"Proper" Art!

Just lately, I've been doing more and more drawing... and remembering that I actually used to be quite good at it.

 

I've been thinking for ages about making an original canvas - as in drawing a design from scratch. With my new venture in making and selling my own digi stamps, and my recent re-addiction to ATCs, I've been rediscovering my drawing mojo and so last weekend I finally took the plunge and had a first go at making my original canvas:

 

 

I used a pre-prepped canvas board and drew the image onto it, then painted in the image and the background and added inks and texture gels and embossing paste and gilding paste and built up patterns and texture and highlights.

 

It's not perfect but for a first go I am fairly pleased with the results.

 

It has a lot of texture and shimmer that the face-on view doesn't pick up:

 

 

 

I'm not entirely happy with the shading on the face but hey, practice makes perfect, right?

 

Much as I love papercrafting and stamping and the like (and I still totally do!), I feel like this is quite an exciting step for me, creating my own original art from scratch, all completely drawn and coloured etc by me, rather than working with other people's images, in the form of stamps or papers etc. It feels like "proper" art, if that makes any sense?

 

I'm already planning my next canvas... a bigger one this time, I think... :)

Crafting with Friends

I love having company when I craft. There's something so fab about being able to chat to like-minded folks and to create together and share ideas and inspiration. It's something I rarely get to do, mainly due to having no childcare! I've been on one scrapbooking retreat (the UKS Green Buttons retreat) and am looking forward to going again this year but it's also nice occasionally to just have a friend over for a few hours.

And that's what I did last Wednesday evening... my friend Laura came over and we spent the evening in my craft room having a play with Dylusions ink sprays and stencils and stamping. I dug out a couple of canvas boards and we had a lovely time decorating them.

This was what I made:

As well as the Dylusions sprays and various stencils, I used some Tim Holtz, Stampotique and Stampin' Up! stamps on the background and used Dylusions and Wendy Vecchi stamps (coloured with my summer colours Promarkers) for the images and a Stampotique stamp for the sentiment.

I had such a nice evening and really hope to do it again some time soon! :)

I'm going to enter this into the "What Do You Say?" challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show too.

GBSBII - A whole bunch of LOs... and more!

So the weekend before last was the GBSBII - Green Buttons Scrapping Bonanza II - over at UKS. For those not familiar with the teams/house system on UKS, all point-collecting teams are allocated to one of four "houses" and my team (Crop Circle) is in the Green Buttons house. Last autumn, in an attempt to inspire, enthuse and motivate the Green Buttons members, we held the first scrapping bonanza - a weekend of classes and challenges put together by members of the Green Buttons house, kind of like a mini cyber crop. It was a huge success and lots of fun - so much so that it was decided to hold another one!

The classes and challenges were uploaded over the course of the weekend, starting from Friday evening, through to Sunday evening, and people had until the end of this last weekend to complete and upload their LOs (people can of course do the classes etc any time they like but to count for the GBSBII (and be in with the chance of winning some little prizes!) they had to be uploaded by the deadline).

It's been really fun and I was able to join in with a few of the classes/challenges - though not as many as I'd have liked. And this time around I also set a class myself! So I thought I'd share with you the fruits of my GBSBII labour...

First up is the class that I set, a sewing-themed decorated canvas class (btw if anyone is interested in how I made this, I will put up the class instructions in a separate post);

Sew Special

The first LO I did for GBSBII was for a live speed scrap challenge that took place on the Friday evening - the challenge creator (Thriftycrafter) posted instructions every 10 minutes and the challenge was to follow those instructions, within the time given, to create a LO. It was great fun! So much so that the Green Buttons are planning to now host a monthly live speed scrap. :) Here is the LO I created during the live speed scrap:

A Walk in the April Sunshine

The papers are Basic Grey Obscure and I used  a Martha Stewart Edge Punch, some 3D flower stickers I've had lying round for ages and Making Memories chipboard and rub-on alphas.

The next LO I did was for a great sketch challenge from Mary Buttons:

So Cute

I loved this sketch and it made a lovely LO. Papers, journalling spot, buttons, alphabet and element stickers were all Basic Grey Sugared and the rub-on flourish with bling was also Basic Grey. The flowers are by Prima. 

Another LO that I did for GBSBII was for  JimJam's Ready... Steady... Scrap! challenge. In this challenge, JimJams made a load of cards listing different colours, techniques and embellishments and for everyone who wanted to take part she picked one colour, one technique and two embellishments. I got orange, distressing, chipboard and glitter:

Aimee's First Haircut

I used a great page kit pack  by We R Memory Keepers that I got recently from TK Maxx for the grand total of £2!! I painted naked chipboard letters and shapes in colours to match the papers and that covered the chipboard requirement. The glitter requirement is covered by the little glittery brads that came as part of the page kit. I actually completed this LO and was photographing it when I realised I had forgotten about the distressing requirement! :lol: So I made and added a couple of distress-edged lollipop flowers. :)

The final LO I did for GBSBII was a double LO for agirlcalledbob's gorgeous sketch class. She used wedding photos in her example LO and I did the same for mine as the sketch seemed to really suit these photos:

Our Special Day

I kept the colour scheme very simple with white card, with a bit of embossing for added interest, and a few pieces of dusky pink paper. The flowers are by Prima and the heart charm is one I've had in my stash for about 5 years! :lol:

I've saved the best for last... the final class that I had a go at during GBSBII was Smelly's incredible faux configuration box house. Would you believe this is made from a canvas?! :)

This was such an amazingly clever idea! It used the back of a canvas to create a faux configuration box. I had a great time glueing, painting and decorating it and then deciding how to fill the little boxes. I used Once Upon a Time papers from DCWV that I've had sitting around for ages but not really known what to do with (they were almost too pretty to use! :lol:) and I went with the whole fairy theme in my decoration of the little cubbyholes... I made a wand from a gold-painted piece of cocktail stick and two star stickers and I filled a little glass bottle with glass glitter "fairy dust" :)

I had a great time doing these classes and challenges and there's plenty more that I didn't get chance to do before the deadline. Roll on GBSBIII! :D