Teabag-Beebag Art

Today I made a birthday card for a beekeeping friend, with a grungy brown colour scheme.

I began by stamping a bee image onto a teabag which I had dried, emptied and ironed.

Later, I redid this, using black archival ink, because the sepia didn’t stand out enough.

I inked a piece of scrim mesh with Pumice Stone Distress Stain.

I took a piece of A4 cardstock for the card base and folded it in half, and inked it lightly with Pumice Stone and Frayed Burlap Distress inks, after which I spattered it with water and blotted it off.

The edges were distressed with Tea Dye Distress Ink.

I tore a piece of hand-made paper along a ruler to make it the size I wanted, and distressed the edges with Tea Dye and Vintage Photo Distress Inks.

Again using Pumice Stone and Frayed Burlap Distress Inks, I distressed a piece of printed card, which I have place on top of the original to show the difference.

Assembling the card topper. I stuck the printed paper down onto the hand-made paper with double-sided tape, and the mesh was adhered with spray adhesive.

I used the same spray adhesive to attach a small piece of gold punchinella.

Completing the card topper. I spattered the back papers with white acrylic paint, and attached the replacement teabag, which I had also spattered with white acrylic. The text was written with permanent black pens.

The completed card, with a couple of gold peel-offs.

Mixed Media Anniversary Card

Today is our 31st wedding anniversary. Goodness, is it really that long? What a lot has happened since we got married!

Last night, still catching up with myself after my busy week last week, and then having to rest a lot, I finally sat down in my studio and got a card made for my lovely hubby. I originally planned on making something quite simple because of time, but while I was resting, I came across Marta Lapkowska, a brilliant Polish mixed media artist, on Youtube, and some of her fabulous video tutorials on creating texture from anything you could think of – an absolute gift to a complete texture junkie like Yours Truly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAOJwdQqokQ and this inspired me to do something a little more challenging.

What fun I had!

Here’s what I did, step by step.

First of all, I selected one of my sheets of watercolour paper with stains on it from drying teabags, and tore one out.

In my stash I’ve got quite a few sheets of hand-made paper which I think were originally part of some wedding service sheets that I collected up after a wedding service once. I knew they’d come in useful for art – they are gorgeously soft and textured. Again, I tore out a piece, to give a nice uneven edge, and I was delighted to find that the tearing gave almost the same edge as the natural deckle edge of the hand-made paper.

Next came the teabags. I selected a few from my stash.

I cut them open and put some of the tea on my palette. The rest was thrown away. I should really have a blitz and empty all my stash of teabags (I’ve got hundreds!) and save the tea to put on the garden! Also, the teabags would take up a lot less room without the tea in them. One day, one day…

I mixed the tea with some Polyfilla One Fill, my preferred (cheap) texture paste. It was pretty dry so I added some water.

I opened up the teabags by tearing them, and saved the cut off strips which were interestingly textured.

I applied a few of the teabags to the bottom half of the hand-made paper piece, using soft matte gel medium.

I then applied the tea/Polyfilla mixture in places, to add texture, being careful not to obscure the more interesting part of the teabag layer. I wished I had screwed the teabags up more, instead of laying them down flat, as I would have got more interesting texture that way.

After drying this, I thought it needed a bit more texture added, so out came the coarse pumice gel medium – I love this oh-so-gritty stuff!

Using soft matte gel medium, I stuck down the teabag stain piece to the top of the hand-made paper, and also added a bit of this gel medium over the textured part, to make sure that it didn’t flake off.

Time for stamping. I am soooo glad I bought my wonderful Tonic Stamp Platform! I’ve never been very good at stamping and this tool makes it so easy. Also, I was able to do several test pieces (e.g. on the left of the picture) to experiment with the layout of the grasses stamps – this set is from Inkylicious, and is “Create a Collage – Meadow.” I did the stamping in several stages so that I could get the layout I wanted, using sepia archival ink.

I stamped so that the stems of the grasses extended below the bottom of the teabag stain piece, and extended them, and filled any gaps, with my fine sepia marker.

Here’s a detail shot of the stamping.

Painting with tea and coffee! I made up some strong tea and coffee for this.

Painting with the tea. I used a wide fan brush for this and dabbed it on more or less all over the background piece.

Using a finer brush, I painted the coffee around the edges and to emphasise some of the texture a bit more. I had to do this several times, drying in between with my heat gun – I don’t think I made the coffee quite strong enough.

At this stage I also painted a bit of tea over the teabag stain behind the grasses to emphasise it, as this was getting a bit lost in the design.

I thought the background needed a bit of colour variation, so I used some Infusions. To the bottom left I added some Lemoncello from set 1, and to the right, some Rusty Car from set 2, and these certainly added a bit of richness and depth.

