Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea

Media Board - Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea

I have used a Tando Creative media board for my blog project today and got the inspiration from the DecoArt Under The Sea challenge that is running at the moment. I have a full tutorial and DecoArt Media blog post coming up later in the month as a DT piece.

So these are the steps I took to create this.

Paint board with white gesso and when dry adhere tissue wrap which has been stamped using archival ink. (Whoops forgot to take the photo here).  Add colour with watery translucent media acrylic paints and a brush or your fingers, randomly applying a couple of colours and letting them blend together. Use translucent colours so that the pattern shows through. (I used cobalt teal and quinacridone burnt orange).

Take small chipboards and with matte medium adhere to the background then add crackle paint around the edges.

 Glue on different sized beads, micro beads and glass flat backed cabochons, leave to dry.

Cover elements with white gesso and heat dry.

Make mists of translucent or semi translucent blue media paints (I used cobalt teal in one and a mix of phthalo turquoise and paynes grey in another) and this is the result after one spray.

Take a very small paint brush and the dark prussian blue and add some into the crevices for contrast, some neat and some into spritzed water.

Then use phthalo green/yellow, burnt umber, raw umber, paynes grey, raw sienna and quinacridone gold to colour up the wooden pieces.

Finish with the blue sprays again and a gold self made spray.
 that adds another level to the colour layers.

Here's a couple of more detailed photos ....

.... showing the changes to the wooden pieces after their colour additions.

I hope you will be able to join us at DecoArt for this amazing challenge theme - the world, or should I say sea, is your oyster. (pun intended lol).

Look what you could win......

If you fancy your chance click HERE to be transported over for all the details and the linky.

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you have had a good week and also have an enjoyable weekend planned. We hope it will be fine on Sunday so we can BBQ and watch the last day of the Farnborough Air Show planes from the garden.

hugs Brenda xxx

Products that can be found at Country View Crafts

DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Cobalt Turquoise - See more at: http://www.countryviewcrafts DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Quinacridone Gold DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic - Burnt Sienna DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Burnt Umber DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Raw Sienna DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Prussian Blue Hue DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Phthalo Turquoise DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic - Phthalo Green-Blue DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic - Paynes Grey DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Gold Metallic DecoArt Mixed Media - White Gesso DecoArt clear matte medium DecoArt White Crackle Paint

InLinkz.com

Circles 2 for CVC

I'm here with a DT reminder project for the Country View Challenges theme of circles and have gone a bit wacky I think (must be that Andy Skinner influence). I had in my mind a camera lens with the eye looking through it .......

I began by drawing two circles on some good quality card to look like the eye and took a white signo pen and drew in scribble lines - I did a google search to find a real eye for inspiration.

I took a range of colours I wanted to use ..... although I might just have added a colour or two by the time I was finished .....

... and began painting using lots of spritzed water to keep the colours light and watery at the moment. When I was happy with the first layer I dried it.

Still using the water, my fingers as well as a brush, I added another layer of the colours and started to introduce the black pupil. Again I dried it as a second layer.

This time I frayed the black edge and painted in the dark blue outer edge going between some of the white lines that are still showing through, I also added some water titanium white and yellow around the frayed black. I was thinking at this point that even if it didn't end up as a good representation of an eye it still made a pretty good pattern for the centre of my lens.

Next I used my fine brush again and went over the black and the dark blue edge and just played with the colour washes to create more layers.

Then finally went over some of the white wiggly lines again and filled in colour where I thought I needed to. Not sure if I should have left it alone on the last layer!!

I took the three boards each with different size circles cut in and began painting, texturing and colouring each one.
The first inside one was painted blue/grey then a black inner ring hand painted and given a very watery wash of carbon black.
The second was painted dark grey and white lettering quotes added.
Look at the world with a child's eye - it is very beautiful.
An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
The outside one was given a coat of gesso with a palette knife and then a coat of white crackle paste before being given washes of the blues and yellow watery paints.

The eye looks amazing in the lens effect of the boards ......

.... then some varnish and rub-ons with brads in the corners and inked edges finish the look.

Hope you like my strange piece today .... I really like it with the concentric circles drawing my eye into the painted eye and creating great depth and dimension. The crackles seem to break up what could have been a very dark piece of art.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Infusions and a stencil

I have been playing with reverse mono printing with stencils using infusions and a stencil.

All the details are over on the Country View Crafts project blog and there I show you how I created this artsy looking background.

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It's the Farnborough air show next week. The planes have all been coming in and validating ready for the trade days first and then the public days next weekend. This was the brand new Airbus A350 on it's descent route to land on the airfield and it came right over the roof and garden.

 We are just so lucky to see the planes coming in and it's something I love watching. I've got loads more photos on the iphone and the camera, I just need to upload them to the PC so I can use them, so you might see some more later.

For now have a great weekend, ours will be quiet but the noise will start again on Monday and I will be out in the garden when I can.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx



Updated and added from Country View Crafts

Hi Brenda here. I love reverse mono printing with stencils so I thought I would experiment with some of the infusions and a stencil.

I used Daler Rowney mixed media paper and a stencil from Country View Crafts.

Place the stencil on the paper and spritz over it with a water mister.

Take the infusions and sprinkle them over the stencil and spritz again with water. (Next time I might try spritzing with tattered angels sprays).

Remove the stencil and place the wet side down on the paper beside the print you'd already made. 

Rub over the back with dry paper towel and lift to reveal the reverse print.

Take a clean piece of paper, spritz with water and lay the wet side of the stencil down again and rub and you will get another lighter print ......

..... repeat to see if you can get another one.

This is what I got. It may be I can use some of these for card making.

At the end of my experiments I had used several pieces of paper and cut out eight backgrounds to make cards. I inked the edges with shabby shutters, broken china and ground espresso distress inks.

I then took Tim's butterfly duo die and cut butterflies and embossed them. I painted them with water and some diarylide yellow media acrylic and when dry added watery abandoned coral distress ink and dried again then rubbed dried marigold and ground espresso distress ink pads over the top. I stamped the sentiment from Tim's perspective set, inked the edges with shabby shutters, broken china and ground espresso distress inks and coloured the word with a broken china distress marker.

Just before I took the photos I pinned a small key onto the bow with a small yellow pin I had in the drawer. This is one finished, I also have most of the elements to now make up the other seven for my box.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like these artsy background and if you try this technique do let me know, I would love to see what you make.