Monday 14 August 2017

'Falling' for AJJ and (sorry) a quirky Christmas card :)

Hello

First a page for AJJ Poetry in motion  hosted this month by the lovely Jo from Lets Art Journal using a quote that seemed relevant for me ..

I used my watercolour painting and added some digital leaves and a quote. I often re-use my art - so these leaves were from an old journal page which I digitally cut out and also used to make a digi-kit.

 
After 3 weeks spent saving information from the digi-scrapping place I had been a member of since 2011, it finally closed on Friday with a number of us watching and joining in one last forum thread for the last 30 minutes until everything just froze and was replaced by a 'thank you and goodbye' message ... 

To relax over the weekend I had another play with

 
Its amazing what was lurking inside this set of stamps
 - do you see what I see?
It's a cloud Christmas tree!

  
 The background was made using TH Distress oxides and a little wall stencil from That's Crafty. Coloured the tree with Prima water soluble oil pastels. Added a little extra to the tree trunk with a black pigment pen.
Finished with some gold straight line peel offs for a fairly quick, clean and simple card.
 
bye for now
thanks for stopping by
Gill x 

Friday 4 August 2017

A city at night for AJJ, Donna's stamps & carved nibs

Hello

I am excited that the lovely Jo from 'Lets Art Journal'  is hosting this months challenge over at AJJ where the theme is 'Poetry in motion'   We have been invited to use a favourite poem, quote or saying on our artwork. I collect quotes so this is right up my street - isn't that a funny saying?

 
I used a Rupert Brooke quote on this page which seemed quite apt.
I started with a watercolour painting I did the other day..
I was just playing with a couple of colours at first but then it started taking shape looking like a skyline and then grew - as most skylines do!
Then of course I needed to find a cat - luckily I had already painted one before and have this is in my 'digi-stash' along with the rest of the items I added.
I blended a digital paper over the top to give it a more dramatic and night feel.
My original painting

And next..........
my first play with great some stamps I won from (and designed by)

 
I can see these stamps are going to be really useful for Art Journaling, Mixed media and for my greeting cards projects..and as I needed some more cards - I made one... probably not what you would expect from these stamps - and not obvious at first.
 
 
I did a little rough sketch first, trying to work out how to fit the stamps and make it work.. I used 4 of the stamps and sketched the rest in by pencil a first, then when everything was painted/coloured went over my lines with a permanent marker.


And finally....
do you remember those Himalayan Honeysuckle canes I was drying..

 
they came from this plant


The idea was to see if possible to make wind chimes and pen nibs from the canes.
So Dave cut them up for me in to various lengths.

 
And then he used my mini hobby drill to put the holes
in for the thread to be able to hang up the wind chimes.

 
 I had not realised that the canes were solid in places and not completely hollow, so it wasn't always possible you get the varied lengths I required. So I need to cut some more canes and bare that in mind when choosing which ones to use.
For now my wind chimes project is on hold and the bits I threaded up can dry some more in the meantime.
I've also found a circular metal hanging thing (not shown here) - I don't know what to call it - but it should be useful to dangle the canes from.
 
 
 Most of the canes weren't thin enough to make into nibs (and possibly needed drying more before cutting) but there were two thinner ones, Dave (once again) cut and then
 shaped the end for me and I tried one with some ink.

 
       Well - not brilliant but it sort of worked

 
 
 That's all for today but if you are interested in what else is in my garden
 there is a post from yesterday on
 
thanks for stopping by,
hope you have a great weekend.
 
Gill x