A productive day finally!

Before I get into my productive day (finally!) have to share pics of cake and the birthday 'boy'! It was our friend, Tony's, birthday yesterday. This is the cake Carol got for him. Check out the size of that golf ball!!!
Here's Tony and Carol. This was at Longhorn Steakhouse where we all had the best meal! I actually ate beef/steak/meat! And it was sooooooooooo good. I probably won't eat it again for another year but it was really good. We did go back to Carol and Tony's to cut into that golf cake! It was good but I just couldn't finish mine last night so Carol wrapped it up for me. It will be my lunch today! Thanks for the invite, cake & company!
Yesterday, I started playing with the Sticky Back Canvas by Ranger products. I tried to find this back in Michigan but our Michael's didn't carry it. The Michael's here in Ocala is more of a scrap booking store and a large part of the store is literally covered with scrap book items! It's a scrapers delight for sure, although, I think they've caused the small scrap books stores to close. They also carry lots of Ranger products too, which again is unusual. And of course they are always handing out their 50% off coupons! So guess where I shop a lot! They carry all the Golden and Liquitex products and they have a clearance aisle where I've even found a jar of Golden medium for $6.99 (normally $14.99!).

so onto my first project. I stamped some tissue paper with my lady's face then I painted a piece of the sticky back canvas with some Liquitex soft body acrylic paints. While the canvas was still wet, I laid the stamped tissue paper on top and used Liquitex matte gel medium to adhere the tissue paper on top of the wet canvas, just painting it on top of both (canvas and tissue). You can 'stick' the canvas onto paper, fabric, whatever and you can even sew through it easily. Here are two more pieces that I did. You can see the edges are frayed and I think these will make nice fiber card additions. I love my lady stamp on the right too. Isn't she cool!
For my next project.....last week our fiber guild in Michigan had for their monthly technique a metal covered composition book that my friend Carol T. was going to demo. She sent me a book and the metal tape to make a one so I thought I'd get started on it too.

Here's my finished book cover! Yep, I used my funky lady stamp and another circle stamp that I bought this year at Michael's.

Here's the process:

You take metal repair tape and cut pieces that extend over your book. These will be turned to the inside where you'll cover with decorative paper or whatever when your book is all finished. You can see the left side is all covered and I'm now starting to place the sticky side of the tape down on the book on the right.
After your tape is all 'stuck' and edges turned, you need to sand the metal to remove the lettering or guess you could keep it to add more interest, but you still need to sand areas. The sanding gives a textured look and I think helps the paints/inks to adhere. I was also at Hobby Lobby the other day and yep, had another coupon burning a hole in my pocket so....I bought a bottle of Liquitex ink and another ink by Dr. PhMartin. They looked interesting and because the Liquitex is also acrylic I figured it might cover the metal, which it did.
I just put drops of the inks on my covered tape and used a paper towel to rub into the metal.

Here is the tape painted with the inks and also stamped with the Liquitex ink. You can do so much with their ink but I'm not sure about the Dr. PhMartin. I haven't read up on using their product yet. But do check out the link above for Liquitex inks. I really like this circle stamp too.

I did use Brilliance, archival pigment ink to stamp my funky lady on with. Didn't smear or come off..figured if you could use on vellum, photos or coated papers it would work on the metal and it did.

Taada...I just need to cover the inside with decorative paper and the book will be finished. It was fun and very easy to make....didn't take me long at all but I did use my heat gun to dry each process/paint. Thank you Carol T. for this fun project!

And last but not least! This is Miss Carmella, my friend Mary's great, grand daughter! Isn't she a cutie! She's holding a wood puzzle that I sent her to color! How cute it that! I rec'd her picture in my email today! Carmella is used to me stopping by with coffee in hand! She always greets me at the door asking if I bought food with me! And yes, I usually do! Mary and I always have our coffee from Panera's!

Today I'm off for another bead class!! It's a bracelet class making triangle peyote beads but I won't make the bracelet. I just want to know how to make the peyote triangles for my beading!