A few stencils, and voila!

Here is my piece for Art Every Day Month, Day 20!

It is a 9 inch canvas.  I put down some acrylic colours, using a scraper to get streaks of colour, then when it was dry, I added some feathers in molding paste through a stencil.  When they were dry, I added the blue ink spray through a stencil, then after that was dry, I paintedthe feathers with some different lumiere paint. After that was dry (again) I added some black around the edges of the feathers with a black ink marker.  Since the ink was watersoluble, I went back with a damp brush and feathered the black out to create shadows.
It depends on the angle you look at it as to whether you see the sheen of the metallic paints.
I was pretty pleased with it.  Hope you like it.

Happy creating

lots of leaves

Today's ATC happened in a round about way.
I had been looking at Julie Fei Fan Balzer's Blog and this post caught my eye. I have this book Scraptastic by Ashley calder, but haven't spent much time on it, so I  thought, why not?

This was one of the ideas in chapter 1.  Stamped molding paste.  I used an ivy leaf stamp which I have three sizes of.  The colour was scrapings from chalk pastels, which I brushed on, and then wrote the text with a fine tipped brush and some watercolour.  What I found was that it was easier to actually stamp the stamp in the chalk powder, then onto the molding paste, as I got a better image.

This is my practice page in one of my altered books.
And while we are at it, here are a few other more recent additions to these books.

This one I don't think is quite finished, but it has some interesting ideas on it.  The black edge was liquid shoe polish spomged on, then when that was dry I sponged on some pale green watercolour.  The ferns, or leaves, were just done with markers, but I am still thinking over the next step.

This page, as you can see, is the one facing the leaf page.  Since I had my pastels out (which doesn't happen very often these days), I thought I would have a play.  soft pastels are very concentrated pigment.  what I did here was scrape them so that the powder was sitting on the page.  Then I sprayed the page with water and stood the book up to let it drip.  This reminds me of a wisteria arbour  and i might actually turn it into one, but it needs thinking.

This was an experiment with waxed paper.  I scrunched up a large piece of waxed paper, then opened it out and ironed it onto the paper.  Then I put some dilute watercolour over the page and you can see the pattern it made, sort of a parchment type look or a leather look.  (The splotches were on the page before I started).

These two are parts from a page that I used under my work on this and other occasions.  Usually, I dampen the page before I start, so that and drips will spread on it.

A very papery day today, with not much stitch in it.

Remember spring, and altered books

playing card, molding paste through a stencil, gesso, watercolour paint, (very messy) decorative machine stitching, lazy daisy, felt backing.

Another brief glimpse into my artbooks, today.

This is a niche, cut into my insect theme book, using layered tissue paper and a cast tissue dragonfly.

and another, layered tissue page in my techniques book, with some decorative stitching on the side of the page.

I have arranged some distressed leaf samples I did a while ago on some paste paper in my leaf theme book.

Here are two little niches, front and back in my leaf theme book.

hereis the page complete, with a metal leaf and a cast made from it mounted.

and from the back, with the distressed leaves showing through.

this page is created using newspaper, gesso, acrylic and then a watercolour wash with salt.

And I am playing with this acetate overlay, but I think I might make one out of stitching to go on this page.

I am very busy with things I can't show you yet, which is quite frustrating, but hopefully next week the pressure will be off slightly and I will be able to get some playing done!

And don't you forget to play every day! 

Don't forget Lisa's ATC

a bit of a daisy and some transfer experiments

This atc is made from a bit of the Pam carriker collage I showed a few posts ago.  The daisy is molding paste painted gold.  I have added a few beads to the centre and blanket stitched the edge.


I have been fiddling a bit with transparency transfers since reading about using hand sanitiser gel in pam carriker's book.  I works really well.

The tranfer (on to fabric) on the left is with sanitiser gel, and worked really well, despite my awful pictures.  I wondered if it was the gel, so I tried some aloe vera gel, and it worked, but it bled a little (right)
This gor me thinking, so I looked at the ingredients list on my sanitiser bottle.  There was alcohol, glycerin and eucalyptus.  I happened to have all these things, so I did some experiments.

For this transfer, I mixed up my own concoction of glycerin, methylated spirits, eucalyptus, water and a bit of aloe vera gel.  It worked, but I wanted to know which things were doing the job.

