Such a haunting melody

The challenge this week on Sunday Postcard Art is Haunted.  Being this close to Halloween my thoughts immediately turned to ghosts and ghouls but no inspiration came.  Then I considered that haunting could be taken in a broader sense.  This is my take on Haunted: haunted by sights, memories, smells, flavours and moments in time.

Such a haunting melody

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot that the music is upside down.  I worked with this piece for several hours today and didn't even notice until I saw the photo!

I painted the background with Golden Fluid paints and then stamped a very old piece of line art in blue across the sky area.  I then stamped the music (upside down).

To try and achieve an etherial look for the female image, I stamped it in Sepia Archival ink on white tissue paper before tearing it around the stamp.  I then glued it to the postcard using Soft Gel medium with a layer over the top.  This makes the image translucent.  Here you can see the music and vintage floral stamp through the face.

The heart was cut from cardstock and painted with Quinacridone Magenta mixed with High solids gels (gives peaks).  Once dry, I highlighted the top of the peaks with Iridescent Bronze.

I have no explanation for the heart, other than to say my muse is on a "We are making hearts" kick at the moment.  This the the fourth different heart I've made this weekend!

A little bird told me....

When I saw the topic from Three Muses for this week, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

There were so many different layers that I won't go into them all here.  The paper is standard card stock with a coat of gesso to stop it buckling and pilling with the water and glues.

The first layer of paint is Golden Liquid Acrylics in white, red and yellow (heavy blending and then stippled to give texture).  Then I attached some old paper and started to apply the various layers.  Finally spraying with a gold mica spray! phew...

Sing birdie sing!

 Once I finished the background, I cut the bird and cage from the same card stock as the background but the scroll to hold the cage is a Tim Holtz grunge paper element.

I gave the cage and the scroll a distress treatment to make them look like tarnished metal.

I coloured the bird with Shabby Shutters distress ink and then splashed him with water (you can't see the lovely colour variations well in the pics.  The eye of the bird is a dot of black enamel from Ranger.

You can see the tarnished metal effect better on the scroll work.  I also over heated it to make the under layer of paint bubble a little, this makes it look like the metal is corroding under the outer surface.

I've just noticed that the bird and cage is Tim Holtz and the quote is Lou Holtz - It's a Holtz collaboration :)

I made a video and for once loaded in time and can be found here.  Approx 10 mins long

Broken glass?

This morning I have a day off work and I'm letting my muse have full reign.  I started the Take A Word challenge quite late this week (this morning actually) and decided to do an underwater piece with a mermaid, but my muse had other ideas!

I was playing with UTEE and discovered (for me it was a discovery) that I could make it look like glass, and that if I did things to the faux glass, it looked like stained glass.

Broken dragonfly

The piece is postcard size and sprayed with London Blue and Vibrant Turqoise (ready for the underwater scene I didn't make).   I wiped some of the ink off through letter stencils and a border stencil.  I stamped the Tim Holtz dragonfly in StayzOn ink black.

I then spent a ridiculous amount of time melting layer after layer of UTEE with my heat gun.  Once it was thick enough to look like glass I had a flash of inspiration and lay some fairy film over the top and heated again.
Once cool I removed the 'faux glass' from my craft mat and stamped it in StayzOn metallic gold.  After another blast from the heat gun I started to roughly cut it as though it were being cut from glass.  Then to make the colours 'pop' I painted the back in Mars black.  Voila - stained glass!

The strip of copper down the right hand side (it's from the garden centre to deter snails) is embossed and then distressed with paint.

I'll have to do the underwater scene another time :)

Spare a copper?

The theme at Three Muses this week is Autumn and I was keen to create something, but I've been working long hours and not had much time for art.  Hence, I found myself starting this piece late this afternoon, and for some crazy reason I chose to make another video (which always takes me much longer).

Autumn Leaves

The piece is on 10" x 7" 140lb watercolour paper with quite a heavy texture.  The base layer is water soluble wax crayons in autumnal colours, followed by some molding paste through a leaf stencil at the base.  After the paste dried I painted it with a green / blue patina paint, followed by various metallic paints, copper, bronze, gold, iridescent bronze.

Then came a layer of leaf stamps all over the paper in green, yellow and brown, before I stamped deciduous tree branches all over the paper in both black and brown.

The tree is made with twisted wire and glued to the page with glossy accents.  Finally I cut the small leaves freehand, coloured them in 3 shades of distress ink and when dry, gave them all a touch of metallic paint to match the leaves in the foreground.  Finally I glued the individual leaves to the tree branches.

