It’s time for another challenge at Less is More… This time we have a colour challenge: Blue and Silver or Red and Gold. For me, they are classic Christmas colours, so I’ve used that theme for my cards this time around. First up, my choice for my design team card. It’s hard to see with the reflections, but the snowflakes are heat embossed in silver. The watercolour is Chipped Sapphire Distress Stain flooded into water, then splattered with water and blotted dry.
I’m delighted to be able to share that I have been accepted on to the Less Is More Challenge Design Team. You’ll all know that I have recently been taking part in their challenges after a long hiatus, and it’s an honour to join the DT. You can find the fortnightly challenges here, and a little more info on the card(s) I make following the theme here on my blog. You may even get to see the outtakes…
I’ve used one of my most favourite techniques for my card for the splats – get your Distress Stains out, make sure the tip is nice and juicy and then firmly tap against your page (actually, you thump it down with a bit of force). Watch where the spatter goes!
We’re about to redecorate our lounge in shades of grey-blue, so I was commissioned to create another altered art canvas similar to this one, but with a matching blue as the main colour. It’s taken a day to do and has laser-cut, 3D printed, buttons, wood and polyurethane-cast elements as well as a few embellishments from my collection.
I’m a fan of Finnabair and her combination of collage and assemblage in her mixed media pieces. There are numerous other artists following the style, and plenty of videos on YouTube showing step-by-step ways of working. Silly old me – I watched one and thought I could remember it as I did my own… This wasn’t the case, so this is pretty much all my own work. It’s the result of a couple of hours work, including cutting out the various chipboard/greyboard elements with my laser cutter. I’ve chucked everything at it!
Next week’s Art Journal Session has the theme ‘butterflies’. I’ve three new pages to share, but there are several in my past library that you can find using the search facility.
Happy New Year! After a break for Christmas, and some online classes taking up some time, I’ve been crafting. I’m working on a dragon sculpture, currently curing in the pond, and I’ve been learning 3D modelling software – part of which included animation of a lamp model you may spot in the blog header from time to time.
Anyhoo, today’s bit of crafting was the latest ‘Less is More’ challenge – a project with minimal layers, minimal embellishments with lots of white space and this time using the Pantone colour of the year 2019 and 2020.
They’re not two colours I would immediately choose to put together, so initially, I had a mental block. I ended up with two cards, one of which I don’t like, and one that I do!
It’s just about time for the leaves to fall… the weather is distinctly autumnal (read wet!) and the leaves are turning. This art journal spread started off with a Distress Stain Spray background that I hadn’t used up to now. Next, stamp some fallen leaves (Tim Holtz/Stampendous CMS097) in jet black archival ink. Fill in around them with black acrylic ink. They didn’t particularly look 3D until I added some shading with Black Soot Distress ink. I’m not entirely happy with the quote placement. I can always paint it out if it aggravates me next time I look at it!
My crafting mojo has wandered off, somewhat inconveniently for earning an income, but hey ho, it happens. I have been doing some ‘pottering’ in the studio though and here are a few altered art pieces I have managed to get made…
It’s time for my monthly art journal session on Monday evening, and it coincidently happens on 5th November – fireworks night. It seemed fitting, therefore, to have a suitably explosive theme ‘whizz, bang, pop’. There are spaces available, just let me know if you’d like to come.
Here’s my take on the theme:
Used in this layoutIt’s my monthly art journal session on Monday evening, and this month’s theme is ‘Spring Spraying’. Spray inks, stains and paints are always a fun, and fast, way of making a background. Occasionally, the spray reaches the page… Using stencils and then embellishing with other media, such as white pigment pens, finish the page off nicely.
Speaking of finishing a page… There are some who ask, ‘when do you know a page is finished?’. Here’s an example. The first pic shows where I originally finished the page. It was only when I was editing the photo for posting that I decided I hadn’t finished after all. The second pic shows where I left it after a little more work:
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