Flower Collage Dandelion Seed Head

 Hand Drawn Flower displayed with collage

Workshop Country View Crafts 2023 Deconstruct - Reconstruct

I am playing catch up keeping a record here of the samples I created for my workshop last year.

This is Flower Collage 1, it is actually a Dandelion seed head (clock).

We started  by looking at photos of the Dandelion clock and carefully unpicked the structure of the flower drawing each piece of it individually.

I then sketched and inked up the picture....

... and made a distress ink background and drew it again and painted in the leaves using the distress inks.

Finally I created the collage around it and displayed it in a black paper art book.

I have several more of these to come as I made lots of samples to give the participants a variety of collages as inspiration for putting theirs together.

xxx

Antique enamelled bottle and media tile

Framed media tile.
Hold on tight to your dreams.

Process steps

Take a greyboard die-cut bottle and paint a coat of raw umber over the whole surface and dry.

Next paint it with tinting base but leave the edges almost dry brushed so that the brown paint underneath shows through in some places. Dry.

Poke two small holes through which you can thread the wire to tie the test tube to it.

Press the whole bottle into an embossing ink pad and cover with clear embossing powder, heat and leave to cool then give it a second coat. Sand the edges and rub brown distress ik round them.

Take the test tube apply some clear crackle glaze and leave to dry.

Paint a coat of tinting base over the media board tile and when it's dry using a palette knife used horizontal to the surface, scrape a very light coat of gesso over to create some random texture.

Alter the wildflowers and stems with some paint and archival inks. I tend to rub some paint light over the surface and when dry dip them in more watery paints and finish by rubbing archival inks around the flower parts.

Mix watery wash of pink, spread a little over your craft mat and dip the tile base  in and dry. Repeat several times mixing different shades of the pink. (I used pyrrole red, titan buff and titanium white). Splatter a little burnt umber.

Sand the edges and rub some brown distress ink and seal with a coat of soft touch varnish 

The test tube should now be ready for a couple of coats of both raw umber and white antiquing creams rubbing them with a dry cloth between each layer. Then secure it to the die-cut bottle with some rusty wire.

Assemble the parts and add to a frame.

DecoArt Products

Media Fluid Acrylics - Raw Umber, Pyrrole Red, Titan Buff and Titanium White

Mediums - Tinting Base, Clear Crackle Glaze, White Gesso, Soft Touch Varnish

A new take on my antique enamelled number plates using my DecoArt paints. This is an update to my original post which can be found here from the 19th September 2015. It inspired the layers for the die-cut bottle.

Out of limitations comes creativity - Skype session

Last Friday I had another fabulous skype crafty session with lovely friends Nikki Acton and Alison Bomber.  We have these sessions every now and again where we capitalise on having a longish space of time to work cooperatively together. Our previous encounters have seen us choose the 'next steps' in turn but Nikki pushed us to do something completely different this time. We agreed to work on tags and to collect our materials together first and then allow ourselves the freedom to just create with the limited supplies.

Each of us could pick two things to work with. It went like this - Nikki - 4 colours of paint,  Alison - a stamp set  Brenda - a stencil, Nikki - any item purchased/acquired recently, Alison - 4 colours of ink,  Brenda - your choice of die-cuts/punches. 

We gathered our choices together and showed each other what we had chosen and also agreed we could have a wild card to choose one other thing along the way and each of us could you each others' choices as well as our own. These ended up with Nikki choosing a white posca pen,  Alison chose Words  and I chose rub-ons.

Here were my choices -

Andy Skinner stamps and paints

Tim Holtz dies/die-cuts

And so off we went creating our own masterpieces, deciding our own steps as we went along and  even though we were in lockdown, we could still enjoy each others' company.

I took a few photos straight from the desk, so not the best!

The tags were sealed with the white paint, blended with  grey haze and brayered with mustard seed.

Next I used a palette knife to scrape on titanium white and then mixed some of that with leftover grey haze and splattered it all over before again using the brayer and white.

I used my stencil and created patterns on each tag using different colours and used the stamps also with paint to add more interest

I brayered a little more white, sanded the edges and blended in burnt umber drawing ink.

I took the die-cut wildflowers and used all the paints to create washes to colour them up and I also brayered white over a few of the blooms.

The borders were give the same treatment as the flowers and I die-cut the wreaths from coredinations papers.

As we were coming towards the finishing stage I used words as chosen by Alison and some rub-ons that I chose as my wild card.

