Legs

The Three Muses have the theme of  'legs' this week. This is my creation:

Credits: R Rynne & T Baxter, both of SBG.

Digital self portrait

Credits: T Baxter, R Rynne & M Zimmerman (all SBG)

I decided I wanted to try something different digitally and so I took a photo of myself applied it to a background and started playing with overlays and filters. This was the end result. Double click on the word 'portrait' if you wish to see it in more detail. Let me know what you think.

Umbrellas

Umbrellas is the theme at Sunday Postcard Art today. Here is my response, a digital collage.

Credits: Urban Love by Birgit Kerr @ SBG and Itkupilli

Itinerary 19

My Art Journal Caravan mixed media pages this week focus on the perfect day. I started off with dabs of purple and ochre acrylic paint. I then applied vertical stripes of pastel-coloured oil pastels, blending them with a paper towel. I wrote on the pages using orange and purple Sharpies and stamped on some flower images with pearlescent Brilliance Ink. I drew an arch on each page and doodled inside them, then applying a very thin layer of gesso with a baby wipe.
I hope the pages conjure up thoughts of time spent in the hot sun surrounded by flowers.

My mixed media piece focuses on the verb 'inspire'.

Credits: A Sexton & T Baxter @ SBG

Siblings

ACF provided a picture of siblings to incorporate into our art this week. Here's the original:

and here's what I did with it:

Credits: elements from Curious Adventures & Marion the Librarian by Tangie Baxter

Live - a journal page

Seeing stars

I had fun with this challenge from the Three Muses. I just played and this is what I ended up with. Hope you like it!

Credits: Ruby Rynne, Studio Manu & Studio Ztampf, all of SBG

CD book

When I visited the Big Stamp and Scrapbooking Show at Ally Pally recently, I watched Linda Elbourne demostrate various techniques. She had also brought along a few examples of her work, one of which was a book made from old CDs. This grabbed my attention and so I decided to give it a go. This is the result.

The question I wanted answering when I first saw Linda's book was 'how do you cut the CDs?' Well, score a line with a craft knife 3 or 4 times. Use a heat gun to warm the scored line and then cut it with scissors. It worked first time! I used my Bind-it-All to bind the pages together. I did think I had broken my machine when I punched the holes into the first page, but it's a sturdy little thing and it was fine.

Journal pages

We have a General Election in the UK on Thursday and last week I was watching the political leaders of the three main parties debate various issues. Of course, I couldn't just sit and watch, so I journalled at the same time. These are the pages that ensued.

P.S. I still can't help smiling at the wonderful photograph by Jeff Overs (BBC) that The Guardian had on its front page on Friday 30th April. Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg were both standing on their right legs with their left legs up in the air, whilst David Cameron was staring at the ceiling! Click here if you haven't seen it.

Itinerary 18

The prompt from Art Journal Caravan this week was that we close our eyes and ask ourselves "What do I NEED to journal about this week?" and expect that the answer will come to you. Follow through with whatever comes to your mind no matter how dark, silly, humorous, cheeky, political, painful, religious or otherwise." Well, I closed my eyes for several periods and nothing came to me! This morning, however, I was lying in bed and the theme appeared, 'beauty and ugliness.' Two things we often see around us and, paradoxically, sometimes together. These thoughts led me to create these journal pages.

The pages started with watercolour diagonal stripes over which I applied thin patches of black & white gesso. I added some white paint around the edges and painted some over star-shaped, sequin like waste. Having stamped on some corner images I wrote my thoughts on the pages and drew the frame. It needed more, so I dragged some white gesso over some of the words, used highlighter pens for additional colour and sprayed Glimmer Mist through a number stencil. The finished product!

In complete contrast, this is my digital page:

Credits: A. Sexton & T. Baxter @ SBG

Sewing

This is the challenge from Sunday Postcard Art this week. Anyone who reads my blog on a fairly regular basis will know I am not a great lover of sewing, although I have to say when I see some of the fabric pieces on various blogs it does almost inspire me to have a go. This week my piece is digital, but I'm not ruling it out!

Credits: All elements from Bohemian Rhapsody by Studio Ztampf @ SBG

ACF 72 - Digital collage

I am so pleased I discovered Art Creations Friday, they provide such lovely challenges. This week they provided this background, made by Hermine, to create something with.

I incorporated it into this digital collage.

Credits: Borders by Studio Ztampf; Paper people by Studio Tangie; & background and wings by Studio Gypsy, all of SBG.

I created the little girl by drawing on an old dictionary page.

Age

I created these journal pages yesterday evening whilst watching TV! The two images come from an art magazine. The black pattern in the other two corners are part of a paper serviette glued on with matte medium. The yellow is acrylic paint and the pictures are edged with coloured charcoal, blended with a paper stump. I used a felt-tip pin and a white gel pen for the journalling.

A happy accident!

Having created these journal background pages using water-soluble oil pastels I was debating how to add my journalling. I hit upon the idea of writing on top of white correction tape. To my surprise, instead of the ink sitting on the correction tape, it actually wiped away the tape, leaving the background exposed (click on the white lines to see it in better detail). A new technique discovered purely by accident!

Fabric art

I have been experimenting dying material with tea.

The background is the original colour of the material. For the darker piece I used two tea bags and for the lighter piece one tea bag; very technical! I want to use the lighter piece for a project, so I experimented stamping on the darker piece. I then coloured it with some Distress Inks using a waterbrush. Although not perfect, I was quite pleased with the result and so used it to create this piece of fabric art.