Concertina Sketchbook

In October I attended a concertina sketchbook workshop taken by Karen Stamper. It was very enjoyable and I learned some new mixed media techniques. I have been busy continuing to work into my Beautiful Bologna sketchbook , but now have finally finished.

Concertina Sketchbook

Porta Saragozza

So many  pages!

Buildings with skyline in black

Basilica of San Francesco

Basilica with skyline added using black Posca pen

Wanderlust Week 8

 Wanderlust 2018

 Lesson by Kasia Avery

 Time Travels and Explorations

For this lesson I made a collage . The figure I used is Christine

de Pisan (1364-1430) a French author, who wrote about

women's rights in the fifteenth century. I have used a piece

of her handwriting too.

Christine de Pisan 1410

Wanderlust Week 7

Here is  my finished collage for the Wanderlust lesson by Carolyn Dube, "If these walls could talk"  I used collage,stencils and gelatos for my page. I liked Carolyn's video lesson and the gelatos technique was fun.
 #eaclass, #wanderlustclass

Tag Tuesday-Easter Bonnet

 Easter Bonnet-What a lovely title for this week's tags on Tag Tuesday!

I hope you all have a Happy Easter and enjoy some

sunshine.

For my Easter Bonnet tag I used an image from The Graphics Fairy,

showing  a cat couple in their finest clothes. I feel sure that Mrs.

Cat is dressed in her Easter bonnet ready to go for a walk with her

consort!

I used some hand printed papers for the background, mounted onto

some hand made "fabric", made by collaging fabric and papers together.

I made a fabric border and added a cockerel stamp and a ceramic flower

button.

Last week Pat Brennan and I did a stash swap of our mixed media bits and

pieces. It is great to have some new materials to play with, and I am sure you

will spot some of your things in my tags, Pat!

Tag Tuesday-All the Colours of the Rainbow

The theme for this week's Tag Tuesday is All
the Colours of the Rainbow.
As the weather here was very dull and wet, I

decided to do a colourful tag to give some cheer.

I have made some butterflies in All the Colours

of the Rainbow. They are made of tissue paper

and coloured in with  watercolour pencils. I went

over them with gel pens for a bit of sparkle. They are 

set on a background made from cardboard, which was

coloured and stamped. I added an extra rainbow cord 

round the edge of the tag.

Tag Tuesday-Danger

Danger is the subject for this week's Tag Tuesday.

I struggled with finding an idea for this tag,

 but eventually came up with forest fire danger.

 I stamped a forest onto a background of

textured handmade paper, which I painted with metallic acrylics.

The flames are made from tissue and crepe paper.

I have to say the flames didn't turn out the way I thought

of them in my head, I imagined them creeping towards

the trees. It does give an overall impression of fire, but

is executed rather roughly.

Tag Tuesday-Stencils

Our theme at Tag Tuesday this week is Stencils.

We are still enjoying our "Indian Summer" here. It made

me think of using my butterflies and dragonflies stencil.

It was fun experimenting with different media and

 backgrounds. If you want to see the variations I came up 

with, you can see it on my blog here.

The background is made from collaged layers of tissue paper, Japanese newsprint

and serviettes. This was then painted with watercolour. The stencils were

 applied with acrylic paint. I went over the shapes with gel pens and also used 

some oil pastels.

Tag Tuesday-Summer Holiday and Bugs

There are two tags for Tag Tuesday, this week.  
I am a bit behind as I have had a busy and exciting week.
I attended a batik workshop, which you can see in the
previous post of this blog.

The main excitement was seeing the Queen when she
came to open the new look Reading Railway Station  on
Thursday. I was right near the front and got such a clear and 
close view of Her Majesty! She looked lovely and her
face lit up when she saw the crowd. She had her photo
taken with the construction workers. They were all in 
bright orange, she in bright turquoise, a perfect
contrast!

I have been thinking about summer holidays, and
for me that means one thing-France and sunflowers.
My tag is stitched. For background I used a rough textured
fabric, coloured with Inktense blocks. i added layers of 
stamped sunflowers, and put in some beads for seeds. 
The border is a pretty French braid from a flea market.
I photographed it on my Rough Guide to France.

Here is my Bugs tag, a week late, but I am sneaking it in!

I chose dragonflies for their beauty and jewelled colours.

