In Love With Texture - Sculpture Painting

Now that I am starting to be able to use acrylic paints and glue again as my chemical sensitivities are improving, I am starting to get excited about returning to my first artistic love: TEXTURE building.
I am completely in love with building interesting texture and painting over it.
I use various things to build the texture, gluing on whatever calls to me in the moment.
Tissue paper, fabric, brown paper bags, found objects and dried organic objects like leaves, feathers and seed pods... the possibilities are endless when you have glue and can use it!

Here is a sculpture painting from many years ago that I had a lot of fun making:


And another angle with less glare:


A number of years ago I lived in Montreal which has an amazing system of alleys - awesome places for finding strange little bits of this and that simply crying out to be glued onto something and enjoyed :-)
Most of my 'strange stuff stash' has been packed away, awaiting the day I could use glue again. I think it's time to get it out!


Is there anything you've been saving to use 'one day' that you could dig into right now!?

Doodle: Don't Wait! Do Something You Love Today

Much to my excitement, I sold my first drawing recently.
It's on it's way, all across the ocean, to Finland!  How awesome is that!?
I have 2 more copies of it in the Etsy shop I just created and more can be made if there's a demand.

This inspired me to draw more - something I really love but hadn't done for a while.  'Kiitos' Michelle! ☺

Here is one of the things I drew in the last week.  At 2.75" x 3.25"  it's not exactly the right size to be a wallet card... or an ATC... it's just a cute little reminder.  The size was dictated by some cardstock scraps I had.
I laminated it when done to protect from moisture.  My opinion on self laminating sheets is not high after trying them.  I used the kind that does not require heat to bond - it's a simple adhesive.  It was relatively easy to use but not nearly as durable as I would have liked.  The bonus was no fumes.  :-)

Apropos of nothing I'd like to say that ♥♥♥ I love, love, love my Micron pens. ♥♥♥  Wonderfully crisp lines that, once dry, most markers will not smear when colouring.

Front and back before colouring:

After colouring (unfortunately I really can't capture how vibrant the colours are in real life):

If you have a keen eye, you may notice that more detail got added after colouring.  I always want to add more and more.  Hard to know when to stop!
I will be taking my camera in to 'repair'.  Which usually means they just give me a new, upgraded one :-)
Maybe I will be able to take better photos soon!  Yay!

A Meaningful Bookmark

photo taken in front of mirror to show front and back

shown separately below

I'm not much for words today but wanted to share a bookmark that I made for a loved one.  The CED theme for May was 'Intuition' and I tried to use entirely that when making this!  I went into it with no plan at all - just the intent that the bookmark would be one that would be meaningful to the receiver.
This person is someone who is a bit selective and it's hard to know what will be a good match for them.
Happily, it turned out far nicer than if I had planned it.  And the words and images on it felt like a good fit for the person.
Thanks intuition!
:-)

The backgrounds on both sides were done using a fun technique with plastic wrap and markers that I promise I will try to post about soon!  It works very well on thin paper without warping it but has a much more natural feel than if I tried to actually colour the background with markers.

The blue border on the darker side was done with the edge of a stamp I carved from an vinyl eraser with my new favourite toy: the Speedball Linoleum Cutter.
It feels about a million times better than using an exacto knife :-)

Grunge Star Rubbed Impression Page with Ink Pads and Cereal Box Stars

Did you save the shapes you cut out from the cereal box template project?
If not, you may end up cutting out shapes just to make fun pages like this one!

How To:

Lay a piece of thinner paper (ie printer paper) on a totally flat surface.

Take a stamp ink pad and lightly rub it and drag it around the page until you like how it looks.  *If you have an almost dried out ink pad this will be very easy.
All of mine are newer and the trick to prevent big blotches is to have the pressure so light there's almost none... and keep it moving!*

Repeat with as many colours as you like - preferably working from lighter to darker if you care about contaminating the lighter pads with darker colours.

When you like how it looks, take your cereal box shapes and lie them under the paper.

Take an ink pad of a darker colour (or the same as the most dark you have used so far) and rub over top of the paper in the area of the edges of the shapes until you like how it looks!

So simple and easy!

In the basic image above I just used 2 colours and only used the cereal box shapes on the final layer but you can play around to make this much more saturated, with shapes on various layers like this:

It only takes minutes to do but be warned - it's so much fun it can be addictive!
Now I just need a project to use these pages... which I will likely have way too many of soon :-)

If you do something like this and post on your blog or site, please let me know in the comments!  I'd love to share the links for readers.

Magic Tags and Love Collage

Made from scraps of failed paintings and filled with words I love, interspersed with sparkly tinsel, these 'magic tags' all in a row make my art room a happier place:

Update: I finally came across the photo that inspired me to do these (although the method is a bit different, the core idea was from here).  Like much of my favourite inspiration, this came from Daisy Yellow (thank again Tammy!).

While sorting boxes, I found a collage done a few years ago.
It is so simple yet when I got to this point, I loved how it looked and didn't want to clutter it up!  The wonderful image in the centre is by an artist I love - Susan Seddon Boulet.

Cute Paper Flower... King Arthur had a parrot!

Did you know that King Arthur, of legend, had a pet parrot?
Neither did I!
I bought an Arthurian Mythology book for 50 cents recently to use for altered pages and that tidbit popped up on a page I was using to paint background to use for paper flowers.
I've seen paper flowers on a few different sites and decided to try my hand at making one. You can make them more 3D than this but I wanted to be able to mail it in a regular envelope to a friend.


Here's the front, it hangs on the wall by a string:

Once I realised that I needed a bead on the back to tie the knot to, I decided I may as well make the back look not half bad (but not so nice that my friend would have trouble deciding which should face out:).
The back view:

After I strung the flower, I spun the layers around until I liked how they were, then used dabs of gluestick under each petal to hold them in place.

It lies almost flat on the wall.

There are infinite possibilities for paper flowers or non-flower decorations!
I love having something funky that can fit in an envelope to brighten someone's day.

Materials:

watercolour paint

page from book

scrap paper

double-sided cardstock (middles layer)

homemade 'milk paint' (food colour and evaporated milk with extra milk powder added)

string

sequins

beads

scissors

gluestick

sparkles

Repurposing Failed Projects

Some watercolour experiments don't turn out well so I use the paper as background or scraps for other projects.  All of the words shown in the lefthand photo will become fun inspiration tags like the Magic one shown above.
Update: I finally came across the photo that inspired me to do these (although the method is a bit different, the core idea was from here).  Like much of my favourite inspiration, this came from Daisy Yellow (thank again Tammy!).

I made a strange little decoration for one of my plants including this lovely Blue Jay feather my mom sent me in a Valentine's Day card - thanks mom!