the purple colour. For a full tutorial on how to use these inks I did a blog post about them here.

I put the rest of my page together using bits & pieces some old some new & just let myself play! My title life, was coloured the same way using the Blends, stamped on with archival ink, and covered with glossy accents to give it that embossed look. Once dry some distressing with hot pink acrylic paint was called for & than a bit of doodling.

To finish up I did a bit more doodling around the page and on the tag chip. I hope you take some time today to play with both old & new supplies as well as a little SRTC chipboard!  

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Cat Tags #2

- Life Word (coming soon)

Other Supplies Used:

- Eileen Hull Color Blends by ColorBox
- Stamp by darkroom door
- Stencils by The Crafters Workshop
- Tombow Mono Aqua glue
- Hemptique-Hemp cord
- Papers by Bo Bunny
- Tissue Napkin by Jane Davenport

Happy crafting!

- Karen