Garden Birds

My double page spread for my AJJ ....'anything with eyes' theme and because my garden is always full of birds I am also linking this project to TIOT  theme 'In my garden there is' 

I started with an image torn from a bird food catalogue which was on nice thick paper and used Winsor and Newton Galeria matt medium to stick it down. 

 I tried to choose acrylic paint colours close to the image as possible and mixed them with the matt medium. I then randomly painted splodges to fill the remaining white space on the left page but tried to paint some background looking flower blooms on the right side.

 Then to blend image more into backgroound, I extended the branches and added some leaves and buds - I used PaperArtsy French Roast Fresco Finish  paint.

I finished with a digital quote ..... not certain who it is by.

My feathered garden friends have played a big part in our life over the last 20 or so years :)

And while I am forever out in the garden feeding the birds, Dave is usually in the kitchen looking after my food needs and is busy baking all sorts of things.... breads on this occassion :)

 OK that's all for today,

Thanks for stopping by..

Gill x

Art for Art's sake and a 'thing with wings'

July looks like being a fun month as Chris from Pearshapedcrafting has chosen "Art for Art's sake" as this months theme at AJJ and it's about having fun with arty techniques and our art supplies.

I was wearing a brand new white T-shirt and apron when making this and managed to get to the end without splashing any paint or ink on me (as far as I can see) phew!!!!

 I will be glad when that song stops playing in my head too... so I had to add the words to the page of course.

I started with some blue card and used some cheap gouache paint that I need to use up before it dries and painted a bit of an abstract design. ( dear hubby got me some better quality paint and of course the cheap stuff gets overlooked). 

Then I dribbled some inks down the page - the black one is in a spray bottle and hardly used and for some reason I seem to just dab it on things as sprays always seem to clog.
After drying the drips I added some white acrylic ink and for the first time made use of those little credit card looking things shops give out and used that to swipe the ink.
After writing the words with a black Posca pen I found a stamp I never use to add some fine dots.. the stamp is pear shaped (made by Stampscapes) and called a toner applicator.

 And I have a whimsical page using Neocolor 2's and a little coloured pencils and gouache which I shall link to TIOT   for 'Things with wings' and MOO Mania    for 'Your favourite colours'.
I'm not sure what my favourite colour is - I love all colours, but I think it depends on the shade and what else they are with.

thats all today..

thanks for stopping by.

Gill x

Recycle and collage and a masculine moo too

It's Friday the 13th and a good excuse to stay home and make some art :)
I was going out to pick up a book I'd ordered but there's another one on the way so I may as well wait for that and pick up two at once.
Friday the 13th?? nothing to worry about - it's just another normal mad day isn't it?

Ok.. here's another piece for AJJ Recycle and collage theme hosted this month by Alison and again I used the cardboard from a cracker box as my page.
I used some remnants of homemade washi-tape and leftover die-cuts. I have a box of small envelopes full of die cuts collected over time so I used several heart shaped ones and inked and stamped on them.
Other materials used were:Neocolours, acrylic ink, TH distress stains, a small script stamp and a polka dot stencil with white paint.

And for Moo Mania and More  where the theme is 'Masculine' I have a little Moo size piece

I covered my little moo size card with a leftover scrap of paper that had ticket/map sort of theme on it, stamped the little stamps and coloured with gouache and added words using rub-off letters.

And even more recycling..over at  TIOT the theme is 'Recycle something' so I recycled an ice-cream container to use it as a container to hold my art journaling pens.

I also raided my scrap paper box and mini drawer of stamped tissue paper where I found one of a hand holding a pen and coloured it with gouache. I also used some postage stamps too.

Have a safe and Happy Friday the 13th.

And as always, thank you so much for stopping by.

Gill x

Summer Love Tag for TioT as Guest Designer

Hello :)
 
After being picked as one of the top 5 for the May Transport challenge, I was very honoured to have been asked to be a guest designer by Avril for TIOT tags challenge for the next two weeks ...thank you :)
 
I don't usually make that many tags but I really enjoyed doing this and can see me making more of them from now on.
List of items I used are at the bottom of my post.

