 I was browsing through my Flickr and I found this drawing and realized I haven't blogged about it. I'm in my faculty's computers lab. I should be reading some text for a mini-test in the afternoon but it's sooooo boring and I have heard about the stuff in there since last year. Besides, it's totally useless by now (because the new civil process will see light in.. 6 years or so and i'll be graduated by then, why torture us *now*?).
This cat drawing is for the "Funky Cat Swap" (ATCards.com), I love cats and this is the first swap about them I join. We have to make a cat in every color *but* the normal ones a cat have. Although I love cats, it's been ages since I actually drew one, so this was a bit hard at first. I ended up basing on a cat illustration I found via Google. I don't know why but this cat look really pissed of being looked at, LOL (cats tend to have such a expression towards us, unworthy humans). I like it, though, and I guess he'll have to get used to the attention.
Since this is about strangely colored cats, I wanted to use a embossing resist technique on this one, combined with a watercolor background and reverse masking (or at least, I think it's named that). I want it to look like the "Mulberry Batik" technique on SCS, only withouth the mulberry paper, LOL.
This is why I was asking for clear/white embossing powder before, but I'm not sure if it'll turn out. I actually managed to trade some UM stamps for some white embossing powder and a little pink inkpad, the girl said she'd send it off today, so it'd be here in 15 days or so. Deadline for the swap is Nov. 16th and I prefer to send my cards 3-4 weeks before deadline, so they have time to arrive or I have time to re-make then if they got lost (which has never actuall happened).
And I'm not even counting "test" time, LOL. It'll be the first time I heat emboss and I'm looking forward to some messy trials. I don't actually have a heatgun even, but I know from the personal experience of Heather Taylor that it *IS* possible to heat emboss in a toaster oven, so hope isn't lost! :p
I have a dentist appointment today, soo not looking forward to that. Take care and thanks for looking! :)
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 By now, everyone and their mothers know that "Yatta" means "I did it!!" (Hiro, my favourite character from the Heroes t.v show, popularized the word). And it was like I totally felt today, when FINALLY Claudio brought me the damned toner photocopies of images I printed. Milly, the colorless blender thing didn't worked for me :( I tried several times with different images and different papers and solvents until I found one that worked. My best results were on a smooth paper (for marker coloring) and using nail polish remover as my transfering medium, LOL. I found that better results are achieved when rubbing nail polish remover both on the front of the paper where I wanted to transfer the image and then on the back of the image to transfer. I even could transfer some color from some laser photocopies :) On the left one I applied solvent both in the paper to transfer and in the back of the image and scrubbed with a spoon. On the right one it was only on the back of the image to transfer. My only complaint is that toner photocopies are really expensive. I mean, it is $1 for one letter sized sheet, and it was $0.50 for the laser photocopies, which is also pretty expensive for me. I mean, being a student I'm used to photocopy for 2c each one on photocopy center around the university. I'm not really used to this thing of going to professional photocopy center. I'll have to go, though. Because in my experiments I used almost all the images I had in mind for the definitive ATCs. I'll work on getting a better "collage sheet" over the weekend so I can send it to photocopy on monday or so :3 I want to paint a background for them and then transfer the images. Argh, I always make it so hard on myself on just little card. I should probably start making easier things for trades, so I won't take so much time doing then. And my hand were sore for scrubbing so hard with a spoon D: | |
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 "Este 16 de Julio sale la reina a pasear, saludando al peregrino que la viene a venerar"Someone on ATCards.com requested a card from me that featured traditional festivities/holidays from my country. I thought it was pretty cool that someone actually cared for these things, so I decided to put all my soul on the 2 cards I'll be making for her ;) This one, the first, is about a festival that takes place in the town of "La Tirana" in the inner part of the Tarapacá Region. This town venerates the Virgin of La Tirana, and every year on the 16th day of July the image of the virgin is taken out from the local church and "takes a walk" around town, while everyone dances around her (gypsies, natives, etc). There are even these folks dressed as demons that used to scare the hell out of me when I was little (lower left corner, my drawing doesn't make them justice!). My father likes to make us go to La Tirana every year, to spend time with family and such, thought we (me and my sister) don't really like it now and we make sure he knows, LOL :p Moving on, I've noticed I'm having a hard time drawing directly on the 2,5"x3,5" format so I decided to sketch in the double of that size (5"x7") the I scanned and printed in the correct size. It's a lot of work, because I still have to copy it to the ATC blank, since I want to paint this with watercolors and the ink from my printer bleeds. I was thinking about painting the original too and maybe make some ATC-sized prints, if anyone is interested :D | |
