As promised, here are pics of my handmade travel journal. I decided that I would take an art journal with me on holiday and I’d keep to a plan of drawing/writing daily – after all, I’d have the time! Well, that didn’t quite work out between sun and sangria and nights of cards and local honey rum, but I have finished it:
I’ll be showing the group at the Craft Club on Saturday how to make the journal, and there will probably be a tutorial coming on here later.
Continue readingSo, what do you do when all the rings and inflatable dolphins are the same at the poolside? You ask your artistic uncle to customise yours for you. And so it was I was thankful for taking my collection of Sharpies with me on holiday! I created a dragon for Josh and tattooed eyebrows for Dan’s dolphin. I’m pleased to say that both stood up pretty well in use, and the black Sharpie was far more resilient than the colours. It helped that the surface was grainy on the ring and on the white printed areas of the dolphin.
Whilst sorting out the dining room, I had to go under the floorboards and found sections of the Leicester Mail and a Daily Express from Wednesday, 5th May 1937. The country was gearing up for the coronation of King Edward VIII a week later, and it was the day before the Hindenburg disaster. Fascinating reading! And whilst changing the radiator, I scraped off several historical layers of wallpaper. I’ve incorporated both, and the new wallpaper, into three art pieces to adorn the newly painted walls:
Each canvas panel is 12×12 inches, with the centre area painted in the room colour (Dulux Barley White) and edged with quarter inch brass tape from Ranger. The ageing was done with brown Neocolor II wax soluble crayon. Each section of newspaper was scanned and stuck down with matte multi-medium. The same was done with the wallpaper samples. The flowers are cut from the new wallpaper, Sanderson’s ‘Sweet Bay’ (Pattern No. DPFWSW102).
Dear readers,
I’m about to reach 25,000 views of my blog
In honour of the phenomenal hit rate to my blog, I’m creating another unique zentangle-inspired artwork to give away. In less than six months since I started, I’m about to reach 25,000 views of my blog, with a current record of 624 views in a single day! Now in the grand scheme of things that’s not a lot of hits compared to say, Google, but it’s exciting to me!
So… the spoiler alert? I’m going to create my biggest tangle to date, incorporating all of my tangle patterns – and then I’m going to give it away. Watch out for the pictures, and I’ll launch the give away proper when the blog counter reaches 25,000 🙂
And hopefully by then I’ll have got the hang of actually handing on the give away!
Well dear reader, welcome to another week of daily tangle goodness 🙂
This first pattern is direct from a childhood memory of a small ball bearing in a capsule simulating a Mexican jumping bean. Just one rule with this – make sure the ‘ball’ is consistently placed by gravity, only horizontal capsules can have the ball placed anywhere. Fill in the gaps with movement lines.
Tomorrow’s pattern: ‘Ovate’.
This week’s theme at my favourite ProMarker challenge site, Passion for ProMarkers, is ‘gingham’ [Week 108]. I decided to make my own gingham paper, and it sort of developed from there. It was particularly timely to have available the free gift stamps from Quick Cards this month, the ‘Time for Tea’ stamp collection by Beth Gunnell. I replicated their colour scheme as my head’s a bit fuzzy at the moment, but the card design is all mine.
UPDATE: I was in the top five for the challenge 🙂
I harvested my crop of blackcurrants yesterday evening and was pleased to have got around 900g from my one bush down at the allotment. A bit of boiling, sieving, sugaring and wrinkle-testing later and I had seven jars of blackcurrant jelly setting nicely. Full of my own creative juices this morning, I came up with a novel idea for the labels: I wanted to use the very blackcurrant colour of the jam to depict the fruit on the label. So I printed the text onto my labels (Avery L7160) and used the long-arm Cropodile to punch out three holes per label. A few green lines as stalks and a dab of white Signo pen and ’tis done. It’s a bit hard to see the colour in the photo (and indeed on the jar!) because the jelly is so dark, but the side on view shows the reflections in the glass to show the punch through more clearly. A quick idea to personalise your jam labels.
I’m cutting it fine with this week’s submission to Passion for Promarkers challenge [Week #107, ‘tie a yellow ribbon’]. From selecting colours, finding the cardstock, drawing the bow freehand, shading and blending to cutting out, mounting, photographing, uploading and blogging in less than 45 minutes. And all because I don’t have any yellow ribbon in my stash! Managed to submit it with two minutes to go… and I’m not a morning person either!
Following an enquiry from my sister, I tried making a beaded poppy. Still not sure exactly why she wants one, but I was sufficiently motivated to have a go.
I did this freestyle in brick stitch, making the first petal shape up as I went along. The other four were approximate matches to the first. The centre is meant to be a circular brick stitch, but didn’t quite work out that way, but does the job nicely. There’s something not quite right about it, and I suspect it’s the shape of the petals and the overall flower. A bit more work needed, but a good enough first go at brick stitch, and also a 3D beaded project. The whole thing is about 8cm diameter and each petal has a self-supporting gentle curve to it.
Dear readers – as promised, here are teaser pics of my subscriber draw prize book in recognition of 10,000 views of my blog 🙂
The cover is hand-tangled with my own designs [it’s taken ages!] and will be personalised with the initial letter of the winner’s choosing before being sealed with a gloss varnish finish. It’s a hand-crafted book [which took ages too!], with hard cover and sewn and glued spine.
Inside are colour copies of all my tangle patterns from January to June 2011, and the eight tags will contain hand-drawn tangles, with tips on shading and may be even a unique and unpublished, exclusive tangle pattern.
Remember, to be entered in the draw, subscribe to my blog using the ‘Sign me up!’ button in the side bar on my blog home page by midnight on 30th June 2011. Subscribing to comments or any other page will not enter you into the draw. The winner will be drawn at random from my subscriber list and I’ll contact you by email if you are that lucky person. Good luck 🙂
