Observations Gather Moments - Media Tile

Inspired by Sid Dickens

Another media tile.

Process Steps.

1. Seal the board with tinting bse.

2. Use the black side of some blending foam and add some gesso to a texture stamp, press it hard onto the surface of the tile.

3. Paint some washes of paynes grey, medium grey, transparent red iron oxide (TRIO) and white.

4. Brayer a thin coating of raw umber over the surface until happy with it.

5. Brayer raw umber and TRIO, using only the edge of the brayer, around the edges.

6. Sand the edges and dip in watery raw umber before finger rubbing neat quin gold or TRIO and paynes grey around to match the colours on the front.

7. Use paper covered wire (from floristry departments) and finger paint above colours over it.

8. Take metal word band and alter with paynes grey, TRIO and titan buff.

9. Find a metal insect and also alter like the word band.

10 Assemble adding some transfer/rubon words.

11. Frame it.

xxx

Supplies from DecoArt

White Tinting Base

Media Fluid Acrylics - Paynes Grey, Medium Grey, Transparent Red Iron oxide, Titanium White, Raw Umber, Titan Buff.

Be open to whatever comes next - media tile

Another media tile but sorry no steps as this is going to be part of a workshop once we know we can all get back to normal life again.

No process steps at the moment as they are being used for a workshop but another media tile in a series where the original ones were inspired by Sid Dickens.

Take care in these scary times.

xxx

DecoArt Supplies

Media Fluid Acrylics - Dioxazine Purple, Phthalo Turquoise, Medium Grey v6, Titanium White, Metallic Silver

Mediums - Tinting Base, White Modeling Paste, Soft Touch Varnish

Using scraps - Garden Journal

I have boxes of bits; patterned papers, leftover backgrounds, discarded die-cuts, stamped images, snippets - in fact you name it I've probably got it - so whilst we are locked down in this Covid-19 pandemic I am aiming to use up some of those scraps in any of my numerous journals.

Today it's my garden journal with some rusty and shabby bits. Just a simple collage!

A rusty panel, crackled leftover, textured panel and very old leftover rulers with the beautiful TH dragonfly.

The words came from a pouch of collected bits and just fitted into the current climate.

Suddenly it was life changing times, but amongst it all there is hope for a better future.

xxx

Mixed Media Spring cards

Showcasing new Tim Holtz dies available from Country View Crafts.

Thinlits - Feathered Friends.

Bigz - Baggage Claim.

I used a piece of A5 card which ended up being cut in half ready to make two 5x7" cards then decided to change the background for the second one at the end.

Process steps

1. Scrape a layer of tinting base over the card using a palette knife.

2. Mix a watery wash using the most tiniest pin prick amounts of cobalt teal and grey paint. Dip and dry.

3. Into what is left of the wash add a tiny amount of primary yellow and repeat step 2.

4. Mix a new wash of prussian blue and repeat step 2.

5. Add tiny dots of the yellow, cobalt and prussian blues on a palette. Take a stencil, a small blender with blending foam and a water spritzer. Spritz over the stencil so water goes through onto the background, pick up tiny amounts of one or two of the colours at a time and blend through the stencil and dry.

6. Choose an embossing powder - I mixed a little of Wendy Vecchi's fern green and watering can together and used the text stamp from Tim's entomology set.

7. Use snippets of offcuts to die-cut the birds and cases and make up.

8. For a background variation ink the inside of the botanical 3d texture fade and run through the Big Shot several times with a damp piece of card.

9. Die-cut a couple of wildflowers to match the colour palette.

10. Ink edges. assemble and mount on cards.

xxx

Products

Andy Skinner Artist Pigment Paint - cobalt hue, primary yellow, prussian blue, 

Andy Skinner Matt Chalk Paint - olive grove

Andy Skinner - resist paste

A crafty day with friends.

What is better whilst we are in self isolation and, for us, a complete lock down, than to craft with the added bonus of doing it in the company of two lovely friends. No we didn't meet up in one of our houses or rent a room somewhere, in this amazing digital age we can connect over the internet and enjoy each others company on a Skype Day.  Five hours of nonstop crafting with fun and laughter, chats to catch up and some silent concentration as we focused on our projects in front of us.
I ended up very happy with the outcome.

We didn't make any plans ahead of the session, although that morning I decided to use a large mdf board (40x30 cms) and I looked at my Pinterest colour palette board to choose the paints I would work with.

From there, and our collaborative style of making the session work, we began.

Process Steps

1. Seal the substrate - I used a coat of tinting base.

2. Alison - Use tissue paper and/or tissue tape.
I used some of Tim's typography collage paper.

3. Nikki - Use a stencil for some texture.
DecoArt make a fabulou large baroque pattern that I used with modeling paste.

4. Brenda - Add some text/number stamping in any gaps.
I took a couple of small stamps to use with black archival ink.

5. Alison - Add more than one colour paint in any way you'd like to.
I used heirloom, lace and primitive chalky finish paints by dabbling and spritzing, then I blended chestnut, restore, everlasting and cherish to add more brighter and darker tones.

6. Nikki - use something to create a resist.
I randomly rubbed Andy's resist paste over different areas.

7. Brenda - use a colour medium to reveal your resist areas.
I went back to the everlasting chalk paint mixed with oddments of colours left over and brayered through, dried and rubbed back to reveal some of the darker elements beneath.
8. Alison - add some more stamping but not text and numbers.

Again a random small patterned stamp used with the chalky finish paints.

9. Nikki - Select a focal point and gather elements together.

10. Brenda - Alter/colour up/prepare elements for your focal point/s.

11. Alison - highlight or refresh the original background before adhering the embellishments.
All I really felt I needed to do here was to splatter a little watery white to add just a little more interest.

As always when we have one of these sessions our own inimitable styles shine through and even though we've all taken the same steps, our choices and decisions have made each project unique and incredibly different from the others.
Please take a look at Alison's and Nikki's sneak peek photos and pop over to their blog to see the full project outcomes, you won't be disappointed.

Alison

Nikki

Another last look at my piece.

xxx

A Vintage Journey Tutorial Post

The full tutorial for this shadowbox project is over at A Vintage Journey today. To follow along and create your own version pop over to see the process steps and photos to go with them.

DecoArt products

Mediums - Soft Touch Varnish.

Media Fluid Acrylics - Titan Buff, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Titanium White, Paynes Grey, Burnt Umber
Chalky Finish - Everlasting, Heirloom

DecoArt Mixed Media Team Project for March

I have a post going live over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog today which came about because I had my arm in a sling and needed to not move it around much. So the three media boards I chose to use all had the same techniques and layers as did the butterflies but the small deviations with stamps and positioning created enough variety of interest to the eye.

To see the full tutorial please pop over to the DecoArt blog where it is listed with lots of process steps and photos.

xxx

Take strength from the stars - Media Tile

Inspired by Sid Dickens

Process steps

1. Seal with tinting base.

2. Scrape random layer of white gesso with a flat palette knife.

3. Adhere tissue wrap in a couple of places.

4. Add some texture stamping.

5. Add some transfers/rub-ons.

6. Sand the edges and rub in brown distress ink.

7. Die cut the star from black card, paint the panels assemble and adhere to the tile.

8. Add big chat words.

Supplies from DecoArt

Media White Tinting Base

Media White Gesso

Media Fluid Acrylics - Medium Grey, Titanium White, Carbon Black