The centre of the tag shows a dragonfly , on top

of some hand made papers, which I have drawn into and picked

out the raised lines, making it look like plants. I used

Origami paper, washi tape, a stick on border and cardstock

for contrasting colour.

As I took the photo, a dragonfly  flew over my head! We do have

a lot in our garden.

Tag Tuesday-Garden Party

The theme for our tags over on Tag Tuesday this week is Garden Party.

I have made a very summery tag!

 I found the beautiful image of a hedge gazebo on this week's Graphics Fairy.

 It is from a French gardening book c 1859. This was collaged onto a gelli printed backrgound. The image of the lady and little girl are borrowed from Georges Seurat's painting: A Sunday Afternoon at the Island la Grande Jatte.

I have added garden decor in the form of floral fabrics. stick on butterflies, and a very handsome peacock paper cut out.

Close up

Landscape Collage

Here is a  landscape collage I made in art class.

 I have been busy with the class all school year, and have learned a lot. We have had homework every week, and I have been a conscientious student, and have always done mine. The first term we did Drawing, the second Painting, and now we are working in Mixed Media

The collage is worked in a mixture of painted acrylic and collaged papers. Texture was added with coffee grounds.

Tag Tuesday-Roses

The theme for this week's Tag Tuesday is Roses.

For my Roses tag I decided to assemble some materials containing roses, and bring them together in one collage. I used some rose printed chintz for the background, with a clothes tag, black and white stamped roses. a black silk rose, a permaclay rose (made by a friend), some dried wild roses, a rose patterned button, and an embroidered border. I added another tag with an appropriate quotation on. I took a photo of it on a back cloth of cotton rosebuds.

A close up

The quotation :

It is the month of June,

The month of leaves and roses,

When pleasant sights salute the eyes

And pleasant scents the noses.

Nathaniel Parker Willis

(1806-1867)

American author, poet, critic and editor

Tag Tuesday-Stripes and Spots

 On Tag Tuesday this week our theme is Stripes and Spots.

. For my Spots and Stripes tag I have made a stripey fish tag. The background is tissue paper collage, the fish is painted with Twinkling H2Os and coloured with gel pens, and the seaweed is made from raffia.

Cat Collage

This is a collage I made of my cat, Minnie. She had been very ill, and needed to stay in the animal hospital for 10 days. Now she is well again and looking happy. The collage was a thank you for the vet's practice. I used painted papers and magazines and embroidery floss for her whiskers.

Collage Techniques

This informative book has just come through the post for me, Collage Techniques by Gerald Brommer. I had read about it in Cloth, Paper Scissors magazine. It has all sorts of information about collage and also a lot of photos of collage art. I can't wait to read it!

Tag Tuesday-Letter G

Tag Tuesday 's alphabet theme is on Letter G this week.

G is for gateau

I made a chocolate gateau from the beauty pages of a magazine. The chocolate is eye shadow, the strawberries are lipstick. For whipped cream I used folded silk. The gateau was served on a plate, also from a magazine, and the whole collaged onto some painted papers . I used a Chinese newspaper and inverted it, hoping the text is adverts and nothing inappropriate. I photographed it using a recipe book for background.

Tag Tuesday-Halloween

The theme for this week's Tag Tuesday is Halloween.
 I have used the collage I made for Collage Obsession a couple of weeks ago for the theme WITCHES. I have used an image from The Graphics Fairy for the witch. You can read about my method in an earlier post.

Tag Tuesday-Seed heads

The theme for this week's Tag Tuesday 

is SEED HEADS. Those of you  who have been reading my blog for a while will know that I really like seed heads, and am delighted to see that Carolyn has chosen one of my favourite themes! I have decided to use some tags I made last year when I was exploring this theme. You can see my earlier post and a description of how I did the pieces on my blog  here. Just scroll down the page till you find the post  Seed heads-experiments in textiles dated 24/01/2012. If you click on the photos you can see the close ups.

I made four pieces from the same source photo, a collage made from snippets of voile, a  newspaper collage, a stitched combination of voile and newspaper and a stitched voile piece.

 

Witches

This is a collage I made for the weekly challenge of Collage Obsession, where this week's theme is Witches.

For the background I used layers of papers and fabrics and painted over them in blues.

The rooftops were made from similar layers of papers and fabrics and painted reddish purple. For the moon I used some Indian paper which was very thick and textured. The witch is made from black card, and her silhouette is courtesy of The Graphics Fairy, where the image came from.