 

 

 

I die cut the tag, swirl and 'Love' word on corrugated cardboard ( the cartons that my husbands wine is delivered in is very useful and the wine very nice of course! ) the honeycomb die was cut out of pale green craft foam.
Then on the tag I used a stencil with structure gel and when dry gessoed over it all and then randomly painted with the chalk paints and stuck down the painted swirl. (this had started off blue but then I decided to go over the top of the swirl with a grey Promarker for a mottled effect).

 

I stuck gems on the butterfly, painted over them and the butterfly and then added a little silver wax on the body and antennae. The honeycomb die cut was randomly painted too.
The crown and flowers were made in moulds with air drying clay and later painted.

 
The large word die actually originally said 'With Love' and was very easy to cut up and separate the words. That was painted with the blue 'Mermaid' paint.
After everything was glued down I watered down some of the Gold paint and added a few spots, splats and dribbles.

 

Items used:　

Corrugated cardboard and pale green craft foam.

4 Dies: (1) Sizzix Bigz Tim Holtz ‘Tag and bookplate’
(2) Swirl X-cut (not sure what set is called)
(3) word set by X-cut (had things like 'With Love' 'Best Wishes' etc)
(4) Sizzix thinlet Tim Holtz Mixed media (set of 4 dies)

Prima stencil called ‘Salvage district’ 　

Galleria structure gel

Paints - Paperartsy Fresco chalk paints : Sherbet, Mermaid, Snowflake, Limelight,
Nougat and South Pacific.
Rowney Cryla (in tube) ‘Rich Gold.　

white gesso.

Grey Promarker.

Metallic silver wax.

 

Wooden butterfly from stash added gem stones by ‘Anita’ and painted over top.　

Silk flower from stash.

Small flowers and crown made in moulds with air dry clay. ‘Plaid Modge Podge’ molds..
set:24893 ‘Royal Icons’ and 24889 ‘Flowers’.

Cosmic shimmer glue.

Grey and blue organza ribbon.

Thanks so much for stopping by here today.
I hope you will stop by TIOT and join in,
I look forward to visiting you
and seeing your creations.

 

Gill x



 

 

Some Steampunk, Circles and Cactus flower...

Hi everyone

Hope you have lots of fun things planned for the weekend. It's nice and sunny here today after a week of high winds and rain - but at least it gave me more time to play :)

Previously I promised to show what I was doing with shrink plastic - so here are my earrings created with die cut shrink plastic and I'm linking to the fab Steampunk/mechanical theme at TIOT

I don't really like my photos - the light wasn't particularly good and its not really showing the textures very well or the difference between the matt and metallic paint/wax - I think it looks a bit better in real life.
Doing the little rings and fixing to the earring hook was a bit fiddly but I hope to make a necklace at some point to go with the earrings.



My die cut pieces shrunk and gessoed

The Airship balloon die by Sheena Douglass and cog dies from Crafters Companion. The small middle rivet looking bits were the circles left from the middle of the cog and when I heated them I stopped just before they uncurled so they left a folded over rim around the edge (hope that made sense).

 

 And for AJJ and Rosies circle theme I have an all digital piece all digitally made or photographed etc by me (the  palette isn't real but the paint brush belongs to Dave)

  

If you saw yesterdays post you will know I was wondering when the Cactus was going to bloom. It always seem to happen around midnight but I couldn't keep awake and went to bed about 10pm and threatened nicely asked the Cactus not to bloom last night - ok you know what happened then and this is what we found this morning.

 

I'm hoping this is the first of many and not the only flower. I think the most it has ever had has been 4 or 5 flowers and it hasn't bloomed every year.

