Alice is Going Postal with Stamp Attack!

This month at The Altered Alice the challenge is go go postal - postage, letters, stamps, however you choose to interpret the challenge. It is based on this quote:

The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, `For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, `From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.'Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.--Chapter 6, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The sponsor is Stamp Attack, a British company that produces some of my favorite Alice stamps ever! They just released the new Alice Faux Postage set and the Mouse Tail stamp. The design team has had such fun showing them off! I also used stamps from the Stamp Attack "Alice 2" plate, including the Fish Footman and my fave, the Alice Scrabble tiles!

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Other supplies included a McGill Envelope punch, the Tim Holtz Postcard embossing folder, a postage edge scissors and punch, plus two crown stamps from Stampin' Up. All is shown off on a little Maya Road chipboard square accordian album; each panel is three inches square.

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Here you can see the back, with the pattern made by repeated stamping of the Mouse Tail stamp! I began by painting each panel a different color; the first panel was metallic gold. I stamped the Mouse Tail stamp with black ink on the lighter panels and with Delicata Gold on the dark panel - what a brilliant gold!

Then I used tiny envelopes I made from a mini envelope punch, stamped them with a tiny crown, and tucked a larger crown into one of them. All the wonderful Stamp Attack stamps were colored with Copics. I cut apart the Alice Scrabble tile stamp and put one on each of the stamp panels. I also embossed a sheet of manilla card with the Postcard folder. It tore the paper up the first time, so I started over and heavily misted the paper with alcohol before embossing. This made the paper pliable enough to make the sharp bends without tearing. And here are all the individual panels:

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I hope you have enjoyed my Alice Postage project as much as I enjoyed making it! Come play along, you have until this Friday, June 22, 2012, and Stamp Attack is giving away a great prize! See you at The Altered Alice!

Please leave a comment before you go, it really makes my day when you are kind enough to leave a remark!

Alpha Stamps, meet Daily Window Bags!

Daily Window Bags - Classic Tote

The challenge this month at The Altered Alice is anything goes, and we have been sponsored by Alpha Stamps, [Store | Blog], suppliers of amazing collage supplies, exclusive rubber stamps, and wonderful collage sheets in card stock, transparency and digital formats.

In the meantime, I was contacted by Daily Window Bags and asked to decorate two of their wonderful bags. These bags are really special, as each has a clear window in one side made for stamped inserts! I love my bags; they are so well made and have beautiful apple green linings with pockets. I chose the Eight Days a Week purse and the All Around Classic Tote (plenty big enough for scrapbooking supplies of course), and naturally I wanted to decorate them with a Wonderland theme!

I decorated the straps of the All Around Classic Tote with all kinds of Alpha Stamps goodies, glued with E6000 onto black felt strips which are affixed with velcro over the bag's stitched straps.

I had so much fun picking out items for the bag: there is a royal crown for the Queen of Hearts (red added to the brass with a Copic marker); the keyhole and key for tiny door into the garden; a brass filigree fan for the White Rabbit; clock buttons for the White Rabbit's and the Mad Hatter's pocket watches, a brass butter knife for the March Hare who tried to lubricate the watch with the best butter; small silver-plated teacup, teapot and spoon charms; miniature playing cards for the Queen of Hearts subjects; card suit buttons which fit perfectly into lots of sprocket gears and mini-gears to represent the Mad Hatter's clockworks; a chunky corked bottle with the "drink me" potion, a larger clock face and game spinner instead of hands because time is broken and  it's always tea time at the Mad Hatter's, a large wooden teapot and teacup (handles and rims colored with a Copic marker), and an ornate chipboard-reinforced label at the top that is stamped with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" from the Alice's Adventures stamp set and then stickled and coated with Glossy Accents. A wire pin holds another key onto the bag handle.

The inserts are a generous 5 3/8" x 7 1/2" size. I used recycled chipboard from packaging as a backing. The background is a page from last chapter of Alice where the King of Hearts is talking at the trial, which seemed perfect for my King of Hearts insert. Images from various collage sheets in their Alice in Wonderland section are in the background. The King of Hearts in the lower left corner is a stamp from the Alice's Adventures set, which has been stamped several times and layered for dimension. All has been sponged with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Daily Window Bags - Eight Days a Week purse

I love the Eight Days a Week purse; the buckled straps add a lot of style, and the pockets on both ends are so useful for cell phone and sunglasses! For this window insert, I went with a flamingo/croquet theme. I made the background by stamping the row of flamingos from the Alice's Adventures set then sponging. I love how it turned out, and it is one of my favorite stamps in the set, so different.

