Hope for the New Year

The Three Muses challenge this week is the Queen of Hearts.  My collage is a stylised Queen of Heart with my sincere hope for a New Year full of Peace and Happiness.

Hope for the New Year

 A fairly simple piece today because it's Christmas and also because I have the flu and have been in bed most of the day :(
Background is midnight blue card stock with hand drawn twinkling stars using a Sakura starburst pen.  The lower portion of the page is bead gel, for no other reason than I think it's pretty to look at.
The heart is red card stock painted with Deco Art Quinacridone Gold and then sprayed with sparkling sealant.

The wings and crown are grunge paper die cuts from Tim Holtz, painted bronze and the crown has red diamante attached.
To finish I attached a Tim Holtz 'Hope' ticket dusted around the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink.

Best wishes to you all this festive season, no matter what your faith:  Peace, Love and Happiness!

Having a cracking time!

The challenge at Three Muses is Timepieces so I decided to post a piece I made for my partner.  The piece has been created in a smash journal, which is ring bound with various types of paper.  This piece is on high quality print paper (hence, there is no paint!). 

My grandfathers clock was too old for the shelf so it stood 90 years on the floor

 I started by drawing a rough shape of a long clock with a black marker.  I then drew a circle where the face of the clock would be and coloured it with very dark brown distress ink.  The whole background is coloured with Tim Holtz distress inks in various colours from the brown / blue range.  I used a blending sponge most of the time but also used direct to paper technique.

I had the clock face in my scrapbook paper stash (I think it could be Tim Holtz) which was the perfect size.  I cut it out and then applied a VERY thick layer of Tim Holtz distress crackle paint.  It was incredibly thick but didn't run off the edges.  Putting it somewhere it could stay undisturbed for 24 hours as I watched  it curl and buckle.  They straighten up once you crack them flat again

The clock face was edged with brown distress ink and then glued to the background.  The wings were stamped, embossed and have a metallic paint effect applied prior to being cut-out and glued.

The base of the clock has chains and little penny farthing bicycles to represent the weights with a coin as the centre weight.  All the metallic elements are glued using glossy accents to prevent them coming lose.

The various quotes and sentiments about time are all printed on my computer using Albertsthal Typewriter font and then glued to the page.

For those wondering, yes he does sometimes use the smash book to stick 'guy' stuff in: beer labels, strange diagrams I don't understand, and he writes the weather in it sometimes too - go figure!

My heart was broken

I learnt a valuable art lesson today with this piece.  When things go terribly wrong with a piece, don't throw it away, just keep working it until the problem is resolved.

I am so pleased I did.....

My heart is full of hope

Because this piece went through a major rework, it has a ridiculous number of layers.  I'll omit the error layers in the description, so as not to confuse anyone.  The first layer was gesso, followed by high build molding paste through a stencil.  Then came golden fluid acrylics in red, white,  yellow and my new favourite Iron Oxide (it sparkles).
While that was drying I used a gel medium transfer technique on the cherubs to put them on canvas (worked really well).  Then I used a scrap of canvas as a stamp and randomly stamped with heavy paint.
The wings are grunge paper, painted brown / black then embossed with silver, then again with UTEE to give a look of tin.  Distressed them with black paint to knock back the shine.
The large heart is a technique I've been playing with for a few weeks.  Card stock with high gesso peaks, texture paste, bead gel and high lift molding paste.
Next I applied paint techniques using burnt umber, fine gold, fine bronze, teal, white and some more iron oxide.

The heart shape was torn from orange card stock, painted it with Lumiere paints and then glued it to the base card before stamping with a crackle stamp.  It was finished off with some random stamping and my trusty oil pastels.