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 Not too much "craftiness" this weekend, I'm afraid :( On Friday I made a watercolored ATC but I don't want to post it here until it's all done. Here's is a little project I was working on yesterday, it's a sketch of my entry for the Postage Stamp ATC Swap on ATCards.com hosted by Carol Schmidt (who I know from Nness.org and she's a great host!). This weekend I worked on my living room rather than in my little corner on the "computer's room" because I wanted to work with watercolor and I prefer to paint with daylight (and the light in the other room kinda sucks). You can't notice but this picture was actually taken on my living table <3 I love this series of stamps <3 You probably don't know but I'm an amateur philatelist for some years now. It was this hobbie that got me into the mailart/penpalling world. So, I thought this was a perfect swap to join and show the world the stamps in my country. In general I don't consider the stamps in my country to be amazingly beautiful but this series of endangered species from my country is by far my favourite (better news, the stamps this year are actually better than in previous ones, yay! :3), most of the stamps feature birds, but I've also seen one with a wild-cat. Besides, this postage stamp was my first excuse to use my bird rubber-stamp that I bought from a local decor-store a few weeks ago :) It is supposed to be a stamp to mark books ("This book belongs to....") but I really liked the bird design, it looks like those made by natives in this region. Very appropiate because this bird ("Chincol") lives in my region too. This is just a sketch to see gow my finished work should look like. It is made on 90grs. Bond paper from a sketchbook and I used masking tape tomake a frame the size of an ATC to arrange my drawing, the stamping and the postage stamp in actual position. I haven't started the definitive ones because I don't have heavyweight watercolor paper right now :( But I already asked my fiancé to go and buy me some tomorrow while I am on classes. | |
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 This past 14th there was a *huge* change in postal rates in USPS. It affected domestical and international mail... and my budget D: As I heard (or rather, read) on the OSA Talk group, this was because USPS had bought new machinery for sorting stuff. Kinda makes me be grateful for having a prehistorical mail service, lol. All these changes hit hard on my already poor student economy. I won't be able to shop on eBay for a few months until I save a couple of bucks. I won't be able to join new swaps or send RAKs either... which sucks, I usually love to send RAKs (when I have time to make them, lol). So, I'm taking the hard way. Today I sent my fiance to buy me supplies, because I had to be all-day at university :p He bought me brads and eyelets and some papers he thought were "pretty". My city is really crappy when it comes to craft supplies, so I didn't expect too much either. I'm still trying to figure out how am I gonna paint the brads or set the eyelets without a proper tool, but we'll eventualy figure it out. I'm also gonna print/photocopy my papers, since designer paper is way too expensive now! I guess the only one really happy with this change is Claudio. Since I started this crafting-thing he always encouraged me to try to make my own supplies rather tan to buy them ready to go from a webstore. He says that if they're handmade, they'll worth more. I always wonder if someone would actually notice! I would really appreciate any tip about recycling or making your own card-making supplies. Thank you in advance! :) (Now, I must go study and stop procrastinating, LOL) | |
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 Hello, hello. I'm actually doing some stamping today, as you can see in the above picture :) I have a nasty cold (haven't got this sick in a year!). Damn winter. I don't feel like stamping all day long, so I'm taking a break for a while, until I fell better (or my fiance arrives and helps me finish, whatever happens first, lol). So, I'm off to watch the second marathon of Heroes~ ETA: Ok, I told I had it done... and here it is! My entry for Beate's Sketch Challenge, weee :D  It's a very simple card.. yet, it doesn't look at all like Beate's sketch, LOL. I love when my fiance helps me to finish a card, 'cause I always end up with something totally different that what I had in mind! He always has clever ideas for when I get stuck. In this, for instance, I wanted to use brads to hide the cardstock color changing in the layer behind the rabbit. The thing is, I don't have any, LOL! XD And even if I went to buy some, you can only find a limited supply here in my city (only bronze/silver and not very much range in size, anyway). So, he came up with a very creative way to use ribbon. (I'm still gonna buy some brads and color them myself, lol) But, oh noes. I wanted a knot and the ribbon was too short. Before I could panic, I remembered a little tutorial I saw a few days ago <3 So, it was my time to be clever. Papers: No brand in special. Brown textured cardstock, light-brown textured opaline and light-blue smooth opaline, DELETER Kent manga paper (the white one). Stamps: Kodomo Die Cut foam stamps and Autumn Leaves (Elegant Flourishes by Rhonna Farrer) Inks: None, the rabbit was stamped with Versamark and then drawed over with COPIC Sketch markers (E37, B14 and 0 -colorless blender-) Misc: Brown ribbon (misc. brand), wavy scissor (misc. brand) | |
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