I'm in an Etsy Treasury

How cool is that? I've never been in a treasury before. Here it is, and since I'm not as knowledgeable and don't know how to put the picture in here, you will have to go see it. It is my caged butterfly ACEO. The theme of the treasury is caged, it was created by Fernwistleglen, check out her Etsy shop by clicking on her name.

I'm so excited.

Fun in July swap

And now they're really out of order, so bear with me. In my collage ATCs group we had a gift swap for July. My partner was Judy G, and my package arrived yesterday, I was tempted to wait until tomorrow to open it, but after I royally messed up a cake I was baking for my coworkers, I decided I deserved a little pick-me-up.
These are a pack of water colors, all closed up they came looked like the green bundle below.

There was an extra little gift in the box for my birthday (tomorrow), and I wasn't going to open it until then, but then my plans got rearranged, so I decided I needed to open it today.

Way inside the package, were these cute paper earrings that I'm guessing Judy made. Very cute.

And here are the earrings inside a frog box I found inside my present.

And here is the really cute frog box. I LOVE IT!!!

There were quite a few things in my package. A lot of paper, here is the mulberry bunch.

And here is the rest of it. The blue sparkly piece at the top there, is actually a piece of mesh fabric.

This was in the bag with the items in the next picture. It reads "Pearl Ex (mix with mat medium). I've never used pearl ex, and I don't think I have any mat medium, but I guess I better get some, so I can see what effect this gives.

These are the Pearl Ex. The blue one is actually #686 Turquoise, and the pearly one is #674 Interference Gold. The little "pills", I'm not quite sure about them. At first I thought they were those little creatures you see at stores that you drop in water and they grow.

This is a ball of turquoise fiber, the color is massively wrong on this picture.

Then there was this little package, and it was in the picture at the top of the page.

Here are some stamps. The three circly ones are those little stampers that have their ink with them.

I'm not really sure what these are but the box says Tria Inks Six-Pack 6 Pantone by Letraset colour inks. Tria Inks in 298 Pantone colours, Blender and Extender. Create custom mixes & tints. Use in Tria Brushpen, Letrajet Airmarker, refill Tria Markers.... Looks fun to play with.

She also sent a ton of stamped images and punched pieces. I didn't want to get them all out of the bags but there's frogs, butterflies, people, animals, birds, trees, and a lot more. Can't wait to use them.

And here's the card she made. I think it's tea bag folding but I'm not sure.

And here's the little box that my frog box was in.

Outside of the box challenge

I finally finished my Outside of the Box challenge this morning. Apparently, I'm more of a work at night person. So here's the finished product. I really like it. So, as stated in my previous post, I had this great idea, I was going to wrap it in this bright orange flowery fabric print I had, so I sprayed it with adhesive and added the fabric, but it didn't look good, so I took it off.
Then I had a sticky box I had to do something with, I figured if I painted it, it would dry and not be sticky, so I painted it with black acrylic paint, sprayed it with my new glimmer mist, and then sponged it with blue lumiere paint. That's what I had in my previous post.
I haven't done much more to the outside. I did add a cute little metal bracket thing last night, and then realized this morning it wouldn't open, because the metal was too stiff, so I pried that off and had to fix my boo-boo. I added the blue star german scrap to the top and the rose pin on the bottom.

Now onto the inside.

On the right side, I added a piece of cardstock that's been painted with red Lumiere paint. On the bottom is some coraly looking plastic pieces, and some crushed shells glued on the bottom. I'm thinking it needs something else on the bottom, but I'm not sure what that is, and I have a tendency to add too much stuff sometimes. I figured, I'd walk away and see what I thought later.

I was going to leave the left side alone, but the black paint just looked so dark. I added some vintage book paper that I got somewhere, I'm not even sure what language that is. I brushed some Modge Podge over the top to seal it, I might add something on this side as well, but once again I don't want to go over the top.

So, there you have it. Like I said, I like it, and that's all that matters right? I was trying to go for a somewhat underwater feel (mostly because I'm working on Sea cards for my collage group this month, those pictures will be up later in the week), but not in blues and greens, as those are my two favorite colors to work with.

Hope you all like it. One day late isn't that bad, is it? Especially since my mind still thinks I have until tomorrow to finish it.

Thank you to Lisa for this great idea, and also for mailing me the soap and box after I found out my Target didn't have it. Go over to her website to check out what others did with the box.

An art challenge

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY IN ONE WEEK!!!!!

EDIT: I still haven't finished my box yet, I could blame it on the fact I thought it wasn't supposed to be done until the end of June, or the fact that I was planning on working on it this weekend, but had a change (and extension) in my working hours, and ended up relaxing on the couch both days after getting done. I WILL work on it tonight and tomorrow until I get it done. I know I just need to get into my craft room (which I couldn't do today, because the pest control had to come, and he had to walk around my apartment without tripping over things) and stare until I get it done.

