Drowning in Dickens Triptych

Back in May at Art and Soul I met a gal named Jennifer. We were in a Leighanna Light class. She and I and another gal shared our workspace. Jennifer and I got to talking and decided to exchange email addresses and work out an ATC trade. We settled on doing a triptych with the theme of “drowning”. I was stumped when Jennifer asked about what theme we were going to do. I sent her a list I had downloaded but forgot how vague the themes were. I pondered this for a while and decided to see if there was an online thesaurus. Turns out there is http://www.eat.rl.ac.uk/. I entered the word drowning in the stimulus box and it spit out 34 different answers. One of them was Dickens which had me puzzled. I’ve been listening to classic literature when I take my neighborhood walks but as of yet haven’t listened to any Dickens so I had no idea where the connection came in. I wasn’t sure if they meant the author or not but after a bit of googling about Charles Dickens I found he used the reference to drowning a lot in his books. http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/. Now I finally had some direction in where to go.

I downloaded a map of Dickens’ London and cut it to fit and copied some of the quotes that reference drowning in Dickens’ books and used three different type faces that are indicative of his era. I printed them on vellum so you could still see some of the map. I already had an image of Dickens from a collage image book and carefully cut it out from the book. I used grungeboard as the surface and glued down the map, quotes and the image then used some Ranger Distress Inks to age the edges and the outside.

I used grungeboard hinges but used glossy accents to glue them. I added brads but they are for decoration only. The last step was the outside decoration so I listed some of his books by the years they were published and then added the title “Drowning in Dickens”.

Until my next post,
Diane

Getting Grungy

Last Sunday I took another class from Tina at Beach Scrapbooks. This time we played with Rangers Grungeboard and Grungepaper. It was another technique class so there are finished items but not really a finished "project". It was another instance of me having the stuff but not having played with it too much. We applied Mod Podge to a Grungeboard letter and then applied an old dictionary page. We sprayed with Glimmer Mists. We used Ranger Distress Inks and we used Ranger Alcohol inks to make a Grungepaper flower. We embossed with the Cuttlebug too. All in all it was a fun class. Tina stared a "contest" where each student would guess a number and whoever came the closest got the project board as a gift. I came the closest so I've got the originals she made for the class and since she gave the OK I'll be using them in upcoming projects and giving her proper credit.

Until my next post,
Diane

Dictionary ATC

Here's the first ATC I did for yet another Yahoo Group I belong to . This group is called AlteredDesigns and I found it by looking at Elizabeth's art on her blog. I contacted her and now I'm a member of that group too. Give her blog a look/see, she's got some really neat things on it.

Q: So Diane, just how many of these Yahoo groups DO you belong to?

A: Less than 100 but more than 20 (22 to be exact).

Q: Why?

A: Because they are there.

This ATC was made with using a background layer of Metallic cardstock from DCWV followed by a piece of paper from the Rock King collection also by DCWV. The embellishment is made using a piece of grungeboard from Tim Holtz. I used paper Mod Podge on the grungeboard and then on top of the dictionary page. Look closely and you'll see the words "skull and crossbones" that I specifically selected from the dictionary. I used the Cuttlebug to emboss the grungeboard and then inked it with Ranger Distress inks. I then outlined the edges with a gold deco marker.

Until my next post,

Diane

Giving Credit where it is due

A while back I had a post of the page I submitted for the Yahoo Mixed Media Art Friends that I belong to. I had seen a video that gave me inspiration but couldn't remember who did it. It bothered me and I kept searching using different terms and FINALLY found the source. Jennifer McGuire made this post and although I modified it using recycled cardboard instead of Grungeboard and Gel Medium rather than Mod Podge the concept was basically the same. Take a look at Jennifer's video and maybe you too will be inspired to make something fun.

Until my next post,
Diane