Winter Book

On my work table today.

I have just finished my Winter book. I have been following

an online course by Roxanne Evans Stout, " The Thread That Weaves".

I really like Roxanne's work, and am inspired to add some stitch into my

mixed media pieces. 

My Winter Book

    Three collage pieces attached with waxed string

Stitch with wax string

Roxanne Evans Stout's book on collage

Wanderlust- A life in your Hand

Wanderlust 2018 is proving to be a very interesting and inspiring experience. 
This is the work I have created following a tutorial by Kasia Avery, "A life in your Hand".
I am really pleased with the result. For more details visit the Everything Art website.

A life in your Hand

Textured border 

Wanderlust 2018

Happy New Year to you all!

I hope 2018 is a happy and creative year for you.

I have signed up to do an online mixed media course,

Wanderlust 2018

with Everything Art, and I am really looking
forward to a year of adventure in mixed media.

Pebeo Art Supplies

This week I attended a demonstration of Pebeo art supplies. The best bit was when we got to test the products

I was very impressed with all the products I used.

The approach I had was just to experiment with them in my sketch book and see 

what happened.

The products I used were:-

acrylics

black gesso

Mixtion Relief 

Modelling paste

Texture gel (sand)

Bindex

Gel gloss

Deco markers

stencils

Holiday Journal

I have set myself a challenge to make a holiday art journal. I'm fairly new to art journalling, although I am familiar with many mixed media techniques. So it's the first time I have done this. Limited by the materials I brought with me - sketchbook, pencil case, brush pens and travel watercolour palette, made me creative in using found objects for my journal pages.

Pages printed with brush pens on plastic bag

Collage of gift wrap paper

Collage of newspaper from plane

Printed leaves

Black and White Journal

This morning I have been working in my Black and White journal with my mixed media group.

The sketch book was made in India and has textural hand made paper pages. My journal pages are collages, made from a variety of paper sources.

Gelatos

Here are my new Gelatos , by Faber-Castell, which arrived in the post for me!

I chose the " Brights" pack as I liked the colours. I had noticed various mixed media work

created using these crayons, and thought I would try them.

I particularly like their names;-

Lemoncello, Margarita Mix, Red Cherry, Orange Soda, Lime,

Snowcone, Bubble Gum, Passion Fruit, Lavender, Lemon,

Mango, Boysenberry.

Gelatos can be used in a variety of ways, as crayons, with water

as paints, and added to acrylics and gesso to name a few.

I liked drawing with them, it feels a bit like using lipstick! They are

very soft.

I have created a board on Pinterest, as I have been looking for inspiration

on how to use them. I find Pinterest a useful tool for filing ideas.

Tag Tuesday-Opposites

On Tag Tuesday this week our theme is OPPOSITES.

My OPPOSITES tag came about by accident, as is often

the case! I found the Night Owl Ribbon whilst rummaging

through my ribbon stash, and that set off my train of thought.

I used Inktense blocks for the background, they give

great, strong colour, and it is easy to layer different colours.

My Night Owl was stamped with black ink, then coloured

in with felt pens. The Early Bird was done in the same way.

I didn't have an Early Bird ribbon in my stash, so I stamped

a plain one!

A line of stars completes my tag.

Experiments with stencils

Stencils was the theme for Tag Tuesday this week. You can see my tag here in an earlier post. I found that once I started playing around with my wild flowers and butterflies stencil, that I wanted to go on experimenting. I have tried different media and background papers. 

Some old sheet music made an interesting background.

 I used acrylic paint, which was a bit patchy, but it might work better with a  watercolour wash over the top.

I have used tissue paper and watercolour here.

 This is a negative stencil, done on a gelli plate, using metallic acrylic. I don't think this is effective, but might look brighter combined with another colour or with further layers of paper .

New Ideas from Books

The local library is a great place to go for ideas and inspiration. This week I found two books which interested me, and I couldn't wait to get them home and start reading and looking at the images.

The first is Crafty Birds edited by Kristy Conlin. I was immediately enticed by the cover of this mixed media book. It has articles about jewellery, collage and mixed media, written by various contributors. I liked the interesting mixture of subjects, and found some good ideas, beautifully illustrated with clear photos. As a bonus, I was the first person to take the book out of the library!

 The second is Inspired to Quilt-Creative Experiments in Art Quilt Imagery by Melanie Testa.This book is about the process of art quilting. Melanie Testa gives lots of ideas, exercises to follow and advice about creating art quilts with a variety of methods. I really like it, and have had it out of the library a couple of times before!

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.