This was eucalyptus and methylated spirits, with a bit of water, and worked very well, except that I moved it and smudged it.

This one was just methylated spirits(alcohol) and water.  (I have found that a little bit of water is neccesary)
I worked, but was a bit blurry.

This one was eucalyptus and water and also worked very well, although I redid the bottom and mis aligned it!
So, I think that although the alcohol does transfer, it doesn't fix the ink and bleeds a little.  The eucalyptus seems to do a good job, and has the advantage that it will evaporate away.  I think Perhaps the gel or glycerin helps to stop the bleeding because it makes the transfer medium thicker and less able to bleed.  any way, I have had some good results and will continue experimenting.
Oh, I nearly forgot, it also works well on paper.

Also, I had a little mistake and printed on the wrong side of the transparency.  I found that the ink did not dry on the acetate, so I had a go at transferring it.

I sprayed a little glen 20 ( antiseptic spray, mostly alcohol and water) on the ink and simply pressed it into the fabric.  It worked!  Just a bit of bleeding.

In this one, I used fabric which had been sprayed with alum solution to try and stop the blurring.  It worked, but the image was still not great.  The alum seemed to coagulate the black ink although the coloured inks transfered well.  This would be good for outlining with a fine black stitching....

On this one, I sprayed the glen 20 on the fabric and the damp fabric made it bleed.
This second set of experiments needs a little more refining.  My reason for exploring it is that transparencies are expensive and can only be used once.  I happen to have a lot of simple acetate sheets which I picked up at a junk store, still in their packets (the type we used to use with white board pens, when they were called overhead pens - a long time ago, lol)  The second two prints above used these sheets and after transfer, I simply wiped them clean and used them again-wow!
Anyhow, I have been having a bit of fun, playing with this technique!

don't forget to play with your art materials!

spiral sun and some collage

Here is my ATC for today.  Fabric paper, crushed velvet, satin free machine embroidery, dimensional paint beads and blanket stitch.

Pam Carriker's "Art at the speed of life" is the inspiration for this collage background that I am working on.

Here is the fabric paper base, using magazine clippings and scrunched tissue paper.

Some molding paste through stencils.

Multicoloured glazxe over the top of the stencils.

A better picture showing the stencils

I love the texture of the glaze on the wrinkled tissue.
I am not sure what I am going to use this for, or if I am going to finish the other steps Pam uses, because I like it the way it is. - Any ideas?


Any time is a great time for creating.

Something simple and another journal

Ah, a bit late after the big storm this morning, but oh, so cool - a great day for working!

Today is just a bit of screen print with some free motion meandering.  I loved the fabric so much, I didn't want to put much on to of it.  I was trying out Melanie Testa's knife edge finish from her book "inspired to quilt"
And here is a little book I created recently from Pam Carriker's Art at the speed of life.

I folded mt book, then I changed my mind and pulled it apart and painted the papers

Bit of a messy job.  I used mt homemade glaze medium, which is white glue 1:1 with water.

Here is my cover after collaging and addin molding paste

And after glazing - I love this texture.  In the book there are lots more layers, but I stopped here as I liked it.

and the book.  Almost to good to draw in, but I will be adding to it as I go through Pam's book.

happy creating.

Serendipity and a peek

OK, ATC number 2.

Serendipity, because mine is shiny and molding paste, too.  See Lisa's here.
Playing card, molding paste through a stencil. Starburst moonglow spray (I got it here) and silver marker

Also, today, a peek into one of the projects I am working on.
You may remember these sketches

Which ! posted recently.
Well, they have multiplied and are fast becomming thread paintings

these are simply what i call underpaintings, or sketches.  At this stage I am just sketching in colours and getting even stitches to cover the stabiliser.

And a new one.  This one I did not even sketch in my book!  I just sketched it straight on the stabiliser from a photo taken by a friend.  Not quite sketched out yet.  some water, sky and trees to go

Now this one, I did consider asking you guys if you could work it out, but I decided that right now it is a bit too hard.  It looks like an aerial photo, I suppose, but it will actually be a cross section of an opal.  the centre strip will be full of all the little coloured bits and black and dark blue lines.  The orangy bits are the rock the opal is living in.