Your Sunday Best!

The challenge this month at The Altered Alice is to show us your Sunday best - ribbons, pleats, frills, lace; however you choose to interpret the challenge! The challenge is derived from this passage:

"After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!'"-- Chapter 2; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Altered Alice design team is showing off the brand new Wonderland Perfectly Clear™ Stamps from our sponsor, Stampendous (Website | Blog). This Alice is all dressed up from her shining shoes to the top of her hat, not to mention her frilly parasol! We will have THREE winners this month, and they will each receive the same Wonderland stamp set the design team is using!

I really enjoyed coloring Alice with Copic markers. I tried to make it look like she is wearing an organdy pinafore, so you see the folds of the dress through the sheer white fabric. I trimmed the Alice out, then began on the card base. I stamped a large lace doily stamp (Stampin' Up!) on ivory card stock with Versamark ink, then I used Stampendous White Detail embossing powder to heat emboss the doily. The raised embossing makes the lace look almost real! I stamped it before I folded the card, so it wraps around the back; I really like how that turned out

Then I used a Ranger Ink Blending Tool with various shades of Distress ink to make the doily stand out, creating a vivid background for the gorgeous Stampendous Alice image. I added blue gingham ribbon to create a ground for the figure, glued on with Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I cut a small slit in the fold to tie a red ribbon all the way around the card front.

All in all, I am pleased with how this card turned out, but if I had it to do over again I would start with white card stock instead of ivory; the warmly colored card base shifted the sponged blue into a teal. I have another item I hope to share next week using more of the images in this charming Wonderland set!

You still have time to enter, so hop on over to The Altered Alice and show us your Sunday best! Enter by Friday, April 27, for a chance to win this wonderful stamp set! There are some AMAZING entries this month, so be sure to take a look at all the wonderful submissions!

Please leave a comment, I love hearing from you!

I CAN Slay the Jabberwocky!

I love the final battle in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie, where Alice is dodging the Jabberwocky and trying to gather her courage to slay this hideous monster. This does not follow the books, but I still love her six impossible things! I used the Jabberwocky and the champion Alice stamps. I LOVE these images and it is rare to find them in Alice stamp collections, but  Red Eowyn has them!

I created an art journal page using water soluble crayons, collaged text, Sharpies and matte multi-medium. I had planned a lovely yellow spread (for our best butter challenge) with stenciled background textures, but things when in a completely different direction when I began to work; The only bit of yellow is her hair! Sorry about that! I began by tearing up old book pages into little scraps and built the rocky crags by gluing them down with a layer of matte medium both underneath and on top. Then I sketched in the massive chessboard. The color is all added by scribbling it on with water soluble crayons and then, instead of painting with water, you paint with matte medium (see this post for a better example of this technique). This melts the color and lets you move it around but also seals the color so it won't be disturbed by subsequent layers of color.  I added the shading to the rocks, the trees and the sky in the same way.

You can see how Alice's armor glitters with clear Gelly Roll Stardust pen. This is where I ran into trouble when I tried to add all the text and details. I couldn't get anything to write on the matte medium coated surface except Sharpies, and they did not want to write for long. I kept having to scribble on a piece of plain paper to get it going again. So I have my bold printed Sharpie text instead of the fanciful doodles I had planned, and on the trees and rocks as well. You can see the difficulty when started with the small text around Alice and the Jabberwocky; I had to switch to the larger Sharpie to get the ink to stick for the list of impossible things.

The text around the characters is bits from the Jabberwocky poem as the Mad Hatter said it in the movie:

The Jabberwock with eyes of flame.The jaws that bite.The claws that catch.

Beware of the Jabberwock, my son,and the Frumious Bandersnatch. 

He took his Vorpal Sword in hand.The Vorpal blade went snicker-snackHe left it dead, and with its head,He went galumping back."

And the six impossible things that Alice says in the movie:

"Six impossible things. Count them, Alice.There's a potion that can make you shrink.And a cake that can make you grow.Animals can talk.Cats can disappear.There is a place called Wonderland.I can slay the Jabberwocky."

I hope you  enjoy this art journal page although it turned out completely different from my vision, and go visit the Altered Alice to see the Best Butter challenge winner and honorable mentions! Please leave a comment before you go, I love hearing from you.

Wacky Hearts - The Altered Alice Chapter 12

Well, I am squeaking in at the last minute with my February hearts project! I love these wacky Alice characters from The Octopode Factory. I created two pages in my art journal:

This March Hare image is a favorite, and I combined it with the Valentine Hearts Banner. He looks like the morning after a rough road, and I had to put this crazy caption: "She knew it was true love, because she loved him even before coffee."

The images were colored with Copics, and the background paper is Lost & Found from My Mind's Eye. Several layers of grass were cut with a fringe scissors, and a Cheery Lynn leafy flourish adds some interest. Words were stamped with a little wood mounted alphabet by Studio G, a dollar bin find!

I started this spread by sponging the sky area with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. Then I tore some green paper, crumpled it up, then smoothed it back out before adhering it with a glue stick. I had a blast coloring the
Whimsical Dream Castle with Copic markers. It seemed fitting that the Queen of Hearts would have heart-shaped flowers, so I added the Heart Stems which helped to balance the layout. Letters were stamped directly on the page and the small heart punch is from Stampin' Up!.

I hope you enjoyed these humorous pages! Please leave a comment before you go, I love hearing from you!