I've been chosen as a member of the Artistcellar Design Team!!!

How cool is that??? I'm a little late posting about this, its been very busy in my world. When I saw their call for artists, I thought about applying, then thought some more. I've only been playing with paper since last February, so not quite a year. Then I thought, what's the worst that could happen? They say no thank you. No big deal, I'm a rookie, really. WELL.........I was selected, one of four new design team members out of thirty-some applicants. I am so honored. My other three teammates are so much more accomplished than I am, it was really humbling to have been selected to join such a talented group. 

This is such a great fit for me as I'm a stencil-addict to begin with, and I already have many of the Artistcellar stencils in my stash. The really cool news is that the Artistcellar has many more upcoming releases scheduled for their new designs!!! I've already received a couple of those -- I can't show you yet, but I'll be busy working on my first project using those new designs and will post about my project here and on the Artistcellar blog as well. Some really exciting stuff in the pipeline, so please stay tuned! Don't miss out -- please check out their website and blog! 

Here are some pics of a few things I've been working on lately: 

What is it about poppies??? I just love them! 

 I am loving Viva Decor products lately. The 3D lettering is Ferro thru the Crafters Workshop stencil called Art Is. 

 And another page of poppies! Flowers and pods on this one. This page started out with one of my inky clean up paper towels glued down, then I isolated the spots I wanted to use to be the colors of the blooms and pods, gesso'd around them to make them pop, then added my usual marks and drippage. 

This is the paper towel I used for the background. I just couldn't throw it away with all this inky goodness on it. 

 This pod is my favorite on the whole pate. I just love those colors!

I LOVE color - the brighter the better and the more the merrier. So I challenged myself to a black and white page. I'm so tempted to throw some red ink at it every time I see it, but I resist. I will leave this one black and white, but I'm sure at some point I'll make another and have my way with the red or hot pink ink! 

 And I'm back to color! This one started out with pieces of a paper napkin in the background. The napkins was yellow and white flowers on a ground of pink with white polka dots. The rest of the page just happened. This one makes me smile when I see it. Happy colors! 

 Several Viva Decor products in this one!

Isn't that gold ink awesome? I just love it and I love the way it dripped around the 3D Ferro dots on the right. Close up of that below...

The hexagons are a 3D Viva Decor gel.  

Green Gold Ferro thru a texture stencil. 

 The background of this one was a free digital download of a circular pattern of really cool fonts of letters, then I white washed over that with some Goldens Airbrush Acrylic, then my crackle roller stamp with distress ink in Vintage Photo. You can see all that close up, but when you see the whole page it looks like a map in the background - one of those happy accidents! 

 A friend of mine commissioned me to do three canvases for her living room. She has 14' ceilings and everything in the room is beige, brown or black. She loves bright colors, especially greens. These are two of the three canvases I'm doing for her... 

 I've also done a second Gelli Plate video - not my finest hour, but I thought I post it anyway. I figure its a good lesson to everyone that tries what sounds like a great idea, but doesn't pan out when you try it. I really need to work on the editing part of this stuff. I was able to muscle my way thru some edits, but when I uploaded it -- which by the way took over TWENTY FREAKIN' HOURS -- the unedited version is what uploaded! Shoot me now! And I had some very witty edits added along with some links to what I was working on, and I also edited OUT the last few seconds where my face ends up on camera - very poor angle, no make up, and scarring from some skin cancer treatments I'm currently doing -- apologies if I scare your small children or pets! I'm guessing I need to figure out how to compress my videos too. Twenty hours - really? If anyone has more of a clue than I do about this, please point me in the right direction! Check out this one if you dare! 

Thanks to those of you who have joined my blog and helped me exceed my goal! I was hoping to have 50 members by June 1st, and I'm now at 53! YAY!!! My new goal is 75 by June 1st, so please join me if you haven't yet! 

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

My Name is Patti, and I'm an Addict! I admit I have a problem!

I am officially addicted to my Gelli Plates! Yes, I said plate's', plural! I now have all three of those babies - thank you Santa! I don't know if its how fast you can produce such great prints or if its the suspense wondering what the next pull will reveal. But its something very addicting for sure. My hubby keeps asking, Babe, what are you going to do with all those papers? (God love him, he just doesn't get it!) Ummmm, I'm going to look at them! Hello!!! I did get myself a Cinch Binder Tool with my gift certificate he got me at The Queen's Ink, so some of my prints will live to become a page in a book. Some are so cool I hate to punch holes in them. I'm thinking a 10' x 10' frame with a gynormous collage of all my favs??? That should go over big! Hon, we need to rent a forklift to get my collage upstairs!!! 

In doing all these prints, I'm learning a thing or two about the gelli plate and the results you can get from pulls done a particular way. Being the open and giving person that I am (makes me sound nice, doesn't it?), I decided to try my hand at making a YouTube video. So don't you know that halfway thru what I was doing, my iPhone stops filming - apparently I have a storage issue - but I decided to upload that puppy anyway since it did tape the segment showing what I set out to convey. You can (and really REALLY should, hint hint!) check out my YouTube premier here. I watch tons of YouTube videos and I think I've watched every Gelli Plate out there, and I can honestly say that I've never seen one with someone doing this 'clean up' technique the way I do it. Now I'm not near cocky enough to think that I am the only person in the Gelli Plate kingdom that does this, but I am saying I have yet to see a video about it. These next prints are earlier examples of the results I got when I used the same technique I demo in the video. And I still don't know what to call it - Double Dip Whammy Clean-Up Pull? (Perhaps not!) 

I LOVE how this one came out! You can see the shadows in the green metallic of the remnants that were lifted from the dirty plate. This is one of my favs! Definitely going in the 10' x 10' collage! 

 You can see on this one that only what was the positive part of the stencil is showing the shadows I picked up. This process is covered in the video. 

 I'm not wild about this one, but its not finished yet either. This was just a clean up thru a circle stencil using Golden Interference Violet on black card stock. 

Another print using the positive remains of the stencil. 

So back to the regular ole basic printing, not the Double Dippy Clean Up Whammy prints - hey - that does sort of just roll off the tongue, doesn't it??? Be prepared to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and...

 I am crazy about this 3D stencil. I've used it a lot as you will see, but its really cool!

 If you look really, really close, you'll see that crackle pattern under the black stencil print.

 This is a close up of a pull of the 3D stencil. Looks like an octopus tentacle -- I have to be very careful when I say that word aloud! 

 This one was used as the banner on the Dyan Reaveley Society closed group page on FaceBook! 

 See what I mean about this 3D stencil? Love it! 

And the aftermath: 

That's all for now folks! And if your hand is killing you from all this scrolling, I can recommend a great Carpal Tunnel doc! 

Oh, and guess what I'm doing tonight??? My friend Jodi is coming over for a playdate -- wait for it -- on the Gelli Plate!!! Yay!!! 

Oh, did I mention you should really, REALLY take a look at my video??? Just sayin'! Since its my first take, I'd welcome your input and feedback. 

Thanks again for taking your precious time to stop by and see what I've been up to lately. 

Take care, 

Patti