More of the Inchies in Progress

I'm going to assume that there will be one more shot of these, after this, of all of these together before I cut them apart and separate them. Will be a sad sad day indeed.

I'm having such a block on the upper right square after it was claimed "pot luck" I don't know why now that it is so hard for me to find what I want to put there now, bleh. As you can see I went through and have changed some of the sketches to something else. Just didn't feel right in that particular square. C'est le vie.

I'm planning on, hopefully, finishing up my squares this weekend but I know how my best laid plans tend to go...totally askew, heh.

Inchies (A work in Progress)

Thanks to Rackycoo I'm now addicted to yet another time consuming addictive craft...Inchies.

I decided I wanted to post pics of these as I went along, more to amuse myself than anything as I'm not doing anything different than anyone else could or would do.

I've seen some rather amazing Collaged Inchies, in particular Rackycoo's at http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=211483.0 *grumbles, I need to learn how to do this correctly*

As I'm still struggling with the collaged concept I find it is much easier for me to just draw my images out and paint them.

That being said here is my first post with almost all the images in a sketched stage.
I'm using 110# cardstock as my base but I will be putting this on something heavier like matboard. This is an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet therefore yielding me 88 full inchies.

Here I've gone in and colored 14 squares with my Prismacolor pencils. Oh how I love my pencils! I've gone in and sketched out a few more squares here too.

After staying up late last night playing with these I've got even more done. Funny how I can skip around and do whichever square talks to me at that moment. I just noticed that the whole top row of, albeit empty, squares are cut off the top row, hmmm...I guess that means I've only got 80 squares to do, lol.

The bird squares have been such a big hit over there on Craftster that I believe I will do more birds, oh and evil Kings *wink*

When it comes to the point of cutting these little buggars apart I may shed some tears. It was hard for me to do when I did a set of 9 ATC's in the same fashion.

Stay tuned on this as well...

Another Tip-In with a Twist Page

Having only one partner this last round was actually harder for me than having two partners for some reason and I not only did I not get my page done on time but sent it a day late, gah.


Didn't help that by sending some extras to my partner made me totally forget to add the actual page to the envelope and I came *this* close to sending it without it. Double gah!

As of this post she hasn't received it hey but I feel pretty sure she won't see it here before she receives it...so I'm posting it, hehe.

My partner this round is actually fond of clowns...yikes. Granted, the clowns she likes aren't the scary in your face childrens clowns that give everyone nightmares, but the old fashioned type clowns that are generally scary and still give everyone nightmares, hehe.

In that spirit I tried to give my clown page to her an old-fashioned feel to it. I really struggled with this page as I had no idea initially as to what I wanted to do and even when I decided what I wanted I certainly didn't end up with what I had started out for. Go figure.

The front page is all hand drawn and painted except the 77 cents and the circus ticket. I even made the red banner and cut it out. The striped background gave me the most trouble. I actually started and discarded 3 pages of different stripes. One I actually tried to glue striped silk to cardstock...I don't wanna talk about it...

The back page. I really hope it's not too creepy. The tagline above is from one of my all-time favorite movies "Freaks" from 1932. One seriously creepy movie. Although, after receiving a rather "questionable" luncheon ATC from said partner in the ongoing swap, I feel rather justified *snicker*

Above is the ATC in question. I really am assuming she means luncheon for the rat as he is eating...right?

Thanks Rackycoo! And I really hope you enjoy your clowns.

ATC's from an Ongoing Swap

I said that once I got all my cards for this particular swap done that I would post them all here and so I will.

All 3 of my partners for this swap had Zetti on their list. I LOVE doing Zetti so I did these 3 cards at the same time, can you tell, lol.

My next claim was for a mermaid and out of the ocean depths came this girl.

Needless to say she has the same influence as the Zetti kids as I did her about the same time. I love my Prismacolor pencils!

This little bird followed closely on the heels of the mermaid and again, has the same style. He's going to become my mascot. It's almost official.
Lawn Ornaments was my next claim and who doesn't automatically think of Garden Gnomes...I dare ya.
My last claim was for monsters and who doesn't love an overly sweating furry green monster?

Complete and Utter Lack of New Material

I've been completely baffeld by my inability to think clearly after just recently starting a new job that has, by all accounts, sucked all the life from me at the end of each day. The work itself isn't physically demanding but my mind has to be going all the time and unfortunately the work itself is rather mind numbing but yet...exhausting. I just don't get it but the by product of all this is...no new work from me lately. I do have some ATC's I created for an ongoing ATC swap I joined. I've got the last two I need to get done and send out. I shall post tham all at once.

