Sunday, October 31, 2010

What's new at The Loft - Episode 37

Happy Halloween!!!

Pumpkin Carving

Halloween is always a fun time of year, and it wouldn't be Halloween without carving a pumpkin  This year I let my youngest daughter carve most of the pumpkin by herself with some close supervision of course.


First she drew on the face.

Then I cut the opening on top for her

Then she scooped out the inside.

Then it was time to start carving.


Here is the final result, Cassidy called him Bob!!! 


Pumpkin Painting

I love to carve pumpkins too, but this year I wanted to try something different so I decided to paint a two small pumpkins.

First, I primed both pumpkins with white paint

and from my other paints I chose a fall color palette to use. 

Then I painted my pumpkin using my fall colors, laying down color in a random pattern.

I then painted on some hearts with black paint, and added decoration to them with gold paint.  For added color I found some old puffy paint and put some green and purple dots on top.

The second pumpkin I then spray painted with gold paint.

I doodled a flourish design that I was really happy with and decided to follow for this pumpkin.

I then used the same color palette and painted the colors in a random pattern.  While the paint was still wet I laid paper towels on the surface to remove some of the paint and to give it the look of texture by letting the gold spray paint show through.


I then used black paint to draw on my pattern.

I think these both came out so cute!



Trick or Treat

Lastly what is Halloween with out kids in costumes.  This year only our youngest Cassidy wanted to go make the candy walk, so of course we had to take pictures before she went out.



As always your comments are always welcome so feel free to drop me a note and let me know what you think.

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!!!

Friday, October 29, 2010

What's new at The Loft - Episode 36

New Susan Tuttle class Ghostly Figures

I've just finished up another class with Susan Tuttle called "Ghostly Figures".  I've taken several classes with Susan already and she is such a great teacher and I have learned so much from her.  Here are some photos that I created for the class.


"Evil Clown" - Doesn't he look creepy!

"Lady Waiting for the Train"







"London Fog" - Our assignment was to create artificial fog, so I used this night picture I took from the England pavilion at Epcot to try my hand at it.



"Ghostly Girl with Cats"

"Forgotten Man"

"The Shadow in the Window"


"Ghosts of the 4th of July"  - This is a great straight out of the camera photo I took on the 4th of July.  I was playing with long exposures and caught this great shot of some people walking on my street in a ghostly haze of the firework smoke.



ATC 3.6.5. Challenge

*** Disclaimer on digital ATC cards***. Most, but not all of the digital ATC's here were done with images found openly on the Internet for my own personal enjoyment. I do not own the photos and they have not been reproduced or sold in anyway.

It's hard to believe that on 9/6 the first card shown here I had already made 249 cards this year, but there is still 116 to go.

9/6 "The Ocean"  - I grew up on Lake Erie, literally.  My parents had a house on the beach and when I was younger that's where I could be found most of the time.  Strangely though when I moved to Florida in 1996 I have only been to the beach a handful of times, and I have only been to the beach once on the west coast of Florida where I live.  Our favorite place to go is for a vacation to Vero Beach on the East coast of Florida.  We all love going there just to relax and unwind, and reconnect as a family.    This year we are trying something different by going to Vero Beach for Christmas.  The Image and background for today's card was from an Urban Outfitters catalog.  The journaling was done with a white fine point sharpie poster paint pen.


9/7 "Bored to Tears" - I really loved this picture and the expression on the girls face so I had to use it in this digital card.





9/8 "Peace" - The background was painted with red Liquitex Basics acrylic paint, then stamped on with Black Staz on, and embellished with a white Sharpie Poster Paint pen.




9/9 "Winter Bride" - A digital card created starting with an image of a bride and overlayed with several texture layers.






9/10" Vintage 1908" - My version of going green has combined this vintage image of children with modern packaging for soup.













9/11 "Dream" - A fun little banner for such a sad day using paper scraps, and ric-rac.






9/12 "Holly Short" -  a digital creation which is my representation of a character from a children's book I love called Artemis Fowl. 

9/13 "Queen" - This is my first attempt at a steam punk ATC and I love the way it turned out.  I used some glitter paper for the background and the image was of a Ziegfeld girl I pulled off the Internet.  I then embellished the card metal jewelry findings, and wire along with typewriter sticker letters.








9/14 "Paint explosion" - A card made of bleached muslin used as an experiment in color.  Before adhering the muslin to the card several drops of color were put on the plain muslin, then rolled and flattened.
A messy but very fun card to make.




9/15 "Venus" - Another fun card made using an image of the lady in the Clam shell, embellished with different buttons with the shanks cut off and a small square mirror strategically placed.










Well that's all I have for today.  Comments are always welcome and appreciated so please feel free to drop me a line.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.