Thursday 31 December 2009

As presents have now been opened I can show some of the gifts I made for family and friends!

The first is a wooden tag that I decorated with metal, and Ferro and Terra texture paints that I stamped into. I applied metallic paints over the stamped areas and alcohol ink onto the embossed metal letters. The flowers are also metal - I stamped them in StazOn, cut them out and sprayed them with Glimmer Mists.

For the second piece, I painted the frame with acrylic paint and Glimmer Mist. I used similar techniques on the canvas as I used on the tag.

The third item is a photo frame. I embossed metal and stuck it onto the frame. I lightly sanded the raised areas to expose some of the silver and, once again, I used Glimmer Mists to take away some of the shine and give some depth. The flower is made of Grungepaper, also coloured with Glimmer Mists and edged with a gold Krylon pen.

Saturday 26 December 2009

ACF 55

Art Creations Friday 55th challenge is an open challenge. I made this piece for Paper Digital Art, a group a belong to, but it seemed an appropriate response for the challenge this week.

Bookmark

Hurrah; at last, I am beginning to feel a bit better! So to celebrate, I thought I would make something. I decided on a bookmark using some Grungeboard.

I first put the Grungeboard through my Cuttlebug to emboss it (difficult to see in this picture, but double clicking on it may help to show it). I then painted it with a dark Twinkling H2O. Once dry, I stamped on a Tim Holtz swirl and embossed it with Distress embossing powder. To lift it a little, I added some copper outlines using a gel pen. Lastly, I cut the fringe, set the eyelet and added the ribbon.

Thursday 24 December 2009

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more should die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark the Herald Angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!

Saturday 19 December 2009

Little house ....

A while back I bought a Maya Road chipboard Townhouse. The roof comes off and inside there are six tags .

I decorated the house with 'My Mind's Eye' papers, some German Scrap, the paper roses and the proverb sticker.

I then set to on the tags. I used bits of scrap paper and Distress Inks for the backgrounds.

It seemed appropriate that the tags have pictures of people on them, possible occupants of the house, so I printed these on acetate and fixed them over the backgrounds with Glossy Accents. I then added a few embellishments to finish them off.

Art Creations Friday 54

ACF provided the picture of the little girls. It seemed lovely as it was, so all I did was to add the robins (for the observant amongst you, I didn't have a picture of a robin so they are actually sparrows with red breasts added!), the frame and the Christmas greeting.

Sunday 13 December 2009

Dans notre maison il y a... une danseuse

In my house is a dancer. This is a digital collage.

Dancer and room images courtesy of iTkUpiLLi.

Friday 11 December 2009

ACF 53

My offering for the challenge from Art Creations Friday is a simple one this week, as I am feeling pretty unwell with a heavy cold. The background is a watercolour piece painted by myself and then digitally manipulated.

Monday 7 December 2009

Music

My project for today was to create a piece with the theme of music. I started off with a piece of plywood onto which I pasted some serviette pieces printed with music. I added a different piece of paper at the bottom to provide some contrast. Whilst this was drying I did the metal work. The word 'music' is metal worked over Grungeboard letters. The elongated piece on the left was made using a Ten Seconds Studio mould and the other piece using a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

The flowers are made from Grungeboard, sprayed with Glimmer Mists, and metal. I stuck green stones onto the copper corner pieces and the beads come from an old bracelet. I made the holes with my Crop-A-Dile.

I just have to decide where to hang it, now.

Round book

Having made the masterboards (see below), I decided to use them in one project. I made a mini-book using chipboard circles, 10.5 cm in diameter.
I cut the circles from the masterboards and stuck them to the front and back of the chipboard circles using matte medium, remembering to punch out the hole each time. When they were dry and trimmed I edged them with various colours of Krylon pen. Using my Crop-a-Dile I put an eyelet into all the holes. As a finishing touch, and to give the book a little bit of meaning, I added some words or phrases to the front pages.

Here is a picture of the whole book.

The front page.

The back of page 1 and the front of page 2.

The back of page 2 and the front of page 3.

The back of page 3 and the front of page 4.

The back of page 4 and the front of page 5.

The back of page 5 and the front of page 6.

The back of page 6 and the front of page 7.

The back of page 7 and the front of page 8.

The back of page 8.

Masterboards

I stayed in over the weekend as I wasn't feeling great. I needed to do something, so a bit of stamping and painting/colouring met the need. Here are the four masterboards I made, all using Tim Holtz stamps.

