Linda Israel

Multi-Media Artist

Today Jacquelin Sit with News9 Oklahoma City came to my house and did an interview because of my impending appearance on HGTV “That’s Clever” Tuesday June 29, 2010.

Jacqueline brought two crew members with her, Casey and Sarah. The first thing that Jacqueline said to me was, you give great directions…  I’m glad!  Otherwise they may not have gotten to my house today! lol…   When Casey walked into the house she noticed that the door to my studio was open and walked inside. She said, “we are shooting in here!!! This room is cool!” Or something to that effect…  Everyone that comes into my room is a little overwhelmed by all of the stuff inside…

First I was asked several questions regarding when I started making things, how I got on the show etc.. Then I moved over to my work desk and made a couple of projects for them to film…  This was a lot easier than when the HGTV crew was here for 8 hours…

Jacqueline said that she was inspired and wanted to go to Michael’s to get some craft supplies.. lol I said great, that is my goal to inspire people to create…

The ladies enjoyed the caramel coffees I made for them as well as the peanut butter cookies.. It’s always good to get them on your side before they film you.. lol

I’ve been asked how did I manage to get on News9. Well I was very fortunet to become facebook friends with Amy McRee – News9 Anchor. She posted on a thread that if we had stories to share to let her know, so I posted that I would be on HGTV and she responded. I got an email from her asking if it would be okay if Jacqueline could contact me and I replied well of course! I’m very fortunate that I became facebook friends with Amy McRee, or I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to be on the news! Thanks so much Amy!!

Over all it was a great experience and I’m very glad that I had the opportunity to share with them and with Oklahoma today..  Check out the online article here: News9.com

Here is a link to the newscast on News9.

Thanks everyone so very much for being so supportive of me. I appreciate my Husband and my family for always being supportive. Most importantly I’m thankful to God for the gifts He has given me. It is because of Him that I’m able to do the things I can do, and share these with others…

Make today a great day!!

Linda Israel

The video I created to promote my being on News9:

I have been embossing for years and it is annoying to get the stray specks of embossing powder on your project.. I had a purchased anti static bag, but I knew there was a cheaper way to make my own.. I started looking around at the supplies I had on hand and also on the web.. Here is what I came up with…

Supplies used:

One leg from a clean pair of pantyhose ( one side had a runner in the leg, so I usually wash these and keep them, never know when I might need one for a project! lol)

baby powder

Scissors

I glass or wide mouth jar

Method:

I cut one leg from the clean pantyhose close to the very top.

Then I pushed the toe of the hose into a glass and pulled the top over the lip of the glass. This made it very easy to then dump baby powder into the hose. I put about a 1/4 cup of baby powder into the hose. Could put more or less. It depends on how much baby powder you have, and if you want to make more than one anti static bag. I made two so that when I’m teaching a workshop or if my friends come over I have extras and we don’t have to wait for someone to be finished…

I pulled the hose out of the glass and tied a knot close to the powder. Just one knot, as there will be three layers of hose to protect the powder from spilling out of the hose…

Next I pushed the whole thing back through the leg of the hose and tied another knot, repeated one more time and tied a final or third knot. This kind of reminded me of a hacky sack that we used to play with back in the 80′s.. lol I guess if you changed out the powder for little beans of some kind you could make your own hacky sack to play with. lol…

Once the final knot was tied I cut off the excess hose and the anti static bag was ready to use. Pretty clever huh…

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I hope this helps you in saving money. Because I know that I would rather spend my money on an item that I couldn’t make myself!

If you have questions regarding how to make your own anti static bag, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for stopping by my website.

Linda Israel

I was asked how to use embossing powder with rubber stamps via my youtube channel. There are so many supplies out there that can be used. It took me a little time to decide how I was going to choose which supplies to spotlight in my instructions…

Things you will want to have:

Embossing powder – any brand, but consider the project at hand. You may want detailed embossing powder if you are doing a fine detailed stamp, or you may want ultra thick embossing powder if you are doing a solid stamp that is large.

Heat tool – Not a hair dryer. Back when I first started stamping, we tired all kinds of things to heat up the powder so it would melt. Trust me, the best investment is a heat tool. It doesn’t matter which brand. Just pick the one that fits your budget. I even have a commercial heat gun, that is used for removing paint, just have to be careful and not use that one on high, it will burn the paper! lol…

Pigment ink – a juicy pigment ink will hold the powder in place. If you have an old pad, consider getting the reinker for it so that you can reapply the ink to the pad before you use it in your project. I do this for most of my common ink pads.

Anti static helper – could be a dryer sheet or an Anti Static bag. This you will rub on the paper, before you stamp and apply the powder. It helps to keep the powder from sticking where you don’t want it to stick…  (instructions on how to make your own anti static bag)

Item to be embossed – paper, canvas, or just about anything that can stand the heat…

Basic instructions: prepare the surface with the anti static product of your choice. Ink stamp with pigment ink, stamp on item. Coat with generous amount of embossing powder, tap off excess powder onto / into a container so you can reuse powder. Turn on heat tool (if you let the heat tool run for a moment before you apply it to your project the powder will melt faster.) Point heat tool towards project. When you start to see that the dull powder look changes to a shiny surface move the gun to a new location. Don’t keep the gun too close to the project or it will burn or discolor the project. If you keep the gun on the project too long the powder will melt down into a porous surface and will look dull. Which could be a look you are going for, but most of the time people want the shiny raised look of embossing. Keep moving around the project until all of the powder has changed. Turn off the gun and let the project cool. The powder will be very hot and you will get a nasty burn if you touch it before it cools off! Now look at your embossed project and pat yourself on the back! You did it! Great job!

