Well Mojo and Inspiration have settled back in comfortably making a right mess on my desk and gently nudging me in the right direction.
I printed out a load of my photos last weekend, manipulated with filters and quite small. I want to start making greetings card sized original sized art to either sell in that original state of photo's taken of the art and printed on cards.
Well, this didn't end up greeting card size, more 10x8" than 6x4", hey ho!
The canvas had Grunge Paste smeared over it, wetted in places to make it move, dried, scratched, dried and scratched to get the texture I wanted. Some of the lines of dots you can see were made with a dressmakers wheel. Quite like it, need to try it again in slightly wetter Grunge Paste.
Wanted to keep the background fairly neutral so washes of Chalk and Concrete.
Glued and ripped some text paper an started adding some stamping (Ellen Vargo PaperArtsy) in Watering Can Archival and some stencilling in Sage and South Pacific. Another wash of Concrete to soften and merge the stencilling.
I'm still loving scribbling in water colour pencils to add highlights and shade. Dampening the scribbles to spread the colour and soften it. I used grey, turquoise brown and green over the text, at the edges of it and in the scratches.
The photograph was stuck to some card to strengthen it, edges distressed and Vintage Photo Distress Ink added. You can't really tell but it is a sandcastle, trust me it is, I found it on Southwold beach on my solo holiday at Easter just before the tide came in to wash it away.I dot mind that its hard to make out, its the colour and shape that appeals to me - abstract!
I stuck it slightly off centre so I could still see the text paper and then melted some beeswax pearls. By accident (a happy one as it turned out) it seeped into the text paper to add further distress. Some more pencil lines to frame the picture and white, sage and grey oil pastel added to lift the photo from the background and tone down the very citrus green of the photo.
I have to say I had a lovely morning putting this together and its nice to be paint and paper creative again.
Hugs
Jo
xx
So those errant elves (Mojo and Inspiration) have returned, they didn't apologise, just smirked at me and wandered off into the craft room giggling.
As a result of their return I've finally made "something" Its taken me a few weeks with all the various elements and other demands like work and garden, but yep, here is some art.
I'd been tidying up and found a 12x12" sheet of white card that I'd already splodged some brown paint on in thin washes. I then scrunched it up and keep scrunching it up. The more you scrunch the more the fibres break, the more malleable it becomes. I then direct to paper added Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo Distress Ink and sprayed liberally with water to make the ink run and settle in the cracks in the paper.
Dried it, more scrunching, more ink, more drying, some Chalk paint in a thin wash and finally some stamping in blue and grey Archival.
I then tore this 12x12" into 2x3" rectangles and distressed the edges.
The background is a 5x7" rectangle of Kraft card that had Vintage Lace smeared on it. A dot stamp in grey Archival, followed by the number stamp in grey archival.This was sanded and then a final thin layer of Vintage lace. At the bottom I glued a scrap of text paper and added some Vintage Photo Distress Ink. Distressed the edges and added some Broken China Distress Ink.
Stapled the original 2x3" into an irregular layered shape and added a thin layer Of Grunge Paste on the central one. When it was partially dry I added some dots with a fine tipped embossing tool to give a pitted look. Dried off the Grunge Paste and painted a tiny amount of watered down Toffee paint to give a wash over the white and some black in the pitted holes and finally stamped one of my favourite mini PaperArtsy stamps in grey Archival.
A little bit of extra highlights were added with water colour pencils and finally some scribbles with with an standard HB pencil.
It feels good to be back.
Hugs
Jo
xx
