Smeared and Smudged Rock n Rolla Challenge "Walking On Air"

Hang onto your hats - I've got a bunch of pictures for this one. The challenge here was to use Kerli"s Walking On Air video for inspiration. It's the July 2013 Rock n Rolla challenge on Smeared and Smudged. I made a booklet with 8 small collages. I had meant to use cereal bags to enclose them as I had seen in Cloth, Paper, Scissors latest issue of Pages but I couldn't get that to work. I liked and wanted to duplicate the translucent look of the cereal bags so eventually came up with frosted shrink art plastic.
Two collages were mounted onto the front and back of a little piece of muslin and the whole thing was sandwiched between two pieces of the frosted plastic which had been trimmed to size. I used ZipDry glue for all of the gluing. Then thinking how easy it would be for the plastic to get snapped apart, I laced the edges with ribbon after punching all the holes. Here are the eight pages:

The stamp here is one of Ike's fabulous digis. This one is "Vaguely Goth". Isn't it just perfect?

 The last and hardest part for me was lettering phrases from the song onto painted section of the plastic. Hand lettering never gets any easier! I made a cover for the booklet because when I hauled out the old shrink plastic, I noticed that the edges that had been exposed to the light had yellowed slightly. Now if I were really in an experimental mood I could throw the whole thing in the oven and see what happened. No, I don't think so!

Thanks for visiting!!

"Just Like a Pill" Musically Challenged Entry

Having arrived at this point in my life without ever seeing some of the music videos that are being offered up as inspiration for artwork, I find them quite stimulating. A fellow Smeared and Smudged crafter, Kapree, has started a blog Musically Challenged which offers a new video to work from every two weeks. Additionally the Smeared and Smudged forum offers a monthly video in their challenge group.
The Musically Challenged video for the current two week period is Pink's "Just Like a Pill" and here is my interpretation. All of the work was done in Photoshop CS5. The hallway walls were created using a stamp from The Stamping Ground morphed into perspective and then flipped to create two sides. The floor is a pieces of a stamp from Lost Coast. The figure is constructed from several of the mix and match figures in the book/CD Manga Females Clip Art, a lovely gift from my friend Pam. The costuming is by me. Bits and pieces - light bulb, pill, pill bottle, and bodies are from the internet.

If you've just happened along here be sure to check out the Musically Challenged blog. Great fun!!

Smeared and Smudged Challenges

Smeared and Smudged is a forum that my friend Pam introduced me to. I know, I know, don't end a sentence with a preposition but sometimes it's just impossible to back out of! Anyway, they foster the alternative stampers - the ones who love vampires and Steampunk and zombies and gore and Halloween every day of the year. And they are the nicest, most nurturing folks! They also have a challenge blog Smudgy Antics and a shop Smeared Ink. I haven't gone hogwild participating other than doing their yearly 31 Days of Halloween in 2011 and 2012. But the past few weeks I've played along with a few of their monthly challenges.

For the first piece the challenge was to interpret a video called You Da One by Rihanna. The particular challenge is called the Rock and Rolla Challenge and features a video to use as inspiration once a month. I love taking really old art pieces like this Titian "Venus of Urbino" and playing with them digitally so this was so much fun! The video wasn't anything I've heard or seen before but I find myself humming and bouncing to it all the time now!

The challenge for the second piece was from their Guest Designer for February, Leigh Snaith-Brunton and basically anything Alice worked. I had been working on these (mostly) Rick St. Dennis images for a couple of weeks with this in mind. The last piece of the puzzle was Rick's Dormouse that I had requested from him. So in the end this came together very nicely. I will be printing it out to put into my over-sized Alice altered board book. That's my woods in the background with a couple of stamped trees to integrate it with the foreground. Another of my favorite techniques!!

Meshy Mirrors

This is my entry for the Smeared and Smudged January Bloghop - the challenge is MESH IT.

I had gotten myself some nice Christmas presents, Photoshop CS5 and a book called Digital Art Wonderland by Ange Sullins and Silas Toball. So when the bloghop notice was posted, I was already knee deep in this as a learning project. The mesh idea seemed a wonderful way to differentiate their arches. I grabbed a new meshy dishcloth and an old green onion bag. Seriously, who doesn't save all of their old mesh onion bags? They were scanned into PS, given a blending mode and a layer mask (I learned how to transfer one from another layer).

Then I needed to add the undersea stamps to the sea side. They are Seahorse by Rubber Stamp Avenue, Bubbles by Impressive Stamps, and Spiral Shell by Impression Obseession. The border stamp down the middle is from Ann-ticipations, one of my favorites. I found the quote online and it seemed appropriately creepy.

If you happened upon this accidentally, check out all of the other great entries in the S & S January bloghop from the blogroll in the side bar.