a Circle Journal catch up - Free Art Friday - and more Lost Dogs

Phew - I've been busy recently, here's a little round up

First of all, two entries in the fabric circle journal I'm taking part in over at UKScrappers - there's only one more after this month, pity, I've really enjoyed it:

This one's theme was vintage fashion.  Not my usual kind of thing, but that's what I enjoy about circle journals, they sometimes push me kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone!

I was originally going to use an image transfer technique for the focal image, but, well, this is how it turned out!  Oops!

So I painted her instead, and she turned out pretty cute.  In fact I think I would have left the piece like this if I was keeping it for myself....

...with no further embellishment than the frayed edges on the fabric.  But it wouldn't have been enough for the circle journal requirements, there needed to be at least a little bit of needlework in there, so I added some lace and ribbon and other frou frou in line with the theme :)

Next up, this month's theme was Wings, and I was torn between an angel, a death's head moth, or Icarus.  As you can see, Icky won out in the end:

Again a combination of a painting (acrylics) and embroidery on fabric, which I've done a few of now and I'm enjoying the combo.

This is also my entry for Summer of Color 2014, week one.  The colour palette we were given this week was aqua blue, and yellow, with a pop of hot pink.

Not sure if you can spot the hot pink, so here's a close up - it's the thread around the wings:

Now moving on to another circle journal - the Stay-At-Home CJ over at Collabor-ART ended this month - and sadly so did the site itself, I've decided to wind it down as it has gone deathly quiet there over the last year as we've all moved onto other creative endeavours.

I'll be sorry to see it go, but at least it bowed out with a really great project - the S@H CJ has really been a lot of fun!

Here's my final entry - the theme was cogs, wheels and rust:

It's a bit busy!  It looks better in real life really due to the metallic embossing powder behind the heart and the patina in it....  you'll just have to take my word for that :)

And here are all my pages together for the full 9 months of the project....

....no idea what I'm going to do with them now .... maybe I will donate some to....

Free Art Friday

how's that for a seamless link?

Because I have somehow found myself "volunteered" to organise Swindon's very own chapter of Free Art Friday ..... how did that happen???

All the details about our launch event and how things will shake out in the long term, are on the Facebook page : http://www.facebook.com/FreeArtFridaySwindon - please do check it out, I'm currently in crazy recruitment mode trying to persuade all my creative friends to join in :)

I've also been making lots of work myself to contribute to the big launch event - including 6 more "Lost Dogs":

And, for the kiddies to find, some stencilled My Little Ponies:

There's a ton more in the pipeline too, I'm hoping to contribute 20 or 30 more items to the cause - either for the Swindon drop itself or to swap with other artists and Free Art Friday chapters....so I'll continue to be busy busy busy!!!

Wouldn't have it any other way, though :)

Catch up time

Just a few bits to catch up on this month, first up, here is my entry for the April installment of the Stay At Home CJ .....

The theme this month was "art in my heart", and this was the background we had to work on:

I went for the broken hearted angle on the theme, as I wanted to play with my lovely purple Bombay ink to make those lush drips :)

You can see the full gallery with everyone's interpretations of the theme over at Collabor-ART

Something else I've been having fun with over the last couple of weeks is making "missing" juice boxes for Free Art Friday style drops.  

These two:

were the first couple I made.  I really need to work on neatening up my lettering!  And the whole concept would probably work better with milk cartons than juice cartons - but I don't drink milk :/    Other than that I think they work :)

These were dropped at the St. Athans Boys Village in South Wales:

I hope whoever found them enjoyed them!

(for those of you who are interested, there are lots more photos of this amazing place in this Facebook album from piccie #141 onwards)

Catch up time

I have really lost the knack for this whole blogging lark - as in I have no idea what to actually WRITE - but here are some pretty pictures of stuff wot I have been doing recently....

First of all, over there on the left, I'm pretty proud of this one.

It's a painting of Matthew the Raven (from the Sandman comics) - he took me months as he’s a big old fella (about 5 feet tall, see blurry pic of me below for scale) – and I thought I might never get him finished.  But I got there in the end – yay! - and I have proudly hung him at the top of the stairs.

Next up, a couple of circle journal pages:

This first one was for the Stay At Home CJ over on Collabor-Art – the theme was Mermaid Tales ….. you can see the whole gallery of everyone else’s entries here

And the second was for the Fabric CJ I’m a part of over at UKScrappers.  The theme, as you might have guessed, was cupcakes.  Very much not my usual style this one!  But I enjoyed the needle felting element, it’s always fun to get stabby!!

Another circle journal update....

