Altered Cards Week 8

Hi everyone! I can't believe that we are already in week 8 for the altered card challenge. What a fun challenge this has been. This week the theme is love and Claudine broke out the gelatos and watercolors. Well I discovered that it has been so long since I used my tube watercolors that most of them were dried out. I will have to open up the tubes and put the dried pieces in  containers to re-hydrate them. I also found a tube of texture medium from a couple of decades ago so decided to experiment.

Here are Claudine's cards:

 Here is what I came up with:

Here is my experiment with the texture medium. Instead of using gesso as the base for this card I applied the texture medium. I love how it ended up cracking in places I also took a dried up ink pen and used the point to draw my heart. Promise no laughing about my drawing of the heart.

Like Claudine I took out my gelatos and scribbled and then sprayed water. I then took a bristle brush like you would paint trim with and brushed over my colors blending them in.  I also used a gelato to color in the heart. I then like Claudine used a black oil pastel to outline the heart smudging it. I was not totally satisified with the look though so went back outlined with a black glaze pen.  I played around with using a tag with love like she did but didn't like how it was looking.  I even tried writing on ribbon but it was no go. I then tried to stamp a heart  inside but my ink was too light of a color.. I finally took a piece of wide ribbon and stamped on the wrong side of the ribbon using Stazon ink. Then cut out the heart.

If you saw my handwriting you would know why I decided to use a stamp instead. I was afraid I would not get a clear stamp stamping directly so I used a piece of plastic.Alas my black archival ink does not work  on plastic. I didn't like the brown Stazon and the purple blended in to much  so I ended up using the teal blue. I used a dab of white glue on each of the corners of the plastic and you really have to look hard to see the glue. I thought stamping on paper would be too intrusive. This way you can see the delightful texture and colors.

When I saw the theme was love and hearts I thought this card would be perfect to use. During week one while preparing my cards for the challenge I had experimented with gesso  and stencils. I love how using a stencil with lots of hearts turned out.

As I said my tube water colors were dried up. I did manage to find a Vermilion, Prussian Blue, and a Peridot  metallic one that was not. After adding water to the paints I brushed on and dripped I have never dripped water colors before but love the way the colors blended.

Recently I was going through a box of craft things and there was a green corrugated box I bought at a thrift store for a quarter..  I cut my heart out of that. Lol as you can see I can cut hearts out better than draw them. I used the leftover Peridot paint to soften the color and give it more of a metallic look. The love is printed using my label maker and clear tape.  Taking a piece of black paper from the inside of a page protector I cut out my circle using a die. I then took my black glaze pen and did my stitching. Lol! some of the stitches are crooked but if I was stitching by hand it would be the same way. I also edged the card with black archival ink but it does't really show up in the picture.

One thing about doing this challenge is it gives me ideas for doing regular greeting cards. Also it gets me using supplies that otherwise might be gathering dust or like the water colors deteriorating. Luckily unlike acrylics or oils they can be revived.

Thank you for stopping by. I'm off to make more Christmas cards which are in the works. I would like to get a box full mailed out next week for the Caring Hearts Card Drive.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!