Christmas Cookie Pocket Letter 3

This is a series that I hosted on swapbot - Christmas cookies.  I asked that people create a pocket letter featuring cookies that were tradition in their families, favorite memories of baking, sharing, eating cookies, or favorite holiday cookie, and in the back pocket to include the recipe of that favored cookie.  For my 3rd cookie PL I chose Oatmeal Chocolate Bars.  These were my favorite growing up and mom only ever made them at Christmas time.  So rich and chocolate-y , definitely looked forward to these. As I got older mom let me make them by myself.  Yum!

Prima doll - Christmas 2

Patterned paper, background paper with stitched details, bling, die cuts, stickers, and glittered cardstock on her dress.

Prima Doll - Christmas 1

I used patterned papers, washi tape, bling, sparkle pen, metallic ribbon, vintage epoxy Santa sticker, and the lettering is plastic.

Christmas Cookie Pocket Letter 2

This is a series that I hosted on swapbot - Christmas cookies.  I asked that people create a pocket letter featuring cookies that were tradition in their families, favorite memories of baking, sharing, eating cookies, or favorite holiday cookie, and in the back pocket to include the recipe of that favored cookie. For my 2nd cookie PL I chose the peanut butter blossom. When we first started making these we used the Brach's chocolate stars, that's how it was done.  When it became hard to find the stars in the store we switched over to the Hershey's kisses. These were a favorite in my family and a favorite of my oldest son.  I remember when my son was in the Navy, my mom would make him these and put them in a care package and send them to him.

Christmas ATC's Holtz Style

This was a 3 part swapbot exchange to spell out the word C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S.  We started swapping in October and finished in December.  Each ATC had to include two Tim Holtz items - I used distress inks, stencils, stamped images, and greenery die cuts from the Tim Holtz line.  Additional items used - cardstock, washi tapes, and scrabble stickers for my letters.

Reindeer Pocket Letter

I used vintage images, paper tape, washi tape, patterned papers, bling, and some small stickers.

Christmas Cookie Pocket Letter 1

This is a series that I hosted on swapbot - Christmas cookies.  I asked that people create a pocket letter featuring cookies that were tradition in their families, favorite memories of baking, sharing, eating cookies, or favorite holiday cookie, and in the back pocket to include the recipe of that favored cookie.  For my first cookie PL I chose sugar cookies because I remember making these with my mom and when we were little my brother and I got to sprinkle the different colored sugar on top.  As we got older we got to use the shaped cookie cutters to cut out the shapes we wanted.

Christmas Tree Balls Pocket Letter

I used photographic images, patterned papers, washi tape, and bling.

Prima Doll - Thanksgiving

I used patterned papers, vintage images, cardstock, stickers, and washi tape.

Prima Doll - Halloween

I used patterned papers, cardstock, washi tape, vintage images, and wooden lettering.

Altered Tombstone

For this swap the hostess sent us a tombstone to alter.  I used patterned papers, a Sharpie pen to detail out the wings of the bat, vintage images, and bling.

Halloween Charm Swap

I chose black wire, orange glass lined beads, silver wheel spacers, and little white skull beads.  Charms could only be 1 inch long.

Butterfly 9pc ATC's

This was  9 piece ATC swap with 9 other artists, starting in August and finishing in September.  Each time we swapped it was for a different letter in the word butterfly.  Put it all together and you have the complete set.  I used lots of patterned papers, washi tape and images of butterflies.  For my letters I used letter tag stickers.

Gelli Plate - Painted Prints

This was fun and challenging.  I was going for a pop art effect thinking I could do a neat Warhol project with my students.  I found a simple dog line drawing image and printed it out to fit underneath my 5"x 7" gelli plate.  I made 6 different color variations and I just used a soft paint brush and acrylic paints.  Once they were dry I mounted them all together onto one larger sheet.  If I try this with my students I will probably have to go with 3 or 4 variations so they don't get overwhelmed.

Collograph - Big Flowers

 I created three large flowers using self adhesive foam on a corrugated cardboard base.  Each flower was about 9"x 12".  I decided to use a different color ink for each flower and stamped them randomly onto two sheet of 18"x 24" paper.

For this one I added some smaller flowers using purchased flower foam stamps that I already had. 

I prefer the first one over the one with the smaller stamps added, it seems like a stronger design to me as I look at it now.

Coming back to this post to add that I did do this project with my junior high students, I had then each create one large flower and then they could share between themselves for variety.  Their flowers were 6"x 9" and I had them stamp on two sheets of 12"x 18". The small foam stamps that I had were also available to them if they so chose.  Here is the link to the Artsonia gallery if you would like to see how they did.

Student Flower Collographs

Gelli Plates - using masks

 I used my 8" circle gelli plate and I freehand cut 4 different bird on a branch shaped masks, I used acrylic paints and plastic rubbing plates to achieve the patterns.

Art Cats Pocket Letter

For this PL we were required to choose cat artwork, choice of artist was up to us.  I chose the work of Heather Mattoon and just could not resist her "Cats in Clothes" series.  Her brush work is beautiful and each cat has a personality - so fun and whimsical. I used colored cardstock, washi tape, and bling to accent each image.

