Fancy Free

Today's Three Muses Challenge was to create a journal style page with a favourite quote.
I haven't done anything in this journal for a while now and once I got started I really enjoyed it.  I can't say the quotes are particular favourites, but I had fun doing it :)

Underwear for the great outdoors - I feel so free :)

I started out by putting a layer of relatively smooth gesso on both pages and once that was dry I began painting with various shades or Americana Paints, Lemonade, Mint Julep, Spa Blue, Indian Turquoise and Butter (the colour not the dairy product).
Next came various layers of stamping using Ranger archival inks in various colours.  Once all was dry I applied some stencils and then sprayed with Dylusions Ink in Fresh Lime (yummy)
I found the wonderful ladies on Freubels free digi images site.  I printed them on cardstock, cut them out and glued them to the pages.
Over the top of all that, I stamped again with butterflies in various colours of inks.  I stamped two butterflies on plain white paper, coloured with Promarkers and glued them to the ladies heads.

The final step was to stamp the border around the page using Stayz On ink - my 'go to' black ink.

I've been so busy with work lately and also busy taking a slight detour with my art!!  I'm planning to do more assemblage and have been spending spare time creating a techniques sampler I will use on those pieces I'm going to create.

I've also been creating some backgrounds and working on swaps I'm registered for.  I'll post a blog about them soon.

New Year Circles

The theme at Thee Muses this week is circles.  I've been busy playing with techniques but wanted to do something for the last challenge.  So I made an 'out of this world' piece.

Happy New Year

I think it looks like the craters of the moon, hence the 'out of the world' reference.  It began as white card stock with a thick layer of gesso applied.  Into this I pressed various circular objects, bottle tops, pencil ends, paint brush ends etc.  Once dried I painted the whole piece black and then covered that with a blue / green gold.  Next came many, many layers in ever lightening shades of viridian paint using a dry brush technique, until the final layer was just zinc white (almost translucent).  In all I believe there to be approximately 25 - 30 layers.
I really wanted to use this piece for something so decided to take a photo into photoshop and add a seasonal greeting.  This is where the hard work began!

Becoming more and more frustrated that I couldn't make the words appear as I wanted I threw a hissy fit.  Captain Slow to the rescue....  he took the file and manipulated it as I wanted it and then gave it back to me (so technially, this isn't all my own work).

This piece now feels more like leather than paper but I don't know if it's due to the gesso, the paint or both.

Thank you everyone, for taking the time to look at my work this year and for leaving such wonderful and encouraging words.  I wish you all the very best for the new year and hope that it brings you everything that you would wish for yourself.

Stone the crows!

The challenge this week on Sunday Postcard Art is Crows, which is part of the 4 weeks of Halloween.  I know that the crows should probably be in a Halloween context but I'm taking a tangent.

Welcome to my crazy crow.

The crow who wouldn't quiet down.

 I sprayed the postcard with Bubble Gum pink and sunshine yellow Dylusions sprays before stamping a small script stamp in Archival Orange and a cross hatch stamp in Archival Magenta.  Across the bottom I stamped a small checker pattern in Memento London Fog.  This is an amazing shade of ink because it always looks to be layers below everything else, even if it's not.

Next came some white gesso through a stencil and the pink dye has fed through and given it a pearly sheen.  I used black gesso through a stencil at the bottom and then painted the black squares with interference red, the interference gold on the white gesso.

Mr crow was found on a search on the internet and the crown I cut from a scrap of paper.  To give it some texture I applied perfect pearls to the crown and the white circles

How clever are you?

This is a simple page I made using the Phrenology head stamp from Stampers Anonymous.  I really love this stamp so much I have it digitised so I can produce it at any size for whatever project I'm working on. 

This page is from my A5 art journal.  I added a coat of gesso and then covered the page with various red, orange and yellow Inktensil pencil by Derwent and then washed over with a wet brush.
Next came a layer of mica spray in gold and some in red with gold mica.
The next layer I used a template and Barn Door red distress ink by Tim Holtz.  Next came the phrenology head which had been stamped on coated white card stock and coloured with flesh tones and pink water soluble wax crayons.  The final layer was used mostly a watery white wash and various techniques, splattering, dashed lines, circles etc.  There are a few other layers too but I lost track of the various things I did. 
Around the edges I used a black Posca paint pen and created some pearls with a Viva Pearl pen in white.

I still don't have my act together!

Well, quite   some time has passed since I decided to create this blog, but still no art to show.  That is because I have been enjoying myself too much creating art.  I have just put gesso on a couple of pages in my art journal and decided to pop in here while it dries to see if I can figure out how to get this blog operational.  As soon as I do manage it, I will start to post photo's of my creations.