A Very Deer Canvas by Shanna

Hello to all you crafters out there. I am excited to share a new altered canvas I created for some change in weather inspiration for you. Also with Thanksgiving this past week I know some people love to get those Christmas decorations out and get started on the season. 

So first I covered everything with gesso. Then I added some various sprays, paints, and inks to achieve the look I desired. 

For the deer I just covered the chipboard with gesso and after that dried a thin layer of Crackle Accents. After letting the Crackle Accents dry I went over the deer with some Distress Ink so it got into the cracks and then used a paper towel to wipe off the extra ink. The crackle will act as a resist!

I did the same thing with a leftover piece I had from the Wrought Iron Set. I just love this technique. 

I added some stamping and flowers with a word I cut out. With Winter well on it's way I thought this project would inspire you to get into some cold weather themed projects!

Items Used:

Flourished Deer

Wrought Iron Set

Spooky Sentiments and Tombstones by Dianna

Hi Everyone, Dianna here with Gina's Designs Spooky Stand Up Sentiment and Tombstone Stand Ups.  I made this project with Amy Loves' celebration of 500 Youtube Subs in mind.  I will be sending this to Amy as part of her giveaway.  Make sure you hop over and see
Amy's Youtube channel.

First I spray painted the sign black and cut the Spooky out of three different papers. I then embossed the purple with a splatter folder.  I then tore the different papers in various areas to give a more tattered look.  I then distressed the edges with black ink

I then painted the wrought iron set black and placed the large fence behind the Spooky.

I painted the skeletons white and used white and purple Stickles on all the skeletons.  I cut the arms and legs off the large skeleton, punched holes in all the pieces and used brads to reattach the limbs.  I used orange paint on the pumpkin and placed the pumpkin in the skeleton. I placed a green rosette with a black bat on the top of one of the fence spikes. The spiderweb was painted white and daubed with white Stickles.

I decided to paint four tombstones black and used black Stickles on three of them.  The fourth black tombstone I used grey Stickles over the black to create a streaked look.  I painted the last tombstones grey and distressed both with black ink.  Stickles was used on the angel tombstone and the center stone was papered with left over scrap paper.  

ITEMS USED

Gina's Designs

Stand Up Sentiments

Tombstone Stand Ups

Spooky Shape Set

Spiderweb Shape Set
Wrought Iron Set

Tombstone Stand Ups for Halloween And a Look at a Famous Cemetery

Happy Howl-o-ween, and welcome to my version of Hollywood Cemetery.  When I saw this set of tombstones from Gina's Designs Lasercuts, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them.  I want to share a bit of history behind Hollywood Cemetery with you first.

Hollywood Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery located next to Richmond, Virginia's Oregon Hill neighborhood at 412 South Cherry Street. Characterized by rolling hills and winding paths overlooking the James River, it is the resting place of two United States Presidents, James Monroe and John Tyler, as well as the only Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis. It is also the resting place of 28 Confederate generals, more than any other cemetery in the country; these include George Pickett and J.E.B. Stuart.^[3]

My inspiration for this goulish project is simple.  As a kid, on Sundays after church, my father used to take us to this famous, historic cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, to visit relatives buried there, as well as show us historical burial sites for very famous people.  You see, my father grew up in a house across the street from this pre-Civil War cemetery, and as a boy, he used to play all over this garden-like setting.  He knew every inch of it, and knew exactly where interesting people were interred, as well as the history behind it.  It may sound eerie to some, but it is a beautiful and very serene place to visit.  Modern cemeteries do not have beautiful tombstones or mausoleums to honor loved ones, so some of the architecture here was quite stunning.  For this reason, many movies and TV shows would be filmed in the cemetery throughout the years, including a scene from the move, The Jackal, starring Richard Gere and Sidney Poitier in 1997. 

Monroe's grave at Hollywood Cemetery.  
John Tyler's grave is visible in the background. 

George Pickett's grave

The Sauer family Mausoleum
in Hollywood Cemetery

I took liberties decorating my tombstones, as I put the architectural elements where the names and dates would be, but art is art, and this is just my interpretation of the beauty I remember.  

I first cut pieces from the Wrought Iron Set and the Border Sticks Floral and Border Sticks Lace,  glueing them onto the tombstones to make them more ornate.  I even used some of the punch out parts from the Wrought Iron Set and put them together to make different designs.  Nothing went to waste here. 

