That's a jazzy kite!

Ever since I saw Three Muses challenge of Fly a Kite, I've had this idea floating around in my head.  I just couldn't let go of it, so eventually had to create it in my journal.

Welcome to my jazzy kite!

Let's go fly a kite....  

The journal page already had some ink on it from mopping up some previous spills.  I sprayed the whole page with water and then the lower part with Lime Crush followed by Cut Grass in patches.  The top part of the page was sprayed with Vibrant Turquoise.  Once it was dry I lay stencils over the top (flowers, Letters and a clock) and sprayed through them with water and let them sit until the ink re-dissolved before I mopped them with paper towel.  Next I applied some Gesso through a harlequin stencil and left it all to dry while I worked on the saxophone.

I sketched the saxophone shape onto a vintage text page, cut it out then painted it in Golden Translucent Primary Yellow.  I stamped on it with music stamp in Pumice Stone Distress ink and at the same time I stamped on the background across the grass.

Next came a little colouring of the sax with some cheap oil pastels and a charcoal pencil before I glued it to the background.  Finally I drew the music coming from the sax and going into the sky with kite being represented by the treble clef.

A totally bonkers bit of work, but my muse is happy now.  Thanks so much for looking, it is always appreciated.

Words of Wisdom

The challenge at Three Muses this week is 'The Written Word'.  This journal page has quite a few layers but creating it gave me so much joy!

There was no initial plan, no rough outline, just me with my journal and a pile of art 'stuff'.

Death by a sharp word!

The background of the page is completely covered with pages from an old Punch magazine and sealed with Golden Mat Medium.  Once dry I painted over the top with DecoArt medium white mixed with Liquitex mat medium (makes the paint thin without losing pigment.) Once this was dry I used Gallery Molding paste through a text stencil and waited for it to dry completely.  Next came a text stamp in Archival Ink in Monarch Orange, followed by a French Script stamp in Archival French Ultramarine.
I then used Sennelier Oil pastels in Chinese Orange and Azure Blue and used my finger to smear them into the page and over the raised molding paste.

The words are all printed in different sizes from the computer and dabbed with Spiced Marmalade distress ink.  (tip:  I always use a pouncing motion over printed words so that the ink doesn't smear).

Thanks so much to Three Muses for the theme, I've really enjoyed creating this piece!  Check out what the other artists have done.

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 :)

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 :)