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

                  

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