Then I base coated each piece, front and back, with black gesso, using a dabbing motion to get some texture.  When that dried, I painted each piece with a wash of dark grey acrylic paint and water.  I used a heat tool to dry it and bubble the paint a bit for more texture.  Remember, some of these tombstones are over 150+ years old. 

I painted the smallest skeleton from the Skeleton Shape Set with grey paint, then dry brushed the white over it for an aged look. I shaped the skeleton gently with my fingers and glued his feet to the bottom of the double tombstone.

For a mossy look, I added the green Flower Soft, which was a bright green.  I wanted it to look old, so I added moss green paint to it when it dried.  See the difference on the angel tombstone where I added the paint.

I wrapped the bead garlands around the tombstones to look like vines growing up around them, some of which I colored with the orange distress paint. 

I removed the prongs from metal cross brads and glued them to each tombstone.

Here are some closeups of the different Tombstone Stand Ups in the set.

Gina's Designs Lasercuts Supplies used:

Tombstone Stand Ups

Border Sticks Floral

Border Sticks Lace

Wrought Iron Set

Skeleton Shape Set

Other supplies used:

green flower soft 

acrylic paints

white glue

embellishments (my stash)

If you would like to read more about this famous and historic cemetery, you can visit the Hollywood Cemetery website.

Thanks so much for stopping by and for sticking around for my history lesson.  I encourage you to visit Gina's Designs Lasercuts shop for all of your chipboard needs.  She has the most intricate and high quality shapes around. 

Have a very safe and Happy Halloween and stay crafty, my friends.

Barbara

Haunted House with Guest Designer Jackie Neal

Hello again! Jackie here, for my final Wednesday with Gina's Designs! I have to tell you, this guest spot has been a blast and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Gina's products! Again, Gina, thanks so much for asking me along!

BOO! Haunted House!! 

I started with the Haunted House Silhouette 2 Set, then added other chipboard pieces by Gina's as I went.

 

To begin, I covered the house with gesso, orange and green so these colors would come through the crackle when the purple top coat was added.

  

Here I added two different sized webs from the Spiderweb Shape Set

To distinguish the roof line I used a stencil with black modeling paste to create the look of roof shingles. Skellies and ghostly children were added.

The remaining piece of my Wrought Iron Set  was cut in half to become the gates for the sides of the house.These gates also help to stabilize the house upright as I chose not to use the stands that were included.

Layers and layers of color as well as embossing powder for texture were added to the gates.

 The tree, which came from the Winter Shape Set  was also layered with color as well as crackle paste.

The chipboard pieces, ghost, cat, BOO, and bat all came from the Spooky Shape Set  to help complete my Haunted House !

I do hope you have enjoyed my haunted Boo house and that I have inspired you to go shopping with Gina's and create some fun of your own!  -Jackie

Gina'sDesigns Products used:

Haunted House Silhouette 2

Spiderweb Shape Set

Wrought Iron Set

Winter Shape Set

Spooky Shape Set

Other Products Used:

Stickles

DecoArt Paints

Cheesecloth

DecoArt Weathered Wood

E6000 Glue

Various Graphics 

A Special Tribute by Guest Designer Jackie Neal

 Hello everyone,thanks for joining me again here at Gina's!

Today I would like to share something very special to me. September 19 was my Mom's birthday. She would have been 84. 

In honor of my Mom, I created this wall hanging using some of my favorite photos of her along with some of my favorite pieces from Gina's Designs.

 Read along as I share some photos and a few steps of my process.

This first photo is to show you a bit of how I work.

I had the general vision of what I wanted, but not sure of what elements I would use. The assorted Gina's pieces auditioned on and off and up and down, for about an hour before I finally (and I use that word lightly) decided!

For the base, I used covers from a book. They were gessoed, then painted, crackled and glued together.

 

 Next up painting the Flourished Frames Set-Evie (I used all three) and giving these a layer of crackle as well.

oops about the extra bits-darn macro shows everything!

Gina's Peacock Feathers Shape Set are absolutely gorgeous! These fit perfectly into Mom's piece as she had a beautiful evening dress that my Dad had brought her back from Japan. The dress, iridescent Damask Silk, had Peacock feathers all over and was one of the colors I used for this.

After the Peacock Feathers were painted and placed along with the other chipboard, I felt I needed just a bit more. I went through my Gina's stash and found the perfect chipboard pieces!

Again a bit of separation was done -

I told you Gina's chipboard was versatile!

 Here I used the Wrought Iron Set and separated a few of the swirly embellishments for my accent pieces for the center.