Want to see embossing in action check out the video:

Have questions regarding embossing, please feel free to ask, just make sure to give all the details you can in your inquiry…

Thanks for stopping by my website.

Linda Israel

I used a technique learned from Gary Reef to create the following Bubble Art pieces.. The shapes are wood, two inches thick, the base is about 8 inches wide and about 10 to 11 inches tall. My neighbor got a new front porch and I came home when the guy was cutting these pieces off.. I asked him if he was going to throw those away and he said yes, I asked if I may have them and he said sure, keeps me from having to haul them off.. I wasn’t sure what I would do with these at the time, but I’m glad I took them…

Henry and I went to Home Depot and I stopped by the paint department and looked for their Oops paint.. I found a small pint of Behr Premium Plus paint interior Eggshell Enamel in an off white for $1.00. I figured that this would work as “house paint” for the technique that Gary talks about..

I first painted the pieces with liquitex basics acrylic gesso, and let that dry.  I coated one side of the triangle with the house paint in what I thought was a thick enough coat (didn’t read the instructions again until after I started). Painted another triangle and then read the instructions where it said to put a very thick coat, thick enough that your finger sinks down and leaves a huge hole in the paint.. I thought great, I have messed up.. But I went ahead with what I was doing and started the heat, rest, heat rest to see what would happen… The two that didn’t have as much paint on them made smaller bubbles, and I liked it much better than the one that I put a thicker coat on.. So I decided that when I did the other sides I would use a thinner coat and go from there… Heat, rest, heat rest, this went on forever.. lol.. Henry turns to me and says “you do realize how much time you have in these right?”…  Yes I know, but isn’t the texture cool?  And this was just with the ugly house paint! lol.

After all of the sides were bubbled up, I went and got my craft paints, as I don’t have any “artist” paints. I used one from Craft Smart – Violet, Plaid – Tapestry Wine,  Plaid Metallic – Aquamarine. For the Violet I put a little in a cup added water and white acrylic color to make a “wash” then proceeded to paint all of the triangles. I then heated the paint so that it would dry, I also puffed up the bubbles some as those were still not quite cured as I was doing this in one session.. Then I put the Tapestry wine in a cup with water and black acrylic color and put this wash on all of the triangles.. Heated again to dry.. Lastly I put the Aquamarine in a cup with just water to make  wash and covered all of the triangles and heated again..

That was it, I felt I was done, at least for now.. I may add something to these later, but for now I thought that I liked the color and the texture.. Maybe in a day or so I would look at these and think ah, I know what to do next, but for now this is what they look like…

Thanks for stopping by for a look, and thanks to Gary Reef for sharing his technique with the world.
Linda

While surfing the web one day I saw an image full of circles.. This image got me to thinking about how could I make a piece of art using circles. So I started looking around at the materials that I had on hand and found that I had a circle die that cut a series of circles. Then I found an 8 by 10 canvas and pulled out my paint..

I had all of my materials it was time to get started.

Supplies used:
8 by 10 Canvas
Acrylic Paint
Paint brush
Acrylic Gel Medium – Golden
Die cut Paper Circles
block to adhere foam shapes
Circle fun foam shapes
Heat tool to speed up the drying time

This was very abstract, no real design to this, just wanted to use the circles and blue.. Recycled some paper and went to work…

The video of making the project:

I hope you enjoyed watching. Please leave comments and questions. If there is a technique you would like to learn just ask, I’ll see about putting together a video for you..

Make today a great day!

Linda Israel

Today I’m smashing bottle caps for a project.. It’s kind of fun, and it’s a great way to take out frustrations.. You don’t have to think about much while smashing the caps.. I’ve had a huge bag of bottle caps for a couple of years, waiting for that perfect project… I’ve decided what I want to do with them, but in order to use them I mush smash them first..

A while back I remember reading somewhere that I could smash them using my old Sizzix die cutting machine and a Sizzix converter.. I played around with what cutting pads I had and figured out the best solution for me…

Again several years ago, tired of spending so much money on cutting pads/plates I sought out a local plastics vendor and picked up some sheets of plastic and cut those down to be small enough to fit through my sizzix sidekick.. Just so happen that I had enough of these that I could use these for my bottle caps and not worry about messing up the other plates… So I made a stack of one of my plastic plates and a sizzix clear plate and pushed the cap under the converter.. Down went the handle, pulled everything back out and the bottle cap was stuck to the plate.. Duh turn the cap over so that the rough side was up silly.. So after prying it off of the plate I tried it again and smoosh it went…

I decided that I wanted these to be really flat so I picked up another on of my plastic plates and made a stack of two plastic plates and one clear so I had three and ran the cap through the machine again.. Smash again, ah that’s what I’m talking about! So I spent an hour smashing bottle caps, methodically, push it in, down goes the handle, pull it out, add a plate, back into the machine, down goes the handle… I’m sure anyone watching would be wondering what is she doing, has she gone mad? Well yeah a long time ago, what does that have to do with today? lol…

Back to smashing bottle caps I think I have two or three hundred of these things and I need them flat. lol..

Make today a great day!

Linda