I've done a couple more CJ entries since the last time I blogged, so for the sake of completeness, here they are (apologies this won't be a wordy post, I am soooooo tired and my bed beckons :) ):

This one had a Shakespeare theme, so I did a portrait of Titania and her beloved Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream

The theme for this one was Innocence and Experience....

And finally, this month's "Bestitched" fabric CJ entry - the theme was 'bejewelled' .... which made me think of jewel toned fabrics and sari silks, and paisley motifs....

So I hand cut a paisley stencil (fiddly little bugger!):

And then sewed together strips of fabric in jewel tones as a base for the stencilling:

A smattering of sparkles finished it off

Circle Journal catch ups

I haven't blogged since last September??? Blimey!  Didn't realise it had been that long!

So - anyway - here's a catch up on my current CJs

First up, my first entry for a new fabric based CJ taking place over on UKScrappers.  My theme is tattoos, and I've asked each participant to make a 8" x 8" mini art quilt:

That blooming swallow took me two weeks to embroider, and not all the stitching is perfect, but I am fairly pleased with the end result.  I look forward to the next six months, some of the themes are going to be a bit of a challenge for me I think, but that's why I enjoy CJs, I like being forced out of my comfort zone a bit.....

Next, and I'm not sure why I haven't blogged any of these already, I've been taking part for the last few months in a very different kind of CJ over at Collabor-art.  It's called a Stay At Home CJ, and the basic premise is that each person taking part has made a background, and chosen a theme - we all have been sent colour copies of the ten backgrounds, and each month we all work on the same background, to the same theme, blind.  There's a big reveal at the end of each month of what everyone did.  And the big plus points are that 1) there's no postage costs or the worry of things getting lost in the post and 2) you get to keep all your artwork

Here are my entries to date, and links to the Collabor-art posts for each month so you can see what everyone else did from the same starting point:

Month 1, theme "for the love of trees":

Original background, by Lou

My entry - the quote is Emily Bronte if I remember rightly

Full gallery here

Month 2, theme "Beastie":

Background by Carmen

My entry - Cthulhu

Full gallery here

Month 3, theme "steampunk":

Background by Pat

My entry - this was a 2 layer hand cut stencil which rather annoyingly fell apart on first use, so this is a one off!

Full gallery here

And last one for now (I'm currently working on Month 5), Month 4, theme "song lyrics":

Background by me

My entry - the lyrics are from Cochise by Audioslave

Full gallery here

Phew, that was quite the update, I'll try not to leave it so long next time....

Always be a unicorn.....

End of the month - it must be circle journal time :)

This is my entry in Karen's CJ, her theme is something along the lines of witty sayings or quotes - so here's mine:

I painted the unicorn using acrylic paints, over a metallic background made on the gelli plate

Wording was all done (not very well!) using Posca pens

I think next month is my last one for this circle, it's been fun, I'll miss it

Time for a bloggy catch up

I've neglected this poor old blog recently, haven't I....... no "Rocking Your World" or "A Year of Firsts" posts since March, and half the stuff I make doesn't get onto the blog any more either.

Sorry peeps, it's all down to wok craziness, it's been such a busy year and I've been working silly hours, so a lot of my free time activities, including keeping my blog up to date, have had to give

But anyway, enough excuses, here are a few things I've made recently that I haven't put on here yet:

First up, I've been taking part in the Summer of Color challenge this year - and a few of the bits you'll have seen already, but here are two you haven't:

Week one - colour combo Citron Green & Turquoise - I made a batch of gelli prints and then used one of them to make my dad's Fathers' Day card:

Week two - Hot Pink & Orange - I used on a CJ entry already blogged here

Week three - Lime Green & Purple - well purple always makes me think of chocolate thanks to Cadbury :)  so I used this combo for my Hollow Chocolate Bunnies book review artwork, already blogged here

Week four - Charcoal Grey & Pale Pink - I can't share that one yet as it's on the artwork for my next ARC book review, but watch this space!

Week five - Candy Apple Red & Yellow - I made something for myself to keep for a change.  I bought this wooden plaque a while ago in the Works for £1.99, and used it to make a bit of tribute fan art to the wondrous webcomic Romantically Apocalyptic

Any of you who haven't checked out RA yet - do it now!!!  Head for the archives and read it from the beginning or it won't make sense.  Well, it doesn't make much sense anyway :) But it is so funny and beautiful and just brilliant.  What are you waiting for?  go!   (but do come back here afterwards and finish reading this blog post :) )

The week six combo is looking likely to be Sage & Sepia, not sure yet what I'll do for that one....

What else haven't I blogged?  This ICAD portrait of my cat:

And this CJ entry:

(I cut that 4 layer stencil of the Krays by hand, it gave me a knife finger blister! more details over here)

I think there are probably other things I've forgotten to blog, but that's a reasonable attempt to catch up.....

