It's so cold ....

....  Morning!  We've got another bitterly cold day here in Northville - it's the end of February at the temperature here at the moment is -21°C (-5°F).  This is all wrong, it's March tomorrow and we should be having warmer weather, not breaking winter cold records!!!

I am grateful for a warm roof over our heads and plenty of heat.  And today I'm off out to Scrappy Chic, a local craft shop for craft lessons with the wonderful Dyan Reaveley - a whole weekend of classes getting messy.  Must go off and get ready to head out.  Bye for now.

Crafty weekend ....

...  WARNING!!!  PHOTO HEAVY POST!!!

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.

Playtime Sunday ....

... Good evening all!  Hope you've all had a super weekend. I've had a really fun, crafty time.  Yesterday I was at a  couple of work shops run by Amy Flowers - a really talented artist who is also a really super teacher.

Our first class - Watercolour and the Rubber Stamp 202 - built on a previous class (which I missed).  We explored different techniques to use with water colour paints. The one involved painting watercolour paper with a flat wash of one colour, adding another colour and then putting cling wrap on top and allowing it to dry.  Once dried, we picked a rubber stamp, inked it up, stamped the image and added some more watercolour for definition.

The background was not at all what I expected, but I really like the pool like feel.  So I picked the dragonfly stamp, inked up with a blue versafine pad and added a touch more colour.  I think I'm going to add a little Twinkling H2O to the wings - after all, dragonfly wings shimmer!

Next we played with salt and watercolour paints.  We used both table salt and rock salt.  The rock salt take away much more colour than the table salt, but this is a technique I'll have to play with a bit more to get it right.  Here's what I made, still a work in progress as I will be adding a sentiment.

Our next class entitled Layer Cake Collage was lots of fun.  I had a large canvas (10" × 10") which was covered with tissue paper and some very light washes of acrylic paints.  On self-adhesive canvas I traced out a bird, some feathers and circles and I painted them with acrylic paints in bold colours.  The final stage involved adding some design paper, the canvas images and then adding dimension with pan pastels and some metallic acrylic paint.  Here's my canvas:

I'm really pleased how this turned out.  So much so, that I might have another go at home on my own!!  Below is a picture of this canvas with a couple of pieces that I made last year in Amy's classes - the larger picture at the back uses bees wax and the smaller one is a faux bees wax finish.

Today, Jonathan, Kathry and I went to a photo shoot.  Andrea, our model, is a really super young women.  She's lovely to look at and has a great relationship with a camera!  Here's just one of the photos I took of her today - I took nearly 400 photos in all!  I'll go through them later this week and pick out the ones to edit.  I'll post a link when they're done.

Don't you love it when the clocks go forward?  It's almost 7.00pm and still light!  I have to admit that I love it!  Anyway, that's all for now.  See you soon.

UTEE Charms ....

... Morning everyone!  I thought I'd share a photo of the charms that I made at the UTEE workshop I attended on Thursday evening.  We all had such fun and we made lots and lots!  Here's a photo of all my bits:

Valerie showed us how to use silicon moulds - see the mask, owl, Buddha heads and domed flowers, as well as how to make our own mould.  I made the Buddha head - which means I can make lots more.  We also made a few charms which can either go on cards or be used in jewellery.  I also made some flat pieces by pouring the UTEE onto a craft sheet and simply placing a stamp into it.  They work beautifully, but are a bit thin so probably won't go on a card as they are unlikely to survive the post. 

We had a really good time at the bonfire party last night.  My friend Nicola prepared a fabulous supper of sausages, potato, beans, peppers and parsnips.  It was delicious.  There was a small bonfire upon which we burnt a couple of guys, as well as some sparklers.  We even had a few small fireworks - yea!!!  Such a fun evening.  And that's all for now, see you soon.

Thank you and some arty stuff ....

... Morning, this is just a quick post to say thank you to everyone for all the kind comments and wishes on my new Design Team post with 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown - I really do appreciate the time you take to leave such lovely comments.   What better way to make all the cards I need for Christmas?

Now I thought I'd share a few photos of the art I created at the weekend in Amy Flowers's classes.  Amy is such an inspiring teacher - we all had a blast. 

Our first class was to make an art journal from scratch.  We started with five sheets of plain watercolour paper, prepared them all and then played with paints, stencils - it was fab!  At the moment my journal is still separate pages, but I'll get it put together soon.  Here are a few photos of my pages:

The photos above are for my journal - you can see that I still have a lot of work to do on the middle page - sanding, stamping, journalling etc.

The photo above is the cover from Amy's journal - just love it!

The next class involved bees wax!  I did one of these classes last year, where we created art works with bees wax - well we did the same again, and also created a faux bees wax picture.  This idea of a faux work is great - it won't melt in the heat of a Michigan summer!!!  Here's my work from the class:

Above is the wax picture with the ephemera laid out.  I took a photo as I wanted to get it all back in the right place !

Above is the finished picture.  All the pieces have been adhered and held in place with bees wax.  I also used wax pastels to define the leaves and flowers.  Not only is the class a fun messy hands on experience, it smells great too.

Above it the faux wax picture - it almost has the same texture as the wax, but it doesn't smell as nice and, importantly, it won't melt in the sun!!

The last class on Saturday was to start on an altered book, and as I've only got a page done - I'll share that another time.

On Sunday I attended the last of Amy's classes titled Mirepoix Collage.  Mirepoix is a cooking term referring to three key ingredients for a recipe - here it relates to three elements for a great collage.  We used three canvas to create a triptych - applied collage, acrylic paints, stamps and stencils and several gels which dry transparent and allow the design to show through.  It was fantastic!  Here is my triptych.

This is the complete triptych laid out on the table as I plan to hang it on the wall in my craft room.

Photos showing the individual canvases, and below are a couple of close up photos showing the transparent gels - I had to add some paint to define the edges otherwise you wouldn't see the shapes!!

Here are some photos of work done by my class mates - we all started with the same materials and ended up with something unique to us! 

The triptych above was created by Jessica - I love the colours she used.  It has a very South-West vibe.

The was created by Jessica's mum - Dee. 

That's all for now.  Kathryn has a day off school and we're going to go out shortly - so I'll see you soon.  Have a good day.