Little Daisy is bright today

Better late than never with my submission to the Sunday Postcard Challenge - Journal on a postcard!

I used a sample tube of paint I received from Liquitex in Quin Magenta and mixed in some Golden fluid primary yellow and primary cyan.  I also mixed some Slow Dry medium into the magenta, before I applied it.

This is amazing stuff I think, the acrylic paint stayed open and workable for about 40 minutes!  In fact it wasn't the best idea to try it when I was in a hurry to finish it :)

My beautiful garden

After the background I pressed some white gesso through a Dylusions stencil to make circles and squares, stamped some checks in Archival Monarch Orange and Deep Purple, before stamping my crazy lady in Deep Purple also.
The flowers were drawn with Posca pens and the text is a cheap rub-on I bought in a kit at the Pound Shop!

Thinking about gardens

I've just returned from the garden centre and can't help wishing I had a cute little garden to plant up.  The fact is I don't, I have a balcony, so I decided to make my own little garden for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge this week.

Butterfly's are early this year!

 I bought a packet of little bows today and couldn't help thinking they looked like butterflies, so they are!  I began by spraying the card with water and then with Dylusions ink in London Blue and Cut Grass.  I rolled over the top with a paper towel which transferred some pattern and also some colour.

Once it was dry I used a baby wipe to remove colour through a flower stencil and then stamped some grasses and small flowers using London Fog Memento Ink.

I finished up by attaching the buttons and the bow and then drawing a trail for the butterfly using a Sakura Gelly Roll pen in clear star.  I love these pens.

Thanks as always for taking a look, it's much appreciated.  Check out the other art at SPA.

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!

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.  

Travelling Light

I was well ahead of myself for the Sunday Postcard Art this week in the theme of 'Travel'.  I worked out a design and created it yesterday.  When I woke up this morning and got ready to take a picture, it just didn't look like anything I would create.  It was so sombre and bland.  All kind of beige on beige if you can imagine that.

A new way of looking at things

I started again with the same basic concepts but got out some lovely colourful ink (Dylusions London Blue and Vibrant Turquoise.) And could not resist adding some colour to the Union Flag.

The tickets were stamped with an Indigo Blue plate called Travel on various coloured paper with various archival inks.  I then cut them to ticket shape and punched the little half circles using a single hole punch.  There is a ticket wrapped around the card at the top right hand side with a hole punched right through the card.

Steam punk Traveller

The steam punk traveller and the sentiment are stamped in StazOn Jet Black.  Steam punk man had his binoculars 'enhanced' with some bronze paint applied with the lid from a waterbrush.  And the reflection on his lenses is create with a white souffle pen.

My Pretty Summer Hair

I visited a website last night and they have a postcard challenge, and the topic for the week is 'Quirky'.  How could I resist?  I have never done a postcard size before, so this was something a little different.  It's a nice size to work with although I probably would have enjoyed this subject at any size.

As soon as I sat down to do the design I knew I wanted to use this months free stamp from Craft Stamper magazine, in fact I decided to use on the main image.

My Pretty Summer Hair done for Sunday Postcard Challenge (link below)

I used Dylusions Inks for the background and some Archival Inks for stamping.  The face is drawn on white coated paper and coloured with water soluble wax crayons.  The hair is this months freebie as mentioned above.

A close up of her very pretty hair :)

The Sunday Postcard blog is new to me but I will definitely be checking in there frequently.

ATC - little beginings

I have entered an ATC swap and, never having made an ATC before, I thought I'd make a couple extra.  The theme for this swap is 'metal' or metal related.  I had some great ideas that followed the theme, but what did I make?

Dream in Colour

Well, they are very vibrant, colourful ATC's with no sign of metal anywhere.  For this fiasco I blame the arrival of my new Dylusions spray inks from Dyan Reaveley.  They are just so bright and bold that I didn't want to stop playing with them.  I love how the colours blend and change as you look at them.  On the Dream in Colour card I used Bubble Gum Pink and Pure Sunshine.  All of the other shades are made by the colours blending together.

Smelly Cat

On this one I used London Blue and Bubble Gum Pink again.  The cat is cut from a bigger stamp and coloured with inktesil pencils.  I did some random stamping with various things and sprayed through a harlequin stencil with water to get the ghosted image.  The letters are tiny individual stamps I filled in using a soufflé pen.
And as for the 'metal' ATCs -  I made 4 in accordance with the theme, and two will be going into the mail today.  I will post photo's later once they have arrived with the recipient.