Friday 17 April 2020

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
                  

8 comments:

Helen said...

I really enjoy the results of your skype crafting sessions! your tags are beautiful (as always) Take care and stay safe.

Words and Pictures said...

Completely scrumptious - I love the mixed media layers of the backgrounds and the stems look just glorious against them. And those stems!! The "burnt" tips and edges add so much drama and depth, and the white brayered texture is yummy. The vine frames are so lovely (looking forward to using mine now!), and I really like the little lace snippets, part ribbon binding for bouquets, part windowboxes for the plants... absolutely gorgeous tags all round. Lovely to play alongside you again.
Alison x

lbmeer953 said...

Brenda, You work is always so inspiring! What is there not to love about these tags! Your choices and techniques do make me want to grab my goodies and have some playtime. I am fortunate enough to have a job that keeps me working though these difficult times. Unfortunately, My spare time is spent packing up to move across the states, so everything is getting packed up. But always find time to follow you and your lady friends blogs. Thank you for all of your creative works of beauty!

Anita Houston The Artful Maven said...

I love this idea of the skyping! These tag are gorgeous!

Nikki Acton said...

Who would have thought you had limited supplies! These really are scrummy... the wonderful layers in the background and stunning colours on those wildflowers. They have a sense of serenity about them.
Thanks again for a great day - hope we can do it again very soon!
Nikki

Mrs.B said...

Beautiful tags Brenda, sounds like you had a fun session.
Avril xx

Susanne said...

Beautiful tags Brenda.

Patty O'Malley said...

Absolutely beautiful tags, Brenda!