   I was painting the words "A Moment in Time", when I noticed there was Mom in beautiful cursive, so I cut it from the phrase and  adhered it to one of the pieces from the Stackable Labels Set.

 

I do hope you have been inspired to created something using Gina's beautiful chipboard Designs! 

  Jackie P Neal

 Gina's Products used:

Peacock Feathers Shape Set

Flourished Frames Evie

Wrought Iron Set

Words And Phrases 1

 Stackable Labels Set

Other Products used:

Silks Paints by ColoureArt~

Sea Spray, French Lilac, Chestnut Brown,

Teal Zircon,Wine&Roses, Stargazer, Key Lime

Gesso

Distress Crackle Paint-Clear Rock Candy

 E600 Glue

Once Upon A Time Canvas Layout

Hello everyone.  Barbara here, and I have a fanciful, mythical page to share today.  I love these dragon chippies from Gina's, and I still had this beautiful paper from Die Cuts With a View (DCWV) called Once Upon a Time.  Yep, I am a hoarder after all. And a good thing, too, since this was a perfect match for my page today.

If you are a scrapbooker, I figure you could use this page layout with your pictures, just simply by moving some of the embellishments around.  If you are a mixed media artist, bookmaker, or general paper crafter, I thought this would be a nice layout for a canvas, book cover, or even a card, simply using the smaller shapes in the set, or doing a bit of rearranging.  No matter what I choose to make, I really enjoy playing with the different chipboard shapes and experimenting with different ways to embellish them.  So let me tell you what I did.

Lay out your chipboard and paper pieces that you plan to use.  Take a picture (optional) to use as a reference.

Adhere print paper to a 12x12 piece of mat board, distress edges and add brown ink to darken.  Make a very watery color combination using Twinkling H20s Mystic Blue and Douglas Fir, pick up with a watercolor brush and splatter over background .  Pick up those same two colors with a makeup sponge and apply to background through the stars stencil, as shown.

Begin embellishing your chipboard pieces.

Wrought iron border: Cover with black pigment ink and heat emboss with the Antiqued Iron embossing powder.  Adhere along top edge of page, as shown.

Once Upon a Time title:  Heat emboss with Versamark ink and Tarnished Gold embossing powder; edge with Branch Bark ink for depth.

Large standing dragon: Draw details in with pencil (Picture 1).  Mist lightly with water and begin embossing those lines with an embossing tool.  Color dragon as shown with Blue, Lime Green, Teal, Yellow, and Orange Inktense blocks (Picture 2), then go over those with similar colors of Twinkling H20s Mystic Blue, Golden Jade, Douglas Fir, Key Lime, Yellow Rose.  Add details back in by going over embossed lines with a black permanent marker.  Add Crackle Accents to body and Glossy Accents to wings (Picture 3). Adhere to page with foam dots.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Medium and small flying dragons:  Paint one coat of Oyster, then one coat of Warm Gray Silks acrylic glaze.  Combine the Mystic Blue with the Garden Jade Silks Acrylic Glazes and brush over both dragons, letting the colors run, heat with heat tool  Add Waterfall glitter glue to both.  Adhere to page with foam dots.

Flourish (flame): Color with Red and Orange Inktense blocks, then paint over that with Yellow Rose Twinkling H20.  Heat emboss with Versamark ink and clear embossing powder.  Adhere to page with glue, as shown.

Supplies used:

Gina's Designs Lasercuts:
Wrought Iron Set
Words and Phrases 2
Dragons Shape Set
Flourishes 2

12x12 Once Upon a Time Collection - Camelot (DCWV)
12x12 mat board (or chipboard)
ColourArte Twinkling H20s: Mystic Blue, Garden Jade, Douglas Fir, Key Lime, Yellow Rose
ColourArte Silks Acrylic Glazes: Oyster, Warm Gray
Tim Holtz Stars stencil
Ink Pads: Black pigment ink (Colorbox); Branch Bark (Prima); Versamark (Tsukineko); Black pigment ink (Colorbox)
Embossing Powders: Rustique Antiqued Iron (Judi-Kins); Tarnished Gold (Ranger); Detail clear
Stickles Waterfall glitter glue (Ranger)

I sure hope you have enjoyed my project today and that I have given you some good ideas and inspiration.  Stop by Gina's Designs Lasercuts to see all of the various laser cut chipboard available.  You never know what will strike your fancy!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful, crafty weekend!

Barbara