Sunday 6 December 2009

St. Nicholas

St Nicholas is the theme at Sunday Postcard Art this week. This is my contribution.

Credits: Dover, Alphabet Soup Studio.

Saturday 5 December 2009

ACF 52 - Marilyn montage

The challenge at ACF this week is to use the picture of Marilyn Monroe. Here is my piece:

Monday 30 November 2009

Christmas tags

Three more tags made using paper napkins.

Christmas tags

The basis of these tags is a napkin. I used matte medium to apply the the top ply of the napkin to a piece of cartridge paper. Once dry, I used this as a background for the tag. All the stamps are from Paper Artsy.

Friday 27 November 2009

Mirror, mirror 2

I decided I didn't like the frame of my second mirror as it was, so I added some colour using turquoise blue and winter pine Glimmer Mists. It's much nicer now!

Surreal dreams

ACF provided a background for their challenge this week. I decided it had a slightly surreal feel to it and so made it more so!

Mirror, mirror

Okay, I found that I had actually bought two of the mirrors! So I thought I would use metal to decorate the second one as well, but a little differently.

This time, the metal I used came on a roll, so I was able to use one piece. This meant, however, that it would not fit through my Cuttlebug so all the decoration is done by hand. (I made a tape sandwich, One of Lin Brown's techniques, attaching card to the metal with Humungo tape. This gives it a bit of give to draw into.)

I haven't decided yet whether I am going to add another colour to it.

Thursday 26 November 2009

A while back I bought a mirror in Ikea, with the idea of decorating the frame. Today I decided to go for it!

I started with two long strips of metal for the top and bottom and two pieces, about a third of the size, for the remaining space on the two sides. all the pieces were cut large enough to overlap the sides.Using my Cuttlebug I embossed the metal, being careful to line up the various pieces to give the impression of nine squares. I fixed the metal to the frame using Red Line tape and went around all the edges with a roller tool. Then came the Glimmer Mists; masking the sections not being sprayed, I sprayed the different sections with different colours.

It is hard to get a great picture because of the shine of the metal and the mirror, but hopefully these two give a good idea of what it looks like.

Wednesday 25 November 2009

Time

A digital collage on the theme of time, for the Three Muses' challenge.

Dans ma maison il y a une petite fille

This is my entry for dans ma maison this week. The collage is mostly made from scraps of paper I hadn't thrown away. The image of the girl comes from Lisa's Altered Art. I painted around the edge with brown acrylic paint.

Monday 23 November 2009

Plaque

This plaque is 5 x 5 inches (more or less), the basis of which is the back of sketchbook I had finished. The strip of metal was left over from another project and I embossed it using a Ten Seconds Studio board. Having stuck down some patterned card in the top right corner, I added Terra to the lower corner but this time, instead of smoothing it and stamping into it, I just left a rough texture and dried it with my heat gun to make it bubble in places. I dabbed it with raw umber acrylic paint and let this dry. Masking the card with some scrap paper, I then spritzed the Terra and metal with wild currant Glimmer Mist. The flowers and gemstones were the finishing touches.

Sunday 22 November 2009

Flourishes

Sunday Postcard Art's theme this week is 'flourishes.' Here is my entry:

Accordion book

This morning I was feeling a bit off colour and was sitting reading some poetry. I came across 'The Cap and Bells' by W. B. Yeats, based on a dream he had. The theme of the jester led me to thinking I should use the poem in a piece of art. I remembered an accordion book I bought a while ago and this was the result:

To start, I sprayed the card with a variety of Glimmer Mists.

I printed out the poem and cut up the verses. I attached the title to the front page.

Once the Glimmer Mist had dried, I attached the verses of the poem to the card, one on each page.

I then stamped various floral stamps by Papermania around the verses.

I then highlighted the leaves, scrolls and flowers with Miracle Moonlight Gelly Roll pens.

This is what the book looks like standing up.

The book came in a tin, and so I decorated the lid with complementary coloured alcohol inks, adding the flower and gemstones as embellishments.

Friday 20 November 2009

Recycling!

These are two ATCs that I made this afternoon. The backgrounds are made from scrap paper that sits in the bottom of the box I use for spraying projects. I nearly threw it away until I realised I could use it in its own right. The metal plaques in the centre are cut from an aluminium tray that once held Chicken Kiev! I put them through my Cuttlebug and then sprayed Glimmer Mist on them. I made the silver frames with my new toy, a hot glue gun. Once the glue had set I rubbed it with a silver lustre to make it pop. I edged the ATCs with silver Krylon to complement the frames.