I felt a distinct need to add a bit of complimentary colour to all this brownness, so I dug out my Crushed Grape Dylusions spray ink and spattered some of that on, and I think it improved it a lot.

The edges needed darkening, so I did this with some black acrylic paint. I also added some of this around the texture to emphasise it more.

I thought the whole thing needed lightening a bit, so I masked off the teabag stain piece at the top, and spattered the rest with white acrylic paint.

This was the result.

Originally I wasn’t going to put a sentiment on the outside of the card, but there needed to be something to balance the design, so I decided to add one. I went through my pile of rejects and spares from my Infusions mini-album project and found this one that exactly complemented my design. I tore off the bottom and wrote the text using my Uniball white Signo marker pen, and then darkened the edges, especially along the white torn top edge, with tea. I stuck this to the front of the card with regular matte gel medium, dabbing carefully over the text to prevent the water-soluble white from smudging, and afterwards touching this up where necessary.

To create the card base, I cut a piece of heavy white card and softened the edges with some more tea.

Inside, again using my wonderful stamp platform, I stamped the sentiment with sepia archival ink, using the “Memorable Moments” stamp set from Stampin’ Up.

To add a bit of interest, I made a couple of wide brush strokes across this sentiment with tea, using the fan brush.

I assembled the card using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive which is a really good strong wet glue.

The finished card.

My hubby loves it!

Here it is, side by side with the other card I made recently, for his birthday last week.

WOYWW 339

Well, I haven’t been around much lately, I know. There’s been a lot going on in my life and I’m pretty exhausted, and my creative mojo has fled again for the second time this year… My poor ARTHaven has become the dumping ground it always is when I am not using it, so I thought as a reintroduction to joining the human race again, I would show you just how awful it is, and how little creativity has been going on of late! So here’s the guided tour of Shoshi’s Dumping Ground.

First stop, under the window.

The box with the transparent lid contains the finished cards from my card factory (to which I must return asap!). You an also see my camera case, the purple box that belongs to my lovely cleaning lady – she wants me to alter it for her. Beyond that is a pile of fabric scraps and bits and pieces given to me recently by a lady from church, and under the window, my packing foam pieces that I was making into heat-set rubber stamps, and a pile of dried teabags!

Moving over to the opposite side of the room, this is supposed to be my textile zone and drawing zone, but as you can see, it’s just got stuff dumped on it.

The saddest sight is my main work area. On the desk itself is a collection of dried leaves I picked up outside the hospital a few weeks ago, thinking I would do something with them but now I can’t think what to do with them.

You can see that the dowel that supported my bags of rubber stamps has broken and collapsed. This happened two or three weeks ago and I haven’t had the energy or the enthusiasm to do anything about it. My hubby, bless him, got me a metal rod to replace the dowel, and you can see that on the desk, waiting to be installed.

Here’s a close-up of the wreckage.

How sad is that. It says it all about the state of my creative mojo at the moment!

However, to happier things. I saw the oncologist yesterday and we got the result of my recent post-chemo CT scan, and it is clear, so I have been pronounced cancer free! This is of course very good news, but I am having some problems processing it at the moment as I need a huge mental adjustment to transfer from being a patient (VIP, receiving incredible care and support, all given with kindness and even love, and feeling affirmed and very special) to being a normal person again (ordinary)! I am also wrestling with some feelings of survivor’s guilt, having met some truly amazing and wonderful people on the chemo unit whose stories are working towards an end very different from my story, and whose indomitable spirit and cheerfulness never cease to amaze me – I find myself asking myself “Why me, and not them?” Fruitless question, I know, because cancer is no respecter of persons and the whole thing is a huge lottery with no rhyme nor reason to it. I know I shall move on from this rather complex response to what I know is brilliant news for us, but at the moment I can’t match my hubby’s simple and honest and uncomplicated response of utter joy and relief! I am also wrestling with the fact that my response is a total surprise to me, as I was anticipating feeling the same uncomplicated joy as my hubby.

I have been through a lot over the whole of this year and a couple of weeks ago had an investigation under general anaesthetic which knocked me back somewhat, and I’ve been a bit low in spirits – I think it’s all a reaction to what has been a complete rollercoaster of a year emotionally and physically. I will get there in the end, but for now I need a period of readjustment to my new status as Cancer Survivor and Ordinary Person lol!