We bought this cactus probably about 1981-ish from the garden centre near us but we were living about 60 miles away then and it never bloomed until after 1996 when we moved here  - which was where it came from of course, so perhaps it had not bloomed before because it was home sick.

 

  

Thank you for stopping by.

hope you have a wonderful day and weekend.

Gill x



Steampunk lantern

Hello

I'm linking to TIOT for the fab Steampunk/Mechanical theme  and hope this piece is acceptable.  Not clockwork but I thought the wind-up mechanism was the the nearest thing to being almost steampunk.
The black rubber looking surface of one of our wind up lantern torches went very tacky and horrible to touch like it was disintegrating. We weren't using it, so I had nothing to loose and gessoed over it - and when it dried it was a much nicer surface.
Then I  mod-podged some dictionary papers over that (the lower part of porch) and painted. Added some painted foam die cut cogs and hands.
The top was also black but I mixed up some glass bead medium with some paint for texture and painted that and added my painted silk flower. I didn't overdo the decoration as this still has to be usable and not have things get in the way when winding it up.
 
The photos aren't very good because the light has been bad with the rainy days we have had this week.

 

 

First play with some new stash including some more TH distress oxide ink pads and a set of stamps called 'Katrina' designed by the lovely Donna from Inky and Quirky Designs.

I needed to add to my cards supply so made a couple of quickish and simple cards.

The first card has some paper piecing, the cutting out is hard on my hands but I love the results.  Used the oxides on the background, coloured Katrina with Neocolor 2's. Unfortunately the photo isn't showing the iridescent glitter glue I added to the circles on her hair and skirt or on the hanging heart. The sentiments used are rub ons.

There are some lovely quirky fish in this set which is on my list to play with next :)

 

 

A big old Cactus is starting to flower again - hopefully it will have more than just the one flower which when it opens always seem to be around midnight and doesn't last more than a day or so. It was almost 15 years before it flowered for the first time.

 

 

 I mentioned using shrink plastic the other day but I will post that piece another day. 

 Thanks for stopping by

Gill x

 

GRACE and a TIOT little thing

Hello

Hope your weekend is going well.

First I have  digital piece today for AJJ 'Elegance and Grunge'  made using a digikit called 'Equinox' by G&T designs and an image that was in some clip art on an old genealogy disc.
This page reminds me of the old films which I still love, usually just black and white from about the 1930s or 1940s with all the elegant ladies and wonderful clothes and where the story line is pretty innocent.

  And over at TIOT ' Little things mean a lot'  is a fun challenge and we are asked to make something (any shape) but no larger than 4 inches square and to show what we made with a ruler beside our work.

Mine is a little under 4x3 inches and inspired by Modigliani and some fun exercises I have been doing from Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists   52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun a book by Carla Sonheim.

Have a great day

and for mums in the part of the world celebrating 'Mothers day'

I hope you enjoy your special day too.

 

Thanks for stopping by

Gill x



WALLS and Transport

Hello

I have two pieces today - the first is for AJJ where I have chosen the theme of Elegance and Grunge -  I don't know why I love grungy and distressed things but I do.. even bricks I find interesting with the different colours of them, the textures and cracks.

 

I didn't know where I was going when I first started messing around and then added the gesso and then suddenly I was drawing a brick archway.

 

 

 

Background/bricks was a mix of Prima watersoluble oil pastels, Gelatos and Neocolor 1 water resistant wax crayons. I added some black stabillo all pencil for some shading. The climbing flowers: leaves and stems drawn/painted with Inktense pencils - the flowers were punched on orange paper using a Daisy craft punch and yellow Neocolor 1 added to petals and white in the centres. I'm not certain who the bird silhouette stamps are made by. The quote (by Jim Rohn) I printed off my computer and then coloured some letters in with pencils.

 

I have a page also for the lovely Jo  Transport challenge over at TIOT  The images are Viva Decor stamps - the rest is a mix of paint, neocolor 2s, coloured pencil and intense pencils.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by

Gill x