Aside from that, I'm participating in Lisa's Outside of the Box challenge. She sent me a soap box to do whatever with. Now, my first idea was to cover it in fabric. So, I sprayed adhesive on to the box and wrapped my fabric around it and then added a ribbon, well it looked bad, so I took it all off. My only problem was, now it was tacky, so I got out some black paint and painted over it. Then I used my new glimmer mist and sprayed that over it, after it dried, it was a tiny bit to glimmery for me, so I took a sponge and sponged on some blue metallic paint, now I don't know what to do with it.

I've already seen some peeks of other's boxes, and realized I have to have it done by Monday, I was thinking I had until Wednesday. Oh well, I do have tomorrow and Sunday around my work schedule to figure it out.

I was thinking of maybe making it into an art doll, but at this point I don't know.



Here's what the outside looks like:

And the inside:

Hopefully it will look a lot better than this in a couple days.

Adhesives

Got a question for people who glue stuff. Now I use a few adhesives, my favorite is my Tombo double stick tape, but (as I have learned) you can't use that for everything. I've taken to using glue dots for ribbon and smaller things that my tape doesn't stick to. I also use my E6000 glue for 3D elements, anything that's too heavy for the glue dots. Every once in awhile, I'll use my UHU glue stick to glue on some small things, or old book pages that just come off onto my double-stick tape.
I've also been using some spray adhesive for larger areas, or for vellum, as I've decided I can see everything else through the vellum. Now, I use a pizza box to spray my adhesive in, because you know if you use the spray adhesive, it seems to get on EVERYTHING within in spraying distance. My question is (I do have one), what do you do to get it off your hands? I have been trying to use other adhesives instead of the spray lately because I haven't found a way NOT to get it on my hands when picking up the piece I just sprayed. And I haven't found a way to get it off my hands once it's on there. Since it never seems to dry, I just get more crap stuck to little parts of my hands and then within a few days it goes away (after numerous washing of my hands). I could wear gloves, but I like to get down and dirty when I'm creating, I love the ink stains I get on my hands (not so much my clothes, which happens quite a bit).

So, anyone have any suggestions? I can't be the only one who uses spray adhesive. How do you guys either avoid getting it on yourselves or get it off once it's on your hands?

Treasured Tin Swap

I received my Treasured Tin from Wanda. I was so excited to see it on the front porch when I arrived home from work (especially when I heard she had received hers yesterday). Pardon the pictures for being out of order, I still haven't figured out how to put them in order, also if they're dark I'm sorry, I tried lightening them, but it's pouring outside, so not so much natural light today.
In this picture, there is some Glimmer Mist (I have been wanting some of this for awhile), a frog punch, some paper flowers, a doily looking thing, a blue marker and some neutral/brown buttons.

Here is a variety of flower soft and glitter in blues and greens. Blue/green and any variation of that is my favorite color. Most things in the tin were in that color range. Very cool to open the tin and see.

Here we have punches out of various paper in hears and circly things, plus some gem flowers at the top.

Here there is some buttons, and some binder clips. I'm very excited about the binder clips, as I read about people using them, but have never used them myself.

Here we have glitter butterfly stickers, some painted oval metal frames and a pad of green patterned paper.

Here are some great frog stickers, you should know by now I love frogs. I do already have a sheet of the middle stickers, but you can never have too many frogs.

Some vintage photographs. Very excited about these, as I can never find them around here.

Paper flowers, not quite sure of the brand, but very much looking forward to using them.

These seem to be layered stickers. I haven't looked at them that much yet.

Some trims, ric rac and lace.

The view of the tin when I opened it.

The top of the tin, I didn't realize it was so blurry, I'll try to take a better picture.

I am so happy I participated in this swap, I love all the things Wanda sent me, this also makes me excited to participate in another swap like this.

Stuff I've been up to

So, lately I've been going to garage sales and looking to find some things for the Treasured Tin swap that I'm in.
I bought this tin at our local antique mall, and thought it would work great for the swap. Of course about a week or so ago I thought maye it was a little small, so I emailed the hostess and asked, and she said I could always include more things in my mailing box, so I did. Plus it was my swap partner, Wanda's, birthday on friday and I wanted to include some extra things for that.

So here's some of what I sent her. You can see the tin in the corner, there's a couple boxes of gum with some witty sayings on them for those days when she's had it with people. The bag is full of some bookmarks I bought at a garage sale this weekend, there's another smaller tin near the top filled with some frames (can't be too descriptive as I mailed this all off yesterday and I'm not sure if she'll read this), and there's a vintage piece of fabric on top. I will go into more detail when I've heard that she's received the package.

This is another sneak peek for her: some lace, buttons, books and other things.