Stencil monoprint and stamping

Happy Easter 

I did a workshop at Grayshott yesterday with an amazing group of ladies including Lois, Karen and Dominique.

They wanted to focus on distress ink techniques and create a tag book. We explored 9 techniques and ended up with 11 backgrounds. I came home with my sample book collection plus 32 more panels/tags so I want to use some of them to create some cards. This is the first.

The background which is a stencil monoprint with stamping through the stencil.

The elements. I collected bits together from my collage envelopes and some extra snippets.

A huge thank you to all the ladies who made it such a fun and enjoyable day. I definitely will be back to Grayshot to enjoy your company again.

xx

Supplies

Distress inks - stormy sky, hickory smoke, ground espresso

Stencil - Tim Holtz - Harlequin

Stamps - small text from my supplies, Tim Holtz - Natures Wonder

Dies - Tim Holtz - Silhouette Birds, Crochet

Tim Holtz - Snippets

Black archival ink

Last workshop of 2023

 A Starry Christmas Eve

I made this frame project for my last workshop at Country View Crafts on the 12th December.

The focal landscape was made up of 3 media boards and die-cuts from the Tim Holtz Holiday Blocks dies,

The blue sky background was created by stamping and embossing the stars on watercolour paper then spritzing it with water then distress sprays drying and layering the colours to get a distressed look.

The die-cut elements were distressed by dry brushing and I added snowtex, distress glitter  and stickles. 

The workshop was a great success and the participant's versions were magnificent. It was a fabulous fun day with a lovely group of ladies, of whom most have been with me since my very first class at Flitwick. 

My beating heart

Sharing a project I made at a class with the lovey Monika Maksym a week last Saturday. I so enjoy taking workshops with other tutors, especially when I learn something new which I did with Monika but also as it keeps my feet grounded in what it's like on the other side of the fence.

The shabby crackled doors open to reveal an amazing heart which was made from a mould ......

... layered onto a heart shaped board with a crown.

We used chalky finish paints as well as media fluid acrylics from DecoArt and three different types of crackle medium.

My heart was painted with prussian blue and raw umber before dry brushing a light chalk paint, some silver and then flooding it with a wash of quinacridone gold.

I won't give any other secrets away as those are for Monika to share but .......

 ... this looks amazing on a shelf in my workroom.

Such a lovely way to spend a day with like minded people and enjoying the processes of making art.

Thanks Monika for a fabulous day and .....

xxx

Dragonfly Shadowbox Workshop

Sorry no Technique Tuesday today as I have been rather busy with workshops so I thought I would share the workshop photos of this rusted Dragonfly and Butterflies shadowbox.

I taught this at Let's Be Creative last week and had 11 most incredible variations from the attendees. I shared the original on my blog in April (see Here)

I also made another version and altered the frame too.

These were the amazing results at the end of the day.

Everybody enjoyed themselves and were pleased with their own version, I loved them all.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have fun create your own art.

hugs Brenda xxx

Canvas Board - teaching simple mixed media layers

Happy Mother's Day
........... to all you Mums, grandmothers, friends and aunties out there. I hope you have a wonderful day and hopefully receive some extra love from your precious ones. I have a Mother's Day project right at the end of this post, but first here's one I did for a workshop.

I often get asked to do a session for one of the local church groups and this time they wanted me to do something 'different' (ie not card making or gift bags, paper folding etc) so I suggested using paint and making a mixed media shabby canvas board - you know how I like these - so this is what I came up with. Bearing in mind we only had two hours there was a lot to do but I die-cut and prepped a bag for each of them so everything was at hand.

Using 5 x 7 canvas board

1. Paint canvas with gesso.

2. With palette knife randomly drag thin layer of acrylic paint and spritz with water, move the colour around a little bit - dry.

3. Repeat step 2 with another colour.

4. Repeat step 2 again with a third colour.

5. Lightly blend/daub over gesso with a distress tool and sponge.

6. Stencil over some coloured gesso and gently heat dry.

7. Add a little stamping for interest.

8. Dry brush a little of two of the other colours (not used with the gesso for stenciling) over the raised textures (I used white and yellow).

9. Adhere a small piece of scrunched cheesecloth.

10. Collect together papers, images, die-cuts, flowers etc......

11. ........ and assemble them onto the board. Note the vintage picture of the hare and chicks - I downloaded this from the internet as a free image and sized it to fit inside Tim's clock.

And do you like the butterfly? I loved stamping these, I used Tim's new Oxides - worn lipstick, peeked paint and iced spruce - and a little ordinary vintage photo distress.

So there we have it a pretty mixed media board for Easter.

And here's the one I made for Mother's day too.

Creating the same background (and keeping exactly the same colours) I then gathered different embellishments (mostly Tim Holtz products) -

For a complete change I edged everything with pumice stone rather than ground espresso or another of the brown DIs. - it's more subtle.

You can see where I slotted in the butterfly ..........

On this photo you can see I used a white pen to highlight the flowers a little. They had been stamped and cut from card dipped in worn lipstick  and spiced marmalade oxides with some fossilized amber DI added to it.

I lifted them using foam pads to create height and dimension .......

... and added some wildflowers 2 die-cuts as well as some shop bought mini blooms.

I added an easel and put it in the Packhouse.

It's lovely to have you stop by, thanks so much for the interest you show in my work, I really appreciate it.

Enjoy your day.

hugs Brenda xxx