I am not feeling brilliant physically either, because I am plagued with peripheral neuropathy as a result of the chemo – this is not the transient, acute version one gets after each treatment, which diminishes towards the end of each cycle, but the persistent, chronic version which is different, and quite intense. I have also developed a couple of rare neurological effects which may or may not have developed because of my existing neurological condition (M.E.). There is no guarantee that I shall fall into the percentage of people whose post-chemo peripheral neuropathy eventually clears up, or whether I shall be part of the significant percentage for whom this is a permanent legacy. Either way, it is a small price to pay for a cancer-free life, and if it does end up being permanent, it will serve as a constant reminder, along with Kermit, my stoma, of what I have been through in order to become a cancer survivor, and I shall be glad of that, because I never want to forget, and I never want to take what I have for granted, and I always want to be reminded to count my blessings daily.

More Faux Leathers

THE BIG REVEAL, PART 8.

This is the second of two posts today.

Many of my regular visitors have been justifiably very frustrated and impatient with me lately because I’ve been working hard on several secret projects that I wasn’t at liberty to reveal until now. With her permission, I can now reveal that I have been making stuff for Shaz. As many of you will know, she is about to undergo major surgery and has been through so much over the past year. She and her lovely hubby share the same birthday and I have made cards for them both, a get well card for her (still under wraps) and a selection of bits and pieces for her to play with once she feels up to being creative again. She opened the parcel on her birthday (14th Aug.) and now that she has received them I can share the making of them with you. Until now, I didn’t want to spoil her surprise as she visits my blog regularly. Throughout my own cancer journey, this wonderful friend has been such an encouragement and support to me, and this is one way I can thank her, and show my own appreciation and support. I know that she would love a visit from you to wish her well for her surgery on 2nd Sept.

I shall be uploading a couple of posts each day over the next few days until all is revealed. Please scroll down for earlier posts.

More Faux Leathers

I have made three more sheets of faux leather, this time A4 size, as mini-masterboards, and decided to try doing some different colours. One was the classic brown that I’ve done before, but this time I didn’t use the yellow ochre, and the other two were green and red respectively.

Here are the materials for the green one.

I chose Hooker’s green for the main colour, as it is a nice rich dark green, and sap green for the dry brushing.

For the red one, I didn’t really have the colour I wanted, so I got out the various shades of red that I do have, and also some black in case it needed darkening.

Here are the sheets after their first coat, drying, each with their respective paints.

As before, the brown one’s main colour is burnt umber. For the green one: Hooker’s green. For the red one, I used the whole small tube of crimson red from a very cheap and nasty little set of acrylic paints that I started off with – I’ve had them for ages and can’t remember where they came from – when I squeezed it out onto the palette it was like water, and then at last some more solid paint came out! I mixed it all up well and it took the whole tube to cover the sheet. The colour is more or less OK, though, and it will all get covered with subsequent layers. This red one was more experimental than the others because of not having the exact colours I wanted.

Here are the faux leathers with their respective paints, after all the painting was complete. With the brown one, I decided to leave it plain after the dry brushing with the burnt sienna, and not add the yellow ochre which gives it a slight tan tinge, and I did not add any gilding wax.

The green one looked very rich with a light touch of Treasure Gold gilding wax in the raised creases. As someone said, to get the right effect, you need to touch the surface as if it’s red hot when applying the gilding wax, and this is good advice because that way it prevents you from being too heavy-handed and getting the gold anywhere but on the raised surface.

As predicted, the red one proved more difficult to get right. I added a dry-brushed layer of alizarin crimson, and then cadmium red, but the whole thing still didn’t look quite right, so I made a dark wash with black and alizarin crimson, which I brushed liberally over the surface and let it run into the creases. I repeated this with more black in the mix until I got the right look. I was concerned that all that water would make the card disintegrate so I was careful not to handle it until I’d dried it with my heat gun. The result was pretty fair at the end! It had a lot of layers of paint, dry brushing and washes before I was satisfied, and again it was given a lovely rich look by the application of some Treasure Gold gilding wax. The red one also proved the most difficult to photograph to get the colour accurate – in this photo it looks a bit brown.

Once all the leathers were painted, gilded and fully dry, I was able to apply the acrylic wax. After much experimentation, this is my preferred finish for faux leather. It gives a gorgeous rich, shiny, polished surface once it is dry and buffed with a soft cloth, like the patina of old leather. It goes on quite milky, but dries clear and shiny. Fabulous stuff! I have seen it applied to stitched teabags and they look like old leather!

Here are the finished leathers with their application of buffed acrylic wax.

Unfortunately in these photos, the gilding no longer shows up! It is still there, though, and they look sumptuous and rich. You can see a little of it in this detailed shot of the three leathers.

This is such a fun technique to do! I recommend it to everyone. You can use it for the backgrounds for cards (it is especially useful for those perpetually tricky male cards we are all called upon to make from time to time!); book covers, to cover boxes, for scrap book pages, etc. etc. You are only limited by your imagination.

Suggestions on a postcard, please, on how to make this stuff actually smell like leather!!