Graphicus July Challenge

This Card is for the Graphicus July Challenge, the theme is "Inspired by the Sea" and the colour scheme "harmonious".

I started off meaning to cover both theme and colour scheme, but somehow my harmonious green and yellow morphed into a very unharmonious turquoise and orange. I still like them together, but it shows you don't have to stray far to lose the harmony. Gosh - that sounds like an answer to the meaning of life as well as a comment on colour theory - I must be in touch with my inner philosopher today.

I started by painting he background in greens and a bit of yellow, then I overstamped it with the seaweed and shells stamp from Elusive Images Underwater plate in 2 shades of teal. The panel is a piece of core'dinations whitewash board, cuttlebugged and sanded, I then stamped some more images from "Underwater" and "Seashell Collage" onto yellow paper using brownish and greeny-yellow inks, and cut them out and stuck them on. These ended up looking orange. I might have another go though and try to stick to harmonious colours next time! Oh, and if any more meanings of life occur to me I'll pass them on, but I doubt they'd be very reliable...

Art journals again- my new addiction...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had also started a journal at the Mixed Media course at Graphicus back in April. It didn't need much doing to it, and I have now been spurred on to finish it. Here it is, not all the pages photographed very well, particularly the darker ones, so this is just a selection. The thing with this one is, a lot of it is about texture and dimension, hard to capture in a 2D medium like photos!

And can ayone tell me why on earth these photos come out in a column like this? I'm sure I've got them to spread around a bit better before! Very frustrating ....

Oh Sarah! Part two.

My friend Neet posted earlier about her new addiction - Art Journalling. This is me on the same subject. Oh Sarah! You have led me into a new way of moodling my time away!

We were at a workshop at Paddy's yesterday, and under Sarah Anderson's expert guidance, six of us, i.e. Neet, Sue, Cynthia, Sylvia, Lynne and myself, started to create art journals. This is something I have wanted to do and have been dipping my toe into for ages, partly inspired by seeing one of Sarah's journals before and partly by seeing some of Glenda Waterworth's when I was on the Mixed media course at Graphicus. Both very different, both lovely and inspiring. When I was on the course at Graphicus, I started one which I'm very pleased with, the emphasis being on materials and techniques, naturally, as the course was about just that! I think this type of journal is sometimes called a studio journal.

I also started another one a while ago in which I put pieces of work I've done that illustrate a technique, or combination of materials, colours etc, with a full description or "recipe" so that I can reproduce it later if I want. This is probably a studio journal also.

At Sarah's workshop yesterday she got us to take a more playful approach and cover pages with what we liked, what inspired us etc. We made lists - birds trees dogs chocolate etc - then we started by playing like five-year-olds with big splodges of colour on several pages, using Stewart Gill True Colours which have a lovely matte finish and bright strong colour. Then we stamped over them, added doodles, written journalling, swirls, bits of paper, whatever we liked, in other words collage. I absolutely LOVED it! The freedom Sarah gave us was inspiring, and brought out some gorgeous work in all of us. Pop over to Neet's blog for hers (Hickydorums, see left panel). The main thing is (both Glenda and Sarah said this) - there is no need to finish it now! Just start. Put stuff on pages. One day you'll feel like painting, one day stamping, one day cutting out. One day you'll want to journal about the weather, another day it might be chocolate. So What? Just Do It! The feeling of no need to finish today, or even to have an end in sight, is very liberating.

Anyway, here are pics of a couple of pages of the one done at Sarah's workshop. I have just realised that I didn't post about this aspect of Glenda's, so I'll try and get some pics done tomorrow and post them.

This first one is a double page as you can see, the subject is leaves. Sarah cut some out on her Cricut, I Cuttlebugged some, you can see the leftovers at the top, then I used some as masks to spray paint over. I stamped with some Stamp Bug stamps and some Stamp Man ones, a Tim Holtz one and I doodled a bit. I journalled in some words from a poem I wrote years and years ago about the word "leaves" and it's different meanings and here is the page:-

This single page is about birds as you can see. The little bird that is walking across the bottom is one of the first stamps I ever bought, I have no idea who made it or where I got it, it was in one of those bins where everything is unwrapped and cheap. I loved him then and I still do. The rest of the stamps are from my extensive collection of stamps aquired since featuring birds! The postage stamps were provided by Sarah, originally from a car boot sale apparently!

Anyway I hope you like these pages, I'm opff to bed now as I have akshually been wrkg today between jurnalling, modling and bloging, so am pretty tyred, therefore plz xcs splg!

Neet's Clay Mirror

Last week I was at a workshop at Paddy's Stamping Place run by Neet Hickson, a very clever and talented mixed media artist, who is very generous at sharing her knowledge and skills with us all. We had a great time, playing with Makins clay - Plasticene for grown-ups! We used a cheap mirror from that well known swedish shop as a base and made loads of little clay tiles to stick on it. You can also remove the mirror (or just not put it back, as it's easier to work with it with the mirror out of the way) and put in a picture. The clay tiles were imprinted with stamps then coloured over with pearlex or perfect pearls before being attached to the frame. No adhesive was needed, except a little water. I added the beaded fringe myself when I got home, to tie the piece in with other items in the room where it will be hung. I may add some more beads yet. Anyway I hope you like it. Pop over to Neet's blog for pictures of other's work (Hickydorums, link to your left). If you look back many many posts, you will see another mirror frame which I made at a workshop of Neet's, called a palooza, which was made in a very different way, both as beautiful and fun to do as each other.

Ready Steady Stamp challenge

This is something I haven't attempted before - an online challenge - I think they are a brilliant way of getting the creative juices flowing, but I have never dared enter one before! Anyway, here goes. The challenge is on Ready-Steady-Stamp! and here is the link: http://www.readysteadystamp.blogspot.com/

The challenge is an interesting one - there is a list of "ingredients" and they all must be included, along with at least one stamp, but how you include them is open to interpretation. They are: Cats or dogs; black and gold; three different brads; faux-batik technique and a book or newspaper page. Anyway, go and have a look, I'm sure you'll find it intriguing and fun. Oh and they have a rule - no cute. Suits me!