It’s another theme challenge at Less is More this week. We’d like to see your clean and simple cards based on ‘spring’. Now, because I know what’s coming up in the next challenge I didn’t want to do a similar image and decided for this theme to play around with some typography. Here’s what I came up with:
I have been trying to get into the habit of illustrating a bible verse each day since the start of the New Year. On average I think I am hitting a 40-50% hit rate, which isn’t too bad with everything else that’s happening. Here are the results of some of those bible journaling episodes. I think a typography style is developing nicely, but I’m also very fond of the illustrated ‘Immanuel’ page spread.
Happy New Year! I have a new year intention (I don’t do resolutions, too much pressure) to have a studio clear out and tidy up. As a first step, I decided to replace my water pots for use in classes. Inexpensive Ikea smoked glasses caught my eye – stable and weighty, perfect! Of course, I couldn’t just leave them unadorned…
A little work on some typography, vinyl cutting on my Silhouette and a generous dollop of Armor Etch and my etched brush pots are complete. One features a caution symbol and ‘contains paint’, specifically targeted at one of my studio guests who can mistake her glass of water for the painty water pot. Another has the steps required for cleaning a brush. The third has all the words I could find in the thesaurus connected with cleaning a brush. And the fourth has phrases playing around with the whole brush pot concept, such as ‘clean brush, cloudy water’ and ‘colours in suspense’.
Bearing this in mind, tidying the studio is going to take forever if at each point I have an idea I then implement, making a mess in the process…
There’s just one day left before the Christmas Fayre (in case I hadn’t mentioned it recently). Though I have more items than I can fit on even a large table, the inspiration hasn’t stopped. I thought I would have a go at some mounted typography, so designed, cut out (ok, the Cameo did that bit), stuck together and mounted these two examples – which happened to be two verses from Sunday’s morning services (see the sermon sketchnote).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, I’m finishing off some MDF chalkboards – three down (one featured here), three almost done. The first is covered in old dictionary pages, and aged with a ‘dirty wash’ – a drop of DecoArt Media Raw Umber and a drop of Quinacridone Gold watered down, brushed over and splattered with water before drying and sealing with DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish. The second started with squidged Distress Paints, sprayed with water, then dried and I used DecoArt Media Phthalo Blue as my dirty wash, before glazing with a watered down metallic blue acrylic paint. I then sealed with a gloss varnish with a bit of DecoArt Media Interference Blue mixed in. And the last – I’ve tangled it in Sakura Micron 08 black pigment ink over Dylusions Linen White paint (which when completely dry doesn’t clog the nib), sealed with DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish.
[Disclaimer: as part of the DecoArts Helping Artists Program,
I have been provided with samples of their products to use for projects]