I've also got to finish my next partners' page for the Tip-In with a twist swap, it's due to ship by the 19th I believe. My plan is to have a big art weekend this weekend and I plan to get these all done in just 2 days, hmmm, shall be interesting if I actually pull it off. I've gotten rather lazy lately. Eh, shake it off and get it done, right?

I did stop by my favorite art store this week and bought all kinds of assorted canvases, both stretched and boards. I've got all kinds of visions in my head that I think will be completely awesome once I get them out and onto a physical surface.

Stay tuned...

Tip-In with a Twist Journal Pages

After having 5 of my pages received by my partners already I thought I had better get busy and start posting them. I've been a total slacker lately here but I've been really busy painting and what not so that does have to count for something, right?

My first page went to Amaryllisroze:
This is the front. She had posted her cover and the "scowly" little girl sitting on the chair was on her cover and I felt I just had to use her in my page. The number 1 is an oil board stencil that I painted to look oxidized-rusty and the letters are cut from an old LIFE magazine. Everything else is painted.

When I first started painting the background I was trying to use my cheap-o acrylics as a watercolor wash and it kinda balled up the fabric of the page. Kinda scared me so I started being a little more careful. I used my trusty prismacolor pencils for the small details and my fine line marker for the outlines.

The back. Done in the same fashion as the front and I added the apparently now famous running zetti bird. I do love this little guy and he seems to be popping up quite a bit now. I think I'll officially adopt him.

My next page was for Banga.

The front of the page features designs and colors that she had used on her covers. There is also an alphabet around the outside edge that I cut from the same LIFE magazine. She had also featured some old letters on her covers so I took one page from my trusty LIFE magazine and attempted to "write" a letter with the words found only on that one page. It reads "Miss Kelly, I want to praise a most distinguished Englishman. He drove her to the occassion through the crowded theater. Looking back throughout the ceremony recalls a similiar event by this marriage. Helen W. King"

I struggled a bit to make even non sensical sense of my letter but I like the way it turned out.

The back is done in the same spirit using letters cut from the same LIFE page including the birds body, wing and small envelope. Another alphabet at the bottom. As I was doing this page somehow a real bird feather ended up on my work space, actually on the marker I was currently using to outline the birds' tail so I felt I had to use it.

My next page went to LittleGreenDragonfly.

This partner wanted an organic feel to her page and liked trees. Not having ever done trees before, and I don't think that the ones I did in 3rd grade really count, I went looking for some trees I thought I could use as a background. I heavily borrowed from a photo I found and painted my trees. I then found a poem I really rather liked by an anonymous author.

"The woods are full of fairies, The trees are all alive, The river overflows with them, See how they dip and dive, What funny little fellows, What darling little dears, They dance and leap and prance and peep, And utter fairy cheers. Anonymous~
The little zetti fairie is painted on bristol board and attached with a leaf brad. He can actually spin slightly.

The back is done with some Finnish papers and vintage childrens book papers. I gesso'ed over them and embellished the leaves and flowers back up onto the text and then I aged my page.

My next page went to goatgoddess.

The front features a rusty tin can lid that I found out in the desert. All the letters were taken from the same LIFE magazine. It is looking a little ratty now but it sure has proved its' usefullness. The little girl, "Dorothea" has sparkly red shoes and a sparkly red bow in her hair. The image, I believe, was taken, with permission, from my Flick'r free to use in your artwork photo group, (that's a mouthful).

Again, I used my acrylics and my ever so trusty Prismacolor pencils.

This is the back and again, the photo of the ever glee full Glee Club was borrowed from my Flick'r group.

How can you not love a Glee Club photo as somber as this one? Some of the girls in this photo look down right pissed.

My last set of pages in this group went to Crafty_Dame. As you can no doubt tell I was going through a red phase and I did these last two sets on the same days.
Crafty_Dame likes things on the dark side so what is better than a Goth girl loving Edgar Allen Poe. With the exception of Poe himself I once again turned to my trusty issue of LIFE for the numbers and letters. Everything else is painted with acrylics, sharpies and prismacolors. The little girl is sporting a set of raven wings.

For the back I chose the famous Raven and part of the poem is written along the edge of the raven. "Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore... Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore'".
My human eye I had to go to Cosmo for...le sigh.
Thanks for the inspiration Rackycoo!

Lots more pages yet to be done.

ATC Challenge Winning Card

A dear friend I've recently met informed me that I was being seriously lacking in my blogging by not mentioning here that my "Gobbler Zetti" actually won the ATC Challenge on Craftster. Her card was just fabulous and we raced, literally, neck and neck through the entire voting process with my turkey just narrowly inching hers out by a heartbeat.

All the cards she's ever done for any of the challenges have been just amazing in particular is her rendition of the Velveteen Rabbit, my all time favorite. This post is dedicated to Kaleesi.