Shake your tail feathers

Today's challenge at Sunday Postcard Art is 'chevron'.  Work has been so busy this past week that I haven't had much time to play with any art, so today I continued with my exploration of translucency.  I'm still having fun playing with various weights and colour of tissue paper and also translucent paints.  I also bought some new matte varnish today too, so tried it on the orange tissue paper which bleeds horribly - good result with hardly any bleed.

Do my tail feathers look big in this?

Today piece is a collage worked on 300 gsm card, starting with Golden Titan Buff and when dry I stamped little spots on it with Archival Ink Coffee.  Next came the chevrons, which I hand cut from a vintage Punch magazine before painting with Golden Nickel Azo Gold.  Once dry, these were collaged to the base.
I found the image of the bird on the web and printed it on white tissue before adhering it to the base with fluid matte medium.

The text is printed from my computer and coloured with Tea Dye distress stain.  I applied another layer of white tissue paper across the bottom of the card before distressing the card edges with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo.  I then went around the edges again and applied a rough dab of Golden Iridescent Bronze paint.

Such a haunting melody

The challenge this week on Sunday Postcard Art is Haunted.  Being this close to Halloween my thoughts immediately turned to ghosts and ghouls but no inspiration came.  Then I considered that haunting could be taken in a broader sense.  This is my take on Haunted: haunted by sights, memories, smells, flavours and moments in time.

Such a haunting melody

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot that the music is upside down.  I worked with this piece for several hours today and didn't even notice until I saw the photo!

I painted the background with Golden Fluid paints and then stamped a very old piece of line art in blue across the sky area.  I then stamped the music (upside down).

To try and achieve an etherial look for the female image, I stamped it in Sepia Archival ink on white tissue paper before tearing it around the stamp.  I then glued it to the postcard using Soft Gel medium with a layer over the top.  This makes the image translucent.  Here you can see the music and vintage floral stamp through the face.

The heart was cut from cardstock and painted with Quinacridone Magenta mixed with High solids gels (gives peaks).  Once dry, I highlighted the top of the peaks with Iridescent Bronze.

I have no explanation for the heart, other than to say my muse is on a "We are making hearts" kick at the moment.  This the the fourth different heart I've made this weekend!

A little bird told me....

When I saw the topic from Three Muses for this week, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

There were so many different layers that I won't go into them all here.  The paper is standard card stock with a coat of gesso to stop it buckling and pilling with the water and glues.

The first layer of paint is Golden Liquid Acrylics in white, red and yellow (heavy blending and then stippled to give texture).  Then I attached some old paper and started to apply the various layers.  Finally spraying with a gold mica spray! phew...

Sing birdie sing!

 Once I finished the background, I cut the bird and cage from the same card stock as the background but the scroll to hold the cage is a Tim Holtz grunge paper element.

I gave the cage and the scroll a distress treatment to make them look like tarnished metal.

I coloured the bird with Shabby Shutters distress ink and then splashed him with water (you can't see the lovely colour variations well in the pics.  The eye of the bird is a dot of black enamel from Ranger.

You can see the tarnished metal effect better on the scroll work.  I also over heated it to make the under layer of paint bubble a little, this makes it look like the metal is corroding under the outer surface.

I've just noticed that the bird and cage is Tim Holtz and the quote is Lou Holtz - It's a Holtz collaboration :)

I made a video and for once loaded in time and can be found here.  Approx 10 mins long