I colored in an image from the "Alice Herself" collage sheet. The label is stamped and embellished with tiny brass flamingo charms, as is the ribbon bow at the bottom. The Queen of Hearts in the lower left corner is from the Alice Characters collage sheet, and Alice has been stamped and colored from the Alice's Adventures stamp set.

I LOVE these bags and you will be seeing them again in the future as I make many more inserts for them! Because I glued all my embellishments on the tote bag to black felt strips which are attached with velcro, I can even remove the embellishments to display other themes. I would love to make some Christian-themed inserts based on favorite scriptures for example, or Christmas and other holiday inserts to celebrate the seasons!

Thanks so much to Alpha Stamps for sponsoring this month at The Altered Alice, and thanks so much to Daily Window Bags for introducing me to this fabulous product line!

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this project!

It's time for a Lewis Christmas Carroll over at The Altered Alice!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from The Altered Alice! This month the design team brings you their holiday wishes, and we invite you to send your holiday greetings to The Altered Alice. You have until Friday, Dec. 23 to enter. The winner post will either be a little early or late, as the last Sunday of the month falls on Christmas day!

Our prize this month is a $40.00 gift certificate to Custom Crops, the premier online retailer for crafters of all kinds. From Accuquilt to Zva Creative, adhesives to vinyl and everything in between, Custom Crops offers a huge selection of the products you've been looking for at competive prices with fast, friendly customer service. Thanks to design team member Donna for organizing this Christmas prize!

To celebrate the season, we bring you The Lewis Carroll Memorial Window at Daniell Chapel in England. Notice the left panel where Lewis Carroll and Alice kneel to pay homage to the newly born Christ in this wonderful Nativity scene! This month's quote is actually contained within the windows, do you see it?

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The window was designed by stained glass artist Geoffrey Webb,  a must-see for anyone that loves Wonderland. A wonderful Christmas poem by Lewis Carroll is shown in the center three bottom panels, which include characters from Wonderland - the White Rabbit, Dodo, the Caterpillar, Mad Hatter, and more! Our own Sue Roddis visited this chapel and gave me permission to show her close-up photos here, click to enlarge:

We look forward to seeing your holiday greetings, so send us a Christmas card or tag! If it features Wonderland, you will have two chances at the randomly awarded prize instead of one. Multiple entries are fine, but each must be on a separate post. 

Stop by The Altered Alice to see some AMAZING design team inspiration projects, and we hope you will play along as well!

Mad Hatter Book Box for The Altered Alice CHAPTER 8

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The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last March--just before HE went mad, you know--' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,)
`--it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing 
"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!"
You know the song, perhaps?' 
`I've heard something like it,' said Alice. 
`It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, `in this way:-- 
"Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle--"'
-- Chapter 7, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Here at The Altered Alice we celebrate Mad Hatter's Day twice a year as the date is taken from the price on his hat - ten shillings and a sixpence or 10/6. That means it is on October 6 here in the United States, and on June 10 in the United Kingdom. But mainly it is just a great reason to party with the Mad Hatter twice a year! Your challenge is to celebrate the Mad Hatter, and as OPTIONS you can use something that twinkles or shines AND/OR you can bring some spookiness into it since we are all having a "Twinkle twinkle little bat" sing-along around our mad tea table!


Our prize this month is an A5 sized unmounted stamp set from IndigoBlu (a £13 value), or an equivalent amount of A6 stamps. IndigoBlu is a fantastic new British stamp company that makes "Quintessentially English Rubber Stamps" right there in England.

In fact IndigoBlu is sponsoring The Altered Alice for October AND November, and the design team will be working with these two fantastic Alice stamp sets, titled appropriately "Alice I" and "Alice II". Most Americans don't know what A5 and A6 mean so I'll just tell you, these sets are really big!

