Morning all! We're still enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer here in Northville - it was a fabulous weekend. Not only was the weather great, but I had a super crafty time. I attended several classes run by Amy Flowers of Shrew'd Arts. Since moving to the States I've been lucky enough to go to several of Amy's classes - I always have a great time and get really inky. This weekend there were several classes - Shadowbox Stamping, Woven Text Collage, 365 Days of Being Journal and Gelli Shot Journal.
I've called this piece "Elements of Surprise". It's my finished piece from the Woven Text Collage class. We started with a panel of Gessoboard, added some collage papers, texture paste, paints, stamps and pieces of dyed cheesecloth. In the stash of paper I found the scrap with the Periodic Table on it - I had to have it. And it's a surprise as I've gone out of my usual colours - I'm normally greens, blues, purples - all cool colours, but I decided I had to have a go at warmer colours. This was such fun.
Do you remember the shadow stamps and inks that came out years ago? Amy's Shadow Stamp class was technique based to remind us just how much fun these stamps can be! I have a really neat set of tags made using different techniques and a few sheets that I made with those techniques:
It fun to play with little shadow stamps and remind myself just how useful they can be! I think I'll be using a few of the images I made soon.
The other two classes were to make art journals. I've already done a few classes and love playing, but tend not to carry on with them when I get home. The first class entitled 365 Days of Being Journal was to get us to prep a journal with the aim of doing something for 365 days! We used various techniques to create some initial layouts - collage, stencils, painting, washi tape and stamping. I got to play with a new product - Izink pigment ink - which is fab! Here are a few of the pages I've started:
This is the inside cover - I found this fabulous photo in the scrap bag - love the words on the face. The first page is pained with the Izink pigments - beautiful paint and has a lovely opalescent sheen too! I still need to stamp and decorate this page - it's going to be January 2015.
I created a pocket on one page using washi tape to hold it in place (a lovely way to use washi tape) and also to store bits and pieces. The orange pocket you can see is a CD pocket that I've painted over with Izink and attached with washi. It flips open and I can store stuff inside - and actually see what's there. The double page spread is going to be for January - each little box is going to contain some sort of art - I think I may try zentangle patterns in the boxes.
These are a couple more spreads that I've prepared the green pages are Izink - just love the shimmer on this paint. The red pages were made using Izink pigment ink which I added to matte medium, spread with a palette knife, toned down with a wash of white acrylic and stencilled on some pattern.
Last year I attended a class where we used a Gelli Plate to prepare some pages for a journal. I had such fun with the plate in class that I bought a Gelli Plate to use at home - and then didn't!!!! So when I saw that one of Amy's classes included more techniques with the Gelli Plate, I had to go.
Above is the back cover of the journal (Amy provides all the journals we use). I picked this bright lime green journal. Amy prepared the back using Tulip puff paint when, when heated, puffs up to give a nice raised line. To get colour on the back we printed our Gelli prints and the raised line made sure that there is a green shadow around the black paint. I've still got some work to do on the page, but I think it's a good start.
A couple of pages made using basic techniques - I really like the bold colour block technique.
Above are a couple of techniques that are new to me. The double page spread was made by applying thin tissue paper to the page with matt medium and over printing with a Gelli plate impression - it makes the tissue paper disappear into the page. Love the technique. The single page was made using distress ink on a Gelli plate - the impression is much more subtle, but is lots of fun.
I was able to get a couple more double pages spread made using Gelli plate prints - I really like the blue and green spread made using the first impression and then using the ghost print too.
The pages above are in my 365 Days of Being Journal and are ready for more work. When using a Gelli plate you need to spread the paint on the plate, and I wiped off the brayer in my journal creating really unique pages! The yellow page is actually a Gelli print - I had left some paint to dry on the plate and then spread yellow paint over the top, printed it and found that I got this fab print!
On Sunday I decided to do some photo editing - I worked on a shoot done in March. The theme was steampunk/vintage and we had two models - Natalie (who also made most of the steampunk clothing) and Corian. Below are some photos, but if you want to see all the ones I edited the link is here.
I'm doing the Copic Markers Class over at Online Classes, so I'm off to see what the team have for us today. I've also managed to get some copic colouring done this weekend, but I'll share that another day! That's it for now! See you soon.
