Art Journal Page: Kindness is like snow

Posted on 4th December 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve been forced by circumstances this week to not have a creative outlet, and I’ve come to realise that’s not a good idea! I’ve snatched time though, today, to practice the Gelli Plate technique I’ll be teaching in my Art Journaling Session on Monday evening. There will be spaces available – if you’d like to come, just get in touch.

[Monoprint panels using Chipped Sapphire/Stormy Sky Distress Paints and white acrylic paint; background from cleaning the brayer; text in Posca white acrylic marker.]

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Art Journal Page: Simply Marvellous

Posted on 20th July 2015 by perfectly4med

Another journal page using my new wooden block stamps – they work so well with the Dylusions paint. It’s just the right consistency to cover the stamp, stick to the page, and not squidge everywhere. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite the same when I used rubber stamps, which squeezed the paint away giving me the tramline outline that I then had to fill in with a paintbrush.

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Art Journal Page: God’s handwriting

Posted on 19th July 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve just taken delivery of a set of wooden fabric printing blocks, a commercial take on the carved versions typically seen in India/Indonesia. As well as printing onto fabric, of course they’re suited to printing onto paper as well, and what better way of using them than in an art journal? This page is in my Moleskine journal that has been somewhat unloved since starting art journaling in 2011. I already had a pink/purple background in place, and I augmented this with some dabs of Dylusions paint. The image transfer of some heuchera leaves was also already on the page, and I’ve blended the edges with some more paint as well as adding a smear of orange to colour. The block prints can be seen in purple and white at the borders. I was quite pleased with the right side especially, as the paint acted more as a glue, pulling off previous paint layers creating a serendipitous distress effect. The text is free-drawn in Signo white pigment pen and outlined with a fine black pigment pen, except for the final two words which I traced so that it was a little more ‘special’. For hand-drawn text, I found the book Hand Lettering: Simple, Creative Styles for Cards, Scrapbooks & More by Marci Donley and DeAnn Singh really useful as something to bounce off. We’ll be using the blocks in the Art Journaling Session on 3rd August, for which one place is still available to book here.

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ZIA on other surfaces: monoprinting

Posted on 2nd February 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve just taken delivery of my 3×5″ Gelli Arts Plate, which is the perfect size to have a go at a technique I wanted to test for my forthcoming Zentangle Inspired Art workshop. I mixed black acrylic with a slow medium in equal quantities and used a brayer to cover the plate evenly with the black paint. Working as quickly as I could, I scraped paint off with a rubber tipped tool to ‘etch’ the tangle design. Despite the speed at which I worked, the acrylic still dried, so by the end I was scraping into dried paint, and to transfer the monoprint to paper I needed to add a layer of matt multi medium over the dried paint. After everything had dried on the page, I added Distress Inks to colour. A fast and furious sample, but a technique I think I will try again, perhaps with Golden Open acrylics or even a waterbased printing ink.

Have a go at this technique, along with others, at my workshop on Easter Saturday.

On a separate note, it is worth having a look at my original image – which was taken with a camera – the gloss finished of the acrylic played havoc with the light… Whereas the scanned image above shows off the piece far better. There’s also some resist happening with the black and the multi-medium which adds to the texture.

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Mandala Faux Batik (for Creative Expressions)

Posted on 4th December 2013 by perfectly4med

When I saw the contents of the latest DT goodie bag lots of ideas sprang to mind. We’ve been sent the newest set of ‘Henna’ inspired Creative Expressions ‘Singles’ stamps – rubber stamps that are pre-mounted and cut ready for slapping onto your acrylic blocks and printing with straight away. This project uses embossing powder and spray dyes to create a faux batik effect on a handkerchief – although any cotton fabric would work just as well. For more making details, read on 🙂

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Gelli Print Trio – New Home Cards

Posted on 15th April 2013 by perfectly4med

I needed to stay awake yesterday evening, so turned off the TV, got off the sofa and disappeared down the garden to the studio. A couple of friends have recently moved house, so I decided to make them new home cards, which took about an hour (including tidying up after, which I’m determined to keep doing!):

The backgrounds are mono prints using my Gelli Arts printing plate, layering up lots of different acrylic paint colours through stencils, sequin waste and removing paint with bubble wrap and foam stamps. I overprinted with white acrylic using the Claudine Hellmuth ‘Dwelling’ foam stamp, then outlined with her clear stamp set and Archival Jet Black ink. The sentiment is from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous ‘Simple Sayings’ [CMS155] printed in Archival Jet Black and mounted on background offcuts to tie it all together. I outlined areas using a Signo white gel pen (fine tip) just to help define some of the detail.

College – Term 5 – Final Major Project – another paper craft light shade

Posted on 8th April 2013 by perfectly4med

Well after a flurry of activity over the last two weeks watching my new studio get installed, and then decorating it, constructing furniture and moving in – as well as emptying out and putting back to right the dining room, conservatory and some of the craft room – I have my first ‘working’ day in the studio.

Of the various things I have to catch up with, college work is one priority as I have a mid-way assessment tomorrow. Consequently, I have taken pics of my latest light shade in my series. This one features one of the patterns I gleaned from a visit to the Islamic artefacts at the British Museum, drawn into Illustrator, adapted for the round and then screenprinted in opaque white ink onto thick tracing paper, and then constructed onto a card frame. As with the previous post, here are photos of the shade in daylight, and internally lit at night.

Handprinted Quilts

Posted on 8th January 2013 by perfectly4med

I’ve just put the finishing touches to two small quilts. They both feature my own pattern design, which I hand screen printed at college onto fabric offcuts using black textile ink. The first shows the patten, unadulterated, quilted using black cotton and free motion machine stitch round each of the circle motifs. The second is dyed with Adirondack Color Wash sprays (which despite my best efforts still covered everything nearby!), dried, heat set, rinsed, ironed and then quilted in the same way. Both are hand bound and labelled. I use backstitch to hand sew labels for my quilts as this is unlikely to wash off! They are both 22.5″x42″ in size.

Quilt No.5 – ‘Pattern No. 1’

Quilt No. 6 – ‘Rainbow’

College – Print – Term 4 – Final Pieces

Posted on 23rd December 2012 by perfectly4med

This term in my print lessons I’ve revisited dry point – with a new twist which I hope to develop and share in due course… And then there was the lino cut – it turns out that lino is a lot easier to carve when warm, but crumbles when hot… And there was the collagraph – sticking items to a piece of card, liberally coating with PVA and allowing to dry before using it as a print plate. Part of the final project is to take prints that aren’t quite exhibition standard and embellish them a little:

Basic print

Here’s the before and after of a piece of serendipity – I was washing out my large screen with a large repeat pattern on it, and the water/ink mix was caught by the scrap paper beneath – I loved the texture and distressed colours. I embellished it with watersoluble graphite pencil and a bit of frottage on sandpaper to add texture, and a distress ink mix to tone down the white paper:

Embellished with Distress Inks

Before…

Finally, I wanted to play around with a repeat pattern on a large scale… the screen alone was two feet square – and I chose to run off a couple of lengths of wallpaper as well as a couple of multicoloured prints:

Wallpaper sample

Multicolour screen, first pass

Not sure that I’d want that repeat in black and white across the chimney breast!

College – Term 4 – Print – Collagraph

Posted on 29th November 2012 by perfectly4med

It’s collograph technique time – who would think that a few bits and pieces stuck down and flooded with dilute PVA, dried and inked could make fabulous prints? Here’s a pic of the collagraph plate after a few prints:

And here’s one of the prints: