I spent the evening yesterday slaving over a hot oven… though 160 C is probably a moderate oven thinking about it. I was baking butterflies – not as cruel as it sounds, as they were made from embossing powder. I spent more time tying the darn things together than making them, but judge for yourself whether the results were worth it:
It’s Friday, and another mixed media lesson 🙂
This week we had to do a candle wax resist rendition of the still life – clear wax on whitish paper made the initial stages very tricky. However, as the dye wash revealed, I did fairly well! A bit of charcoal and a smidge of oil pastel here and there, and I was done.
I thought I’d give you some feedback on Judy’s commission for her prize winning piece of artwork for her being the top commenter on my blog for the first year. I asked her to give me an indication of what she would like, and here’s her reply: “I would love a Zentangle piece with a bit of Promarker and WOW powder for accent color! (or colour, as is spelled in your town!) I would love the quote, “Creative Minds are never tidy!” The regular 3.5 x 3.5 inch Zentangle tile size would be fine. It would also be easy to find myself a pre-cut frame for 4 x 6 inches (approximately 10 x 15.25 cm).”
She also provided an album of images from my blog as illustration:
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So… what did I come up with? I’ve put a watermark across it so that the original remains the only copy and unique to my winner. A combination of tangling, ProMarker, and a smidge of clear gloss WOW! embossing powder to make the colours zing. If you’d like to commission your own piece of art, either email me, or use the Commissions tab at the top of the page. This is now on its way to Judy 🙂
I spent this morning playing with the new WOW! stamps, combined with a Tim Holtz 6×6″ configurations box, and came up with this:
Very exciting news – WOW! Embossing Powders have new stamp designs available. Here’s a quick card showing some of them, with a minimalist design suitable for beginners.
I’m entering it into the ‘Less is More’ one layer challenge this week as well. I’ve prepared an instruction sheet ready for the Hobbycrafts show at the NEC, Birmingham (22nd-25th March) – here – I’d love you to have a look and let me know if it’s clear enough!
I’ve done another still life this week – this time using oil pastel resist technique. The objects were drawn in oil pastels first and then a dye colour wash applied for the fore and background. A bit of bleach, charcoal and chalk later and I got this:
I’ve found a challenge blog that suits my natural card making style – ‘Less is More’, a clean and simple challenge blog. There’s so much less of the layers and lace and embellishments and frippery – just a clean simple card. So I thought I’d enter a card into their neutrals theme challenge this week. And then I realised I hadn’t done a ProMarker card for a while, so thought I’d enter the same card into ‘Passion for Promarkers’ challenge this week on their Mother’s Day theme.
Hi all – my journey into 2012 in tags continues, with March and April ready to be taught at the Manic Stamper Craft Club on 17th March. I note that a certain Mr Tim Holtz has copied me copying him and is doing his own monthly tags too 😉 – check them out here. But before you do – here’s mine! Full instructions for March and April are posted over at The Manic Stamper blog.
Hello! Today is the last day of the first year of my blog 🙂
And in my normal fashion, I’m celebrating this milestone with a giveaway! More on that in a moment, but first some first year stats:
Phew! What a year! I’d like to thank you all for your support, comments and enquiries – they really do make a difference to my enthusiasm levels!
And now to the giveaway. In fact, two giveaways!
Both giveaways will be a commissioned piece of artwork (that’s postable) of the recipient’s choosing – it might be a bespoke card, a zentangle, a drawing – that’s for the recipient to choose with me. It’ll be your own special personal bit of blog 🙂
The first giveaway is to the person that has given the most feedback through the comments over the year – and by far the leader is…. Judy Gudeman! Judy, please look in your email inbox! I’d like to give an honourable mention to Dianne T and Lizzie Mayne as runners up.
And the second is to my longest standing, active, email or WordPress follower. All you have to do to win the giveaway is to comment on this blog – whoever has been subscribing for the longest and responds the quickest will win 🙂
As for my new followers, keep following! It won’t be long before I am celebrating my 100,000th view and I’m hoping to get some great prizes to giveaway.
Best wishes to you all and roll on the next 12 months!
Here’s my life drawing from this week at college. We are experimenting with expressive strokes in black Quink ink washes, and this week added in rust colours using oil pastels. The black Quink is ideal for this as it is full of every blue and brown colour you could wish with a few grey tones chucked in as well! I used a blue, orange and brown for the rest of the colouring, blending as I went, over the top of the tonal ink washes.