It seems (on a quick search through my posts and pics) that I have been remiss and have failed to share a project I designed, completed and taught last year. I’ve created another version this month – hence this post. May I introduce my Christmas and Easter pebble painting…
It’s a one-layer challenge over at Less is More clean and simple card-making challenge blog. Don’t forget that one layer means just that… everything has to be on the card blank. No die cuts, no matting and very minimal, if any, embellishments. The theme is ‘hello sunshine’. I have tried to emulate a sunrise with my design team card:
This morning’s project was to prep for this evening’s art journal session at The Studio. We’re playing with Brushos, concentrated crystals of watercolour/dye. They give great, largely unpredictable, paint effects and work wonderfully as backgrounds to mixed media work. They are also tiny and get into all sorts of different places, so they come out rarely and take some cleaning up after! A pot once dropped into my distress ink box and took months to get rid of them all… Everything is covered and ready for colour carnage: here’s my example:
The session runs from 7:30pm, costs £5 and needs to be booked in advance. Materials are included and if you need a suitable art journal to work in they are available for just £2 on the night. Just get in contact for more information or to book your place 🙂
Challenge time again at Less is More… We’re asking to see your clean and simple card designs on the theme of ‘B is for Beach’. You may remember a beach challenge a few weeks ago for a different challenge blog where I chose to go for a less traditional interpretation. For this challenge, I have used a more obvious inspiration:
Summer is almost here, and in anticipation of a heatwave AAA Cards‘ latest challenge is to make a clean and simple card on the theme of ‘everything beach’. I’m a little more of a pragmatist, live in the UK and anticipate foul weather when I go to the coast. Foregoing buckets and spades and fancy parasols, I found this previously unused stamp deep in my stash and created this:
A new one-layer card challenge this week at Less is More. You have to do everything on the card blank. No die cuts, no layers, and minimal embellishments (if at all). It’s quite a tough assignment for those that like plenty of frills on their cards, but it makes for the desired clean and simple card design. This time, the theme is ‘flowers’ and I came up with this:
Over at AAA Cards challenge blog we’re celebrating 9 years of clean and simple card-making. There’s even a money prize up for grabs! The challenge this time is ‘pink birthday’. I searched through my stash and remained uninspired by what I had on a generic birthday theme. Eventually, I settled on one of my flower stamps, coloured it pink and made it a birthday card with a stamped mini-sentiment:
It’s a colour challenge this week over at AAA Cards’ clean and simple challenge blog. Our task is to choose a side (of the colour wheel) – either hot or cold. Most of my art includes warm colours, so I thought this time I would take on the cold side. This meant choosing purples, blues and greens and I turned to the distress palette for my inspiration card:
I was asked to prep some templates and samples on an Easter theme during my regular Bible Journaling session last month. I did so yesterday and today, and we will be using mixed media techniques on Monday to create one or more of these illustrations in your journaling Bible. I’ve tried to choose verses that might not be immediately the first you’d go to, and that show the sadness and joy of the event. I hope my colour palettes reflect those emotions too. As always, the templates are freely available to download via the shop link in the menu bar above. Here are my new journaled illustrations:
The next challenge at Less is More is to make a one-layer card using a self-drawn frame. I went a bit mad and hand-drew the whole thing. The finished piece looks like it is layered because of shading using an alcohol marker on the bottom edge of the mandala – a very effective way of adding depth without layers. The background is a masked, dense layer of blended distress ink over which I’ve used a black pigment marker and Stabilo pencils for shading.