We all agreed we could add some twine in the tag holes and once finished I found there was only one thing I didn't use and that was the bird die.

Thank you to both Alison and Nikki for their time and contributions to the day and making it fun to create with each other on video calling.

If you would like to see both their finished tags you can find them here

Nikki

Alison

 Please pop over and leave some love.

xxx

                  

Mixed Media Eileen Hull Notebook

A  little Notebook, made from an Eileen Hull die, went off to the Craft Stamper to be used for an article about Eileen's dies to celebrate her visit to England last September. It was published in the October 2019 issue and given to Eileen when I saw her at Country View Crafts. (You can see it in the bottom left hand corner on top of the CS magazine.

I chose my colour palette by googling and flicking through my Pinterest board, keeping the colours fresh but vintage at the same time.

Background. 

First there were three layers of brayered paints all mixed to create the colour I wanted from the palette. To start using yellow green light, paynes grey, titan buff and titanium white to get  the darker green colour. Next the beige mixing titan buff, titanium white, burnt umber and paynes grey, and lastly a mix of white and titan buff to lighten it again.

Dip, drip and dry with  a mix of pyrrole orange and paynes grey and rubbed it into the surface - the colour was grabbed by the white card substrate, dry and repeat the process with quinacridone gold but let this layer really drip and dribble before drying.

Next stamp using the entomology text stamp and coffee archival ink.

Use a couple of stencils and a bending tool and blending foam to stencil through both titan buff and titanium white.

Make a weak colour glaze using soft touch varnish, paynes grey, translucent white, yellow green light with a little water mixed together and use this to knock back the background and vintage it up a bit more.

Alter one of Tim's lace baseboard frames with quin gold and titanium white watery paints.

I had some notebooks bought last year and just waiting to be used. Tey fitted perfectly so I bound the nto the spine just going over and through the centre of each booklet using thin elastic.

I used some black thread to pull the elastics together and tie on a typed token at the same time.

For the cover I used some wildflower stems that I watercoloured using media fluid acrylic paints and Tim's new crochet die with one of his quotes too.

Unfortunately I didn't get any more photos taken of the finished design, but I do have this one taken by Craft Stamper which was in the magazine.

I'm catching up a bit with some previous projects and hoping to get to grips with more new ones.

Happy Sunday.

xxx

Wildflowers and cultivated flowers - mixed media journal page.

I went out with a friend for her birthday recently and I bought an old book of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Unusually there is no printer's date in it but it was scribed by someone and dated the 7th January 1910, over a hundred years old, so now I don't want to tear it up or alter it lol.

However my friend had some books in her car ready for the charity shop and one was A Country Diary birthday book, certainly not old at all but the illustrations are all flowers and are hand painted prints so I decided to take it off her hands and have a play at using some of the gorgeous flower designs in some journal pages.

This is the first one stuck into my nature journal which already had some tissue collage paper glued on it.

To age the illustration I stamped with some text and gave it a light coat of watery gesso and distressed the torn edges.

I painted some wildflower stems .....

.... and drew round one of Tim's transparent butterflies on watercolour paper, dipped it in some pinky paint washes, glued the two together and covered the surface with glue to make it matte. I also added a crochet die border and a quote.

You'd think this would be quite quick to do but as always I overthink everything.

I am also sharing this over on the Country View Crafts project blog.

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

Tim Holtz wildflowers die and crochet die

Tim Holtz stamps Nature's Wonder

Tim Holtz Transparent acetate wings

Gelli plate mixed media - Andy Skinner

A had some fun time creating a layered collage using the gelli plate, decoart premium acrylics and Andy Skinner stamps and transfers and am sharing this on Andy's blog today.

Using a gelli plate print from a pile made whilst experimenting for a decoart blog post I stamped the gunge wallpaper in tea rose and added one of the French Fancy transfers and sewed round the edges leaving some of the cotton threads free.

A piece of green core'dinations paper sealed with matte medium and given a light edging of white crackle paste, finished with a watery wash of cadmium red and white gesso

Another gelli print left over for the backing layer stamped with enigma using watering can archival ink and some white gesso scraped around the edges. The 'screws' in the corners were left over from a previous Andy project.

The crackled frame and the flower were in a bits box and came out to be fitted into the layers. The sentiment is my own produced on the PC. The vintage lady is from my own collection of photographs.

This measures about 7 x 5 inches which is the size of the gelli plate I used.

It is now in my black vintage visual journal.

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

Andy Skinner stamps, stencils, transfers, Quick Grab glue

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics and Mediums