Trapped in the amber of this moment....

I'm a proper girly swot this month, as I've finished my entry in Sian's art journal CJ already, and it isn't due to go in the post until 1st August. Which is most unlike me, I am usually a stay-up-till-3am-the-day-before-the-deadline-to-get-it-finished kind of a girl

The theme of Sian's CJ is 'word play' - she has provided a list of words from which each participant chooses a word (or two) to illustrate.   In that respect it's a little bit like the pair journal I'm doing with Shirley (which I haven't blogged about on here for yonks, but it is still ongoing, the latest update is over at Collabor-ART)

Sian has some awesome words on her list - lots of nice happy ones, but also lots of cool angsty words like 'fear' and 'addiction' and 'alienation' - and being the horror movie/rock/metal/comic book fan that I am, I was more drawn to the darker words.  In the end I decided to illustrate the word 'trapped':

Sci-fi fans might recognise the quotation, it's from Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five:

"Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? . . . Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." 

To give the illusion of poor Billy Pilgrim being trapped in amber, I sprayed the central section with a couple of coats of glossy varnish:

I did want to give him a little hope though, so I stamped the crackles on top with white paint to show that the amber is starting to break, maybe he'll escape from this moment soon enough....

Finally we were asked to make a matching tag for our sign in:

I've used a lot of stamps this time around, which was kind of fun, it's a while since I've played with my rubber :)  The crime scene tape is from Viva Las Vegas, the corrugated iron background is by Darkroom Door, the round Circle Journal stamp is by Cats Life Press, all the crackles are from a cube by Stampers Anonymous, and I think the woodgrain that I used for my planks is by All Night Media

The man was painted by me, though.

I do hope that Sian likes it, and that it hasn't overly spoilt the mood of an otherwise pretty and uplifting journal!

So it goes.....

Overworked, over tired and over here....

So - can you guess what kind of week I've had? :)

This is my entry in Jo's book for the 'You're Having a Laugh' art journal CJ - her theme is 'How Do You Feel Today?' .... I wonder if she is going to regret asking that question :D

I actually found it quite stress relieving painting my stressed out lady, the therapeutic powers of art strike again!

As a few peeps have said they like seeing the step by steps, here's how she came about:

Sketched onto a gelli print with a grey pitt pen, shirt, teeth and eyes coloured in with a white paint pen, skin painted with Fresco acrylic paint in Nougat

More painting - all Fresco paints - Squid Ink, Claret and Pansy on the jacket, French Roast and a touch of Hyde Park in the eyes

Very Berry and London Red on the lips and tongue, and the hair was a mix of French Roast, Chocolate Pudding and Cinnamon

After this point I finished off her hair, added the punched arrows all around the page as a frame, and wrote the page title 'Stressed!' using paint pens.

Here's hoping for a reduction in day job workload and stresses very soon and more time for arty pursuits!

Spacey-wacey Timey-wimey

Well, OK, not so much on the timey-wimey.  But recently I have re-discovered the fun of making space art with spray paints.

It really is super easy, and quick, and almost magical in the way it works

^ That one up there was my very first attempt last year after watching some "how to" videos on You Tube.  The kids made their own too and got equally ace results, you can't mess it up even if you try.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I made a CJ page based on Shakespeare's Sister's "Stay" - such a great song and brilliant video too - which was positively crying out for a space art background

Here's the end result:

(blogged in full at Collabor-ART here: http://collabor-art.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/time-for-another-round-of-desert-island.html)

And then today I was working on another CJ page - this one had movie/TV show quotes as its theme, and I happen to know that the journal's originator is a big fan of Star Trek, especially the original series - so I couldn't resist attempting a portrait of Mr Spock:






























And of course he absolutely NEEDED a space background:

So here's how it works.....

First of all you spray a colour, then black then white spray paints in quick succession (without letting the paint dry) roughly where you want your planets to be.

Then you take a slightly crumpled bit of thin paper (a magazine page works well), and put it down over the paint then peel it straight back off.  This is what leaves that fantastic "planet surface" texture:











Spray in a little shadow with black paint on the "dark side of the moon" and then pop round objects (that you don't mind ruining!) in place to make the planets.

Spray all over with black, then add a little bright blue and yellow space dust, and white stars (shaking the can about while only partially depressing the nozzle will give that nice splattery effect)













When the paint is dry, lift off your round thingamajigs, and ta-da:

It's as easy as that!

If you have spray paints handy (the graffiti-style paints in aerosol cans, not spray inks) then I totally urge you to have a go at this, it really is so much fun!


Live Long and Prosper, guys....