ClubScrap Artist Team Monthly Challenge (August)

AUGUST ARTIST CHALLENGE 

The August challenge means “back to school” for many households, so we though it would be fun to incorporate that theme into the August challenge. Some suggestions: Teacher gifts, desk organization ideas, calendars/planners, Back to School scrapbook pages.

Well I just got back from Vancouver, WA where I was working for a week. Just prior to going there, I painted a bunch of rocks to leave as 'Abandoned Art'. Normally I leave earrings, but decided to mix it up and make a bunch painted rocks. Here is a sampling of some of the rocks I have been painting:

While I was in Vancouver bored in my motel room - I brought a bag of rocks I had previously painted black and brought my paint and tools to paint more rocks:

Well I was telling my co-workers about my little project and one of them said - have you heard of "Vancouver Rocks"? well no I hadn't...so I looked into it. It is a facebook group dedicated to painting rocks and leaving little pieces of Art all over the Vancouver area. It is a fairly new group and already over 15,000 people in the group. Well funny that I had just hauled a bunch of rocks to town to leave...seemed like fate!

Anyways since I am on this little kick and this challenge came along - I thought why not try rubberstamping on rocks and they could be great little paper weights for Teacher gifts.

TIPS:
Find FLAT rocks...they are easiest to rubberstamp on!!
Place your unmounted rubberstamp onto a mouse pad, sticky side on the pad. This allows a little more flexiblity with trying to stamp on a rounded edges of the rock.
Don't touch the HOT rock!!

I started out thinking about using white Stazon ink, but didn't happen to find my pad quickly enough. I ran across my embossing powders and decided to give them a try first. I used my versamark pad and stamped on my previously painted black rocks:

Add embossing powder - use heat gun to melt embossing powder - now TIP here...it will take a LONG TIME - like way long - like looooonnnnngggggg - OK maybe not that long but if embossing on paper takes say 30 seconds, the rock takes (I am guessing) 2 or 3 minutes...I think that whole darn rock needs to heat up before it melts...but eventually it does...BUT DON'T PICK UP THE HOT ROCK!!!! It will be HOT and probably burn your fingers. I just slide rock onto a piece of cardstock and moved off to the side to cool down. Takes them quite some time to cool down too!!

I tried a few different colors of embossing powders even one with tinsel in it...they all seemed to work just fine. When I was done and the rocks had cooled, I added a bit more color using acrylic paints. Last step is to spray the rocks with polycrylic sealing spray. Let dry and spray both sides. Gives the rocks a nice shine while being protective at the same time!!

Anyways I think these will be awesome gifts for the teachers...I am thinking when I go next week to all the classrooms to meet the teachers, I could just casually leave a rock behind as a little surprise!!

Hope I have inspired you to go find a rock and get your Art on!!

So now go check out LILIAN's project next!!!

The majority of the materials used in this project are from ClubScrap. TFL DebDuzScrappin