It's an Adorable World Pocket Letter

For this swap we were to create pockets decorated with tiny houses.  I decided to go out of my comfort zone and I chose gingerbread house. I printed out images of 9 different gingerbread houses and then using a black Sharpie pen I drew the background, sidewalks, candy cane and lollipop trees, gumdrop bushes, etc.  I colored all my sweets with marker and I used colored pencil to the ground and sky.  When I got done the skies looking a bit empty so I added some washi tape.

One of the options for the backs of the pockets was pretty paper, showing the inside rooms of the house, or showing who lived in the house.  I chose 9 different gingerbread people to be my proud homeowners.

Tape Transfer - Bird 5

For this one I used some of my mini gelli plates to stamp added colors, patterns, and shapes.  I used distress inks to ink up the gelli plates, then I used texture rubbing plates to press a texture pattern into the ink and then I stamped the gelli onto the bird background.

Each of these 5 birds tape tranfers were just experimenting with the process and I would go a lot farther if I were to try this again and/or have my students do this for a project. I think I would definitely have them use calendar pages in the hopes that the paper would slide off easily for them too.

Tape Transfer - Bird 4

Cut this transfer into several pieces, tried overlapping two pieces of transfer, really like that effect.

Tape Transfer - Bird 3

On this transfer I cut a chunck off and separated it from the bird and added it back to the background.

Tape Transfer - Bird 2

Again, scrapbook paper and scraps.

Tape Transfer - Bird 1

I used scrapbook paper for the background and then went through my scraps to break things up a bit.  I do like how the paper patterns show through the transfer.

Printmaking Class - Tape Transfers

 I decided to use some of the gorgeous calendar pictures that I have been saving up and chose birds for this project.

I was so lucky that after soaking them in water the entire paper backing slid right off. I have never had this happen so easily for me before.  Usually it takes a lot of rubbing to get all the paper off the back.  I guess I have only even tried this with magazine pictures before.

There was this film left on the back, I noticed after I let everything dry, so I did have to go back and rub that off, but even so, it came off easily and it was more like adhesive residue than paper.

Dog Days of Summer Pocket Letter

Photos of dogs (had to include chihuahuas of course!), patterned papers, washi tape, and some fun summer stickers to top things off!

Lepidoptera Lollapalooza Pocket Letter

For my background I used a sheet from the Mariposa paper stack.  I printed out 3 butterflies and used Stickles to add some glitz and added them to the outside of the page so that I could bend the wings and add a touch of 3-D effect.

Postage Stamp Pocket Letter

I chose stamps portraying different clothing styles from Indonesia.  I thought it was fascinating to see the different styles all together and was so tickled that I found 9 different stamps from the same country, it worked out great.  I used patterned papers and lots and lots of washi tape, including some glitter washi.

Chicken Pocket Letter

Vintage images of chickens, patterned paper, and washi tape.

Collograph 3 - Geometric

 I used my big shot and embossing folders to emboss a bunch of cardstock.

I used my embossed papers along with peeled corrugated cardboard and  texturized wallpaper to create this design used geometric shape.

I decided to try printing this on a paper that I had already mounted another sheet of paper on.  This created more opportunity for color, another geometric element, and the ease of using only one color of ink.

6x6 Gelli Prints

I love how these 6x6 prints turned out and thought it would be a neat project for my younger students - I was thinking of something collaborative like a quilt design.

Hand Carved Stamp 2

Trying to think of ways to incorporate this into student projects and I came up with this ATC sized stamp idea.  I decided to try a jar of buttons since that would give me lots of options for changing colors with each print.

I just used Crayola watercolor markers to print these ATC's.

I probably wouldn't make students do 9 variations, perhaps just 3?

Collograph Print 2 - Organic

It was suggested that we gather many things that we could experiment printing with - so I decided to combine cardboard, wallpaper, cardstock, ribbon, rick rack, and silk flowers for my organic collograph.

It came out a lot better than I thought it would and it changed my thought on what I could use for collograph prints - I was stuck in the cardboard, string, foam frame of mind, so this was a good thing to push me out of my comfort zone.

Collogaph Prints 1 - Cityscape

 We were asked to create some collographs and I decided to use cardstock since it is readily available and not so costly to use with elementary students. 

Hand Carved Stamp - Printmaking Class

We were asked to create a hand carved stamp and then come up with a finished project.  I had seen some examples of  the 1/4 square done and thought it might be a good project that I could translate over to my junior high printmaking class.

Here is my first attempt, using one color and getting the rotation down.

 Here I decided tow try 2 colors in an alternating pattern.

 Next I tried doing random blocks of color, no pattern.

 Random blocks of color on patterned scrapbook paper.

 Two color pattern on scrapbook paper.

Conclusion -  I like the white paper best for using multiple ink colors.  If I were to use scrapbook papers with my students I would probably have then use black ink or a highly contrasting color depending on the paper they chose.