The video is loaded on YouTube but I found some parts out of sequence so have to load it again :(  If anyone would like me to update them once its loaded please let me know

Thanks to Three Muses, I've really enjoyed every minute of this!

Art Journal Zetti

I have been making ATC's and Inchies for some swaps this week but have really struggled with inspiration.  Today I'm back in the groove and have enjoyed creating a page in my art journal that I entered for the Take A Word challenge.

Little Miss Zetti

 No matter how I played with the levels I couldn't make this image as vibrant as it looks in my journal.  I realise that to be really Zetti art I should have turned her eyes upside down, or made them bigger than her head, but I didn't want to because I thought she was pretty :)  So this is my nod to Zetti.

The spaces on the page will be filled with my journal entries, once I start to write on it.

I like her little shoes made from individual leaf stamps.  The stamps, stencils and spray inks are all Dyan Reaveley products.  I applied Gesso to my A4 art journal and then applied the colours and the collage elements.  The face is hand drawn and coloured with Pro-markers.  Black and white pens are Posca.

I've been playing with this for so long today that I forgot to have lunch!

Everything is coming up roses

The Take a Word challenge this week was Hearts and Flowers.  I  don't usually 'do' cute, romantic things,  I'm more of a brights and bolds type of person.  However, the aim is to challenge myself so off I went into a brave new world!

Hearts and Flowers Box

 I had the idea to take the challenge literally but knew the weight of the flowers and the heart would not be suitable for paper, so I decided to alter a small wooden box.

I have been playing around with the flowers for a few days now until I arrived at a method that resulted in something that looked like a flower.  Eventually I used white card stock, die cut with two separate Sizzix dies and then applied a treatment of water and distress ink.

The heart I made from white polymer clay and imprinted with a floral stamp before baking and colouring with a pale pink paint with iridescent medium, working it well into the grooves.  I then over painted with a colour to match the flowers which turned out to be a kind of apricot although the ink was tattered rose (pink)

 I treated the box to various distress techniques, from crackle paint, distress ink, distressed ribbon etc

This is a view of the crackle paint by Viva, I really like the way it cracks.  I rubbed the cracks with distress ink to get the ink into the cracks before removing the ink from the surface.

I made a video of how I did this and have put it on my YouTube channel here. 

What colour is your memory?

Today is the Sunday Postcard Art challenge and when I saw that the theme was 'memories', my mind turned to old things, sepia images, romantic papers and backgrounds: and I didn't want to make that kind of art today!
I had almost decided to not do a posting today but told myself to make a background and see if my enthusiasm changed, and it did.

Happy Day at the Sea side

I sprayed the postcard with Bubblegum pink, turquoise, and sunshine yellow and then let the colours run and blend.  As I watched it dry, I decided this was far more like my memories.  So with that I went hunting for a photo of me as a young girl (totally politically incorrect, holding a monkey on a sea side pier), but that photo brought back so many happy and joyful memories.
This is about the only time I've bothered with photo manipulation, I used a radial vignette on the photo and printed it on velum, so that the images beneath would show through.

The quote from Robert Willmott seemed really fitting for the bright image I created.

Information Overload

Do you ever feel like there is too much information inside your head and the pressure is building and very soon all the information will spill out?  Well thankfully I don't feel like this but the collage I did for this weeks Take a Word challenge, represents how that may feel.

Information Overload!

 The piece is A4 size, covered with gesso and then liberally sprayed with Dylusions Inks.  Firstly yellows on the full background and then blue through a numbers stencil

The phrenology stamp was onto white cardstock and coloured with Promarkers.  I then stamped a steam punk gauge across the top of his head to represent the power surge.

The base / body is sprayed with green / blue halo mica spray and over stamped with gears and cogs using Distress Ink in Rust.

I felt the computer style messages were quite appropriate.  My particular favourite computer message is "Was this message / information helpful?"  This at the point where I really want to throw something through the screen :)

Who's knocking at the door?

This week the Sunday Postcard Art theme is Doors.  I'm quite a fan of old doors and have lots of photo's so was mildly tempted to try some digital art, however since I love to play with paint and glue I decided to stay with mixed media.  If you would like to see the video of it being made, it's Here and is approx 11 mins.

A very tiny key can open a very heavy door - Charles Dickens

 I'm really happy with the way the faux wood planks turned out and the 'brass' heads to the screws.  You can barely see from the photo above but there is a strip of copper at the base of the door treated with verdigris paint.  I bought the copper strip from a garden centre, it's designed to keep snails out of plant pots!

The door handle (ring type thing) was originally holding two little keys.  One of the little keys is now hanging from the birds beak.

Once again, I had a great time doing this and loved every minute.