I encourage you to go visit IndigoBlu.com. All stamps are on sale right now with their introductory pricing, but that won't last forever, and the designs are all wonderful! In addition, the Head Honcho Alfie says
"The Altered Alice readers can take 10% OFF during the challenge; just use coupon code AlteredAlice in the voucher code box at checkout!" 
Thanks Alfie!


Enter by Friday, October 28; our randomly drawn winner and the honorable mentions will be announced on the last Sunday, October 30. Multiple entries are encouraged, but each must be on a separate post. As always, entries that feature Wonderland in some way will get two chances in the drawing instead of one.


Mad Hatter Book Box

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My project starts with a paper mache book box. I painted it with gold and copper, then I painted the outside with crackle medium, then ivory.  Wherever the crackling was not very good, I filled in with the wonderful IndigoBlu crackle stamp in rust ink. I love this IndigoBlu image of the Mad Hatter looking pensive; a nice change from the Tenniel and Disney versions! I stamped it in brown and colored it with Copic markers and trimmed it out. I stamped the raven image on tissue paper with gray ink and used the back side as this softened the bird image even more and let me flip it to face the other direction.  The raven riddle, another IndigoBlu image, was stamped in brown and trimmed out. Because I used a waterbased dye ink to stamp the rust crackles, I sprayed the whole box with a fixative, which prevented the ink from running when I decoupaged the two images onto the front with matte multi-medium.

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On the spine of the book box, I decoupaged the Alice in Wonderland title, another IndigoBlu stamp that I stamped in brown and trimmed out. I colored the raised bands on the spine with gold and copper Krylon leafing pens, then added a row of bumps with a Viva Decor pearl pen in copper.

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Of course I had to show off my ultimate favorite IndigoBlu image, this whimsical March Hare! I can just imagine him defending his attempted repair on the Mad Hatter's watch, saying that he used the best butter to lube the works! I love the distressed font on the IndigoBlu quote stamps, this one and the hare were stamped in brown, the hare was colored with Copics, and they were decoupaged onto the box. The IndigoBlu flourish was stamped on the front and back with Versamark and heat embossed with gold detail powder. The box is not perfectly flat, so the impressions were not perfect but I think it goes with the crackling and distressing!

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I painted the inside of the box black and added a strip of brown striped ribbon and this IndigoBlu image of the Mad Hatter's tea party. I think this would be a really great place to keep all kinds of Alice-related charms and trinkets for use on projects.

Supplies: (Note: If you are viewing this in email or a reader, you will have to click on the title of this post to go to the blog.)
I hope you enjoyed my project to celebrate Mad Hatter Day in the U.S.; I'd love to read your comments! I also hope you will visit IndigoBlu to see their wide variety of wonderful stamps; remember they are already on sale plus you get an additional 10% off on top of the sale price!

A life without BOOKS...would kill me!

I am an avid reader. I have thousands of books; I am afraid to be more specific than that, lol! We moved all the time when I was a kid, and being quiet, chubby and wearing glasses pretty much ensured I was not at the top of any popularity list. Books were my friends, and they were friends who could come along with me no matter where we lived. When I found this quote by Heinrich Mann I knew I wanted to build an art journal page around it: "A house without books is like a room without windows."

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I started by sealing the page in my 7x10 inch journal with gesso. Then I tore up book pages and decoupaged them onto the page with matte multi medium.  Then I scribbled Neocolor II watercolor crayons in various shades of green, but instead of activating them with water, I used more of the multi-medium. It worked like a dream and had the benefit of making the watercolor impervious to subsequent applications as it was now sealed with acrylic!  This allowed me to then paint in a brown path over the greeen without mixing the green into it. I used an ultra-fine Sharpie to sketch in cobblestones and clumps of grass.

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Then I turned my attention to the sky. I scribbled in a sunrise sky with all different colors of watercolor crayons, then wet my brush with matte medium instead of water. I LOVE this technique. The medium is wet so it activates the watercolor, but it is like mixing up an acrylic glaze in all different colors right on the page! Heaven!  I stamped the quote with a little Studio G wooden letter stamp set that I found in the dollar bin at Michaels. I did not even try to keep them straight; I prefer the crooked look. I used black Stazon to ensure it would stick to the acrylic medium.

