Happy 2014!!!! New Goals and Challenges.

Happy New Year everyone.  Hope you've had a good start to the new year and suffering too much from a fuzzy head.

So as the new year begins everyone makes resolutions to lose weight, eat healthy, exercise more etc etc.  But these are the common things what about really challenging yourself or setting goals? 

My challenges/goal for 2014 so far are - 
- to try and read at least 52 books (yep one a week may not happen but that's the challenge), you can find the facebook page here if you fancy joining in.

- finish the 40 portraits challenge (there is no time limit on this one)

- the 29 faces challenge starts again in February -1 face each day

- make space by using up all the fabric and wool I have in my collection

Another challenge I signed up for (early this morning haha) is 30 Paintings in 30 Days - I'm not sure how I'll do with this one as I'll be heading off to the USA in a couple of weeks - I may have to get some made in advance.

My first painting for the 30 paintings in 30 days is a mixed media Artist Trading Card (ATC) it measures 2.5 x 3.5 inches.  

So there we go the start of my New Year.

Happy New Year

Anita

How to make bookmarks or gift tags from scraps of paper

Gather your ingredients - scraps of paper, glue and a sheet of card to stick your scraps onto.  I used an A3 size card you can use A4 which is what most crafters have in their stash of cards.

This is what I call the "eww" stage because it looks like a 5 year old's work.

Next start adding paint - I used acrylic paint and added it using a crumpled up piece of bubble wrap - randomly.  You can use anything you like to paint with fingers, crumpled up paper towels, an old credit card etc.  

I then used a stencil with white acrylic paint to sections of the background.

  Over this I added spots of gel medium (with my fingers) and sprinkled some embossing powder (the turquoise bits) into it and heated it with a heat gun - on top of this I did the same again but this time I added some gold embossing powder.  

I also added some fibres which added texture but lost its sheen as I went over it with paint and glue - so you may want to leave it out or add it at the end.

These 2 pictures show a close up of the embossing powder and the texture it creates.  The more I heated it the bubblier it got - just make sure you have a good ventilated room - embossing powder is meant to be used with embossing pads to adhere the embossing powder but I like to experiment and gel medium worked really well (didn't give off any smell but just to err on the side of caution make sure you don't over heat it).

After the background has dried you can cut them to any size you want.  I cut mine to 12cm by 6cm.  I then mounted these onto coordinating card and cut around them so the clean card showed around the edges - you don't have to do this I just think it finishes the tags/bookmarks off and it covers the back of the original background - mine got glue and paint in parts.

Now you don't have to do this stage but I added some embellishments just to make them that more interesting and unique.  I used some odds and ends I've had in my collection box - you can use images out of magazines, text from newspapers in fact anything you like. 

To finish off I punched a hole at the top and added some fibres.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial.

Anita