Sunday, June 7, 2015

Paint The Sky

We spent a few days in San Francisco the past December. We took the ferry out to Alcatraz Island. The sky was just beginning to clear after a night of rain and there was a rainbow that flowed right into the Golden Gate Bridge. It looked like someone painted the sky in watercolor. The colors of this current CSI case were just perfect to showcase the painted sky.

I started with a plain piece of watercolor paper and did a wash in the yellow and light green colors. I took the brown and stamped a distress stamp around the border and added a bit more of the light green, a little bit darker.

Then I began working on the cluster with the photo. First I dripped teal ink to represent the rain. Next I dabbed distress ink through a flying bird stencil. Then I cut out clouds in polka dot teal vellum. I arranged them, but you really couldn't see the edges and they all blended in together, so I cut some clouds out of pale yellow cardstock. I still thought there wasn't enough definition, so I penned the outer edges in black. That did the trick. While I was at it, I cut a sun out of the same yellow cardstock. I pulled some wooden shapes; prisms, plane, geo tag, boats, and colorized them with ink. I cut the main title out of plain white cardstock from this really cool brush font, and inked it, trying to have darker and lighter areas. After arranging the above, I stamped the subtitle using distress ink. It ended up looking really watery, which was not a look I was going for, but fit perfectly. For the final touch, I added a propellor to the center of the sun. I created some lines for my journaling down in the bottom corner to give balance and added a starburst. I love that starburst.

Evidence used: pen work, birds, clouds, paint and stamps.

Testimony is written directly onto the page, "The weather wasn't perfect but it made for dramatic light, cool clouds, and colorful rainbows."




Got Ink

The office inspiration of this week's CSI case reminded me of these photos that I took of my fingers trying to re-ink a stamp at work. Try being the operative word! The opening for the ink was stuck shut and I had to fight to get the dumb thing open and got ink EVERYWHERE.

I decided to pull the frames and grid layout from the photo too. I cut some frames from fun paper, framing all the elements, from photos to journaling to the title to messy date stamping. Some ink splatters and smudges just finished it off.

Evidence used: stripes, ledger paper, wood grain, frames, and lightbulbs

Testimony is a list on how to re-fill, I mean not re-fill a stamp

1. Fight with case to open
2. Fling pieces apart - get inky
3. Pour new ink into res. - get more inky
4. Stamp - get inky
5. Repeat steps 3-4