Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Time Flies Altered Calendar

Hi everyone! I have a great project to share with you today, one that has been sitting in the back of my closet for some time now. I actually forgot that I had purchased this item to alter a while back, and found it behind my paper rack a couple of weeks ago. Then it sat (again) until I had the chance to sit down and do something to it. Finally yesterday I threw my hands in the air, said "screw everything", and sat my butt down to stamp. My house suffered, but I still managed to feed my kids and get my Smeared Ink orders out like I should, ha ha!

So, the item that I am talking about is this wooden calendar that I found at Goodwill. It cost about a dollar and a half, and worth every penny. Of course there was NO WAY that I could leave it the way it is...as you can see in the pic, it is definitely NOT my style. I like cows and all, but not enough to hang on my wall and look at every day.




You can see that the calendar has these little wooden tiles that slide in and out for you to arrange the dates, plus some tiles with a month on each side and some with holiday pictures. Pretty cool cause you can add those in if you want them.

To start altering, I coated the base with a black glitter paint. Then I added in other layers of paint, including beige, copper, gold, pink, and red nail polish. After all the layers dried, I tore up some old book pages and modge-podged them onto the background.

I stamped my image from the Muertos Doll stamp set from Bombshell stamps. I used coffee and watercolor crayons to color him in, then added a blood red heart using nail polish. I cut him out and arranged him on my base. Although I modge podged over him as well, I left his right hand out because I wanted to add some dimension.

Then I stamped, colored, and cut out my little flying clocks from the Rise and Shine Bombshell set. I added them to my base, with one going into my doll's right hand. A pop dot was placed behind the right hand to bring it forward. I also hand wrote my days of the week with black and white paint marker.

The final step on the base was to add my embellishments and my saying; "Time Flies When You're Having Fun", also from the Rise and Shine set. My embellishments are tiny watch pieces and gears. As the muertos doll catches the clocks, they spew out their innards! Kinda gross when you put it that way, but I thought it was cute at the time. I also added some larger washers and gears onto the shelves to complete the look.

To change up my tiles to match, all I did was color them with a gold foil pen. I decided to keep the original holiday pictures that were on the tiles, and the original words.

So in the first picture you can see that there are some blank tiles to fill in the spaces where there are no numbers; those are just the holiday tiles turned over. The second pic shows without those in place. The last two pics are closeups of the details.

I hope you enjoy!!!! I'd love to hear what you think about my project; I adore it and will be hanging it on my kitchen wall!


*click pics for larger view





Thursday, May 6, 2010

RSC Convention

Just a quick post to let you know the RSC Virtual Stamp Convention starts now! Visit our booth for a fabulous sale. Plus, we are having two giveaways, one of which is the "Li'l Grumpies" mug you see here. The other you'll have to see in the booth, but I'll give you a hint, it's a SNEAK PEEK!



Come on over and take a look!

SMEARED INK BOOTH

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

What's Going on This Month?

There are so many exciting things happening this month with Smeared Ink and Smeared and Smudged that I thought it warranted a news post all to itself!


First, Smeared Ink is hosting a brand new weekly gallery challenge! You can find all of the information on the Smeared Ink Website on the news page. The best part of the challenge is, YOU will get to pick the winner! That's right, after the entries are posted, you get to leave a comment and vote for who you think should be added to our gallery. Then at the end of the month, the four weekly winners will battle it out for a chance to win the monthly prize! Even if you aren't interested in participating, we'd love to have you come on over and vote. We are in week one right now, so hurry on over and join in the fun! Our first entries will be posted and voting session will begin this Thursday.


Next I'd like to mention that Smeared Ink is sponsoring the May sketch challenge over on Rubber Stamp Chat this month. If you don't know what RSC is, it's a wonderful forum where stampers commune to share all their fabo rubber stamping creativity! We are offering a free stamp set as the prize, so check it out when you have a sec. Also on RSC this month, their bi-annual rubber stamping online convention. Lots of amazing stamp companies will be running virtual "booths" with wonderful specials! Smeared Ink will be participating and offering some specials, and it is well worth the visit! It runs from May6-10 and you can check it out HERE. Just click through to the virtual convention thread on the 6th.


Finally, here is some Smeared and Smudged Forum news. All of our May challenges have been posted, which include our Very Sketchy sketch challenge, our Oh! The Horror Inspiration Challenge, Rock N' Rolla Inspiration Challenge, and our Twisted Tutorials Challenge. You can view all of these by visiting The Challenger group in the forum. We have two fabulous sponsors this month, Stamp It Crazy and Stamp Happens, who are offering some wicked prizes! These challenges last through the month of May, so be sure to take a gander.


Also, in case you haven't heard yet, the Smeared and Smudged forum will be moving to it's own website very soon, so be on the lookout for an update. If you are already a member, you should receive an email over the next couple of weeks that invites you to join us at our new location. If you're not a member, now's a great time to join us! We have lots of exciting things going on and great people to inspire and be inspired by!


So I hope you get the chance to take a look at all the exciting things happening this month, and I look forward to seeing you at the challenges and convention!