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I love this set of Zettiology house stamps by Teesha Moore. Each one looks like it has its own story inside! I really like the way they all have faces and text inside. I stamped them with Versafine on cream cardstock and glued them down with the matte medium. It still needed something, so I added this tree with a leaf stencil by troweling gesso through the stencil using an old credit card. When it dried the white looked too stark, so I colored it with Copic markers! Love the way this turned out.

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Supplies: (Note - if you are reading this in email or a reader, you may have to go to the blog to view the supplies; just click the title of this post.)
I would love to hear your comments on my page!  Thanks so much for stopping by.  I'll have a pretty incredible card to show you next time, back to my roots!

Twelve Things to Remember. . . We will never forget.

Last week I visited my friend Molly and showed her some of the fun things you can do with PanPastels. I quickly created this vivid background in a Strathmore Mixed Media Visual Journal using the Sofft Tools oval sponge and the 20 painting colors set. They are completely erasable, so after I used a fine black Sharpie to draw my checkerboard border, I just erased the pastel and brought it back to a bright white page! The eraser was not the best, sure wish I'd had my kneaded eraser handy!

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Molly had just received a Zettiology order, and I could not resist stamping this cool Teesha Moore image in the center! I used the eraser to create highlights in her face, legs, and striped sleeve. Then I used a fixative so I could add more layers without smearing. 

There are three really good quotes worked into this stamped image, but they are so tiny you can hardly read them. I decided to write them larger on my page AND site the sources. I am fanatic about listing the authors of things, and I like to list dates also when that adds interest. 

Can you see all the quotes? One is on her chest, another down the left sleeve, and the third is writing tiny, tiny, tiny around the whole figure:

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I added white gel pen highlights to the figure with a Sakura white Gelly Roll pen. A little shine on her nose, highlights in her curls, and gleams in the whites of her eyes, white gloves, a dazzle on her tiara, it all really brought her to life! 

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The quote on her chest reads "We should gain more by letting ourselves be seen such as we are, than by attempting to appear what we are not." was in the "Maximes" of François de La Rochefoucauld which began in 1665 and reached their final form in 1678. Isn't it fascinating how human nature doesn't change? This advice sounds as fresh today as it did in the seventeenth century! I wrote it in at the top with various black Copic Multiliner SP pens, then I doodled lines and added some white dots and outlined them as well.

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All around the checkerboard border, I wrote in "Twelve Things to Remember" by Marshall Fields, the great Chicago retailer. It echoes the way it is written all around the edge of the figure. They are also sometimes called "Twelve Priceless Qualities of Success."

Twelve Things to Remember:

1. The value of time
2. The success of perserverence
3. The pleasure of working
4. The dignity of simplicity
5. The worth of character
6. The power of kindness
7. The influence of example
8. The obligation of duty
9. The wisdom of economy
10. The virtue of patience
11. The improvment of talent
12. The joy of origination

All things worth remembering, worth valuing, worth preserving.

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The quote down the left sleeve says "You give birth to that on which you fix your mind." by Antoine de Saint-Expupéry, a French novelist and aviator who lived from 1900-1944. Another quote that is as fresh now as it was then. Of course the point of the quote is to fix your mind on good things, lofty goals, to dream great dreams. But it also works in reverse. Serial killers dream terrible dreams and fix their mind in directions they should never go and give birth to atrocities. Terrorists in some cave or compound fixed their minds on how to devastate America and gave birth to the destruction of World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the high-jacked plane of heroes. We all need to exercise some mental discipline to maintain decency, kindness, and civilization. We need to strive to fix our minds towards the good and so give birth to creativity, to joy and not to tragedy.

I still remember the day it happened. I was at work in a 50-story skyscraper in New Orleans. A friend called and said, "Get out of there! If the planes come to New Orleans it is your building they will hit!" I said what are you talking about and she said "Find a TV!" We all watched in horror in the conference room. Not one face without tears. Just the beginning. . . .

This page did not start off having anything to do with 9/11, but I finished it on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy and it seemed to apply. It was certainly on my mind as I researched all the quotes and added all the text. So I added the speech bubble to the figure. "We will never forget."

9/11/2001:

WE WILL NEVER FORGET.