My eyes are dim I cannot see.....

After making these two moos for the Three Muses Challenge, I think I'll need some Coke Bottle specs!  I don't usually like making these, they are too small and fiddly to handcraft unless I have lots of time, however...  a stressful day at work meant I needed to spend some time in the studio to unwind.

I'm not sure I'm any less stressed but here are my two mini creations.

Silly Old Moo

The background of this one is painted with Americana paints in Indian Turquoise and Spa Blue.  I stamped the lady on white paper and coloured her with many Promarkers.  I then glued her to the substrate and drew some lines and dashes and then stamped a circle in gold paint and dragged some gold paint over the top parts before writing on it.

Hideous Baby Moo

The background on the second piece is Neocolor II.  I stamped the baby on white paper and coloured it with Inktensils and Promarkers.  I sprayed the background with sparkle varnish (looks like white dots) and then glued the baby to the background.

Ridiculous Moos

I've recently joined a group called Abandoned Art, where you leave small pieces of art for people to find, these two delightful quirky things will be sealed in a cello bag and hidden somewhere with a note telling the finder that they can either keep, give away or leave the pieces.  Hopefully someone will post a note to say they found them.

Thanks for looking and please check out the other artists.

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.

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 :)

Fairies at the bottom of my garden?

I bought the Kate Crane DVD set 3 / 4 and decided to use a background technique she demonstrated.  Once I'd completed the background I realised I didn't have a clue what the page would be about.  I started playing around with various stamps and ended up using a toadstool stamp from the Dylusions range.  Having coloured and cut it out, I knew what else I needed - a fairy!
I'm not usually good with cutesy pictures so went on the hunt for a good image I could use.  Maybe a small vintage child image I could add wings...  I just couldn't find anything so in the end almost decided on yet another quirky drawing.
After several attempts I realised I couldn't draw a quirky fairy, because fairies are quirky.

Fairy in the forest

Instead I set about drawing what is part fairy, part pixie :)  Whatever she is, she's happy, and I like that.
I must buy some more Promarkers or Copic markers for these small faces / bodies.  trying to use heavy, gloopy paint just doesn't cut it.  Her wings have the tiniest touch of glitter, which you may just be able to see.

Just sitting on my toadstool feeling happy