Busy with Life Book

I have finally had some time to myself this last couple of weeks and I have been doing a lot of online class work. Today I will share the latest few pages I have done for Life Book. 

This page is almost entirely acrylics, only black, white and cream. The little bit of colour is watercolour pencil applied when the page was dry. It is my favourite page so far. Hmm...I might have said that before, lol. Seriously though I am amazed that I was the one that painted this picture. I have learned so much this year.

This next page is a pocket page. It was bright orange with a little blue around the edges but it wasn't making me happy, so I sprayed the whole thing with blue glimmer spray and now I love it. Sometimes it is okay to keep messing with your work until you like it. The butterflies were cut out and stuck on with foam tape so they are raised.

The last page is not really a page but a series of ATC sized cards. They are meant to be little pieces of inspiration to look at in my studio. They are embossed cards with several layers of paint that has been sanded to expose the underlying colour. The images are magazine cut outs.

I have realised that I have not been sharing any of my techniques of late and that was the main reason for starting this blog. I am going to start taking more photos as I work so I can share techniques that are not specific to any class or teacher. If the technique I use was not learned in a class then I will try to remember to share it. I have learned so much from other generous artists that I want to do the same.

Playing with atcs

I made some atcs yesterday with embossing powder as the main feature.

 

This one is a miniature version of my journal painting. The scroll on the right is cut out with a cuttlebug machine then heat embossed with Opals brand embossing powder. It covers the writing that was too small to read on this little painting. 

The seahorses are cut out with a cuttlebug then embossed with copper coloured Opals embossing powder. A stamp was pressed in the embossing while it was still hot. The background is distress inks smoosh technique. 

My final atc is a "Twiddly bits" butterfly embossed with purple and green embossing powder. The background is sponged gesso coloured with glimmer mist sprays.

Transparent ATCs

I used acetate this week to make these transparent ATCs. They are stamped on one side then coloured with alcohol ink on the other side. I then placed another piece of acetate on to cover the alcohol ink so it doesn't rub off. On the back of the second piece of acetate I coloured the images with alcohol based markers. It adds a lot of colour and makes the images stand out more. The acetate is then sandwiched between two frames that have been coloured and decorated in various ways.

 

 The fuschia one is my favourite.

 

ATCs

I made a bunch of ATCs yesterday using my paintings as the focal image. The technique is to clear emboss an image over a dark background and then colour with metallic creams or paints.
 
These ones were stamped on the background with versamark and then embossed with clear embossing powder.

Others were dry embossed with a cuttlebug then I heat embossed the raised parts with clear powder.

After that a little Viva Inca Gold paint is rubbed over the top. It sticks to the clear embossed areas very well. I used two colours on each background. It was a little difficult to only do the Viva on the raised areas of the stamped images so I put the metallics over the whole background. It still makes the images stand out, I like the effect.

This card was green instead of black. I like the way it looks and it has a lighter effect.

I think this technique might be an interesting background for an art journal page. I might give that a go sometime soon.

ATCs my way

My ATCs this week may look a little plain to some. I often see them around the net with a lot of different elements on each card. I like to give my images a little breathing room, especially if the background is an interesting technique. 

This week I used molding paste or fiber paste to make a textured background. This was then painted when dry and rubbed with Inka Gold creams to highlight the texture. It is an interesting look.

Fiber paste applied with a stencil brush.

Molding paste applied with a stencil brush

Molding paste applied lightly with a paint brush then more applied through sequin waste to make the stars.

 The images were supplied by my atc teacher so I don't know where she got them from. They are lovely though.

ATCs

This week our atc background was made with glue. First we spread the white glue unevenly across the card with a palette knife leaving it a little thick in places. Then before it dries heat it up with a heat gun to make it bubble and stretch. When it has cooled down it can be painted with any acrylic paint you fancy. I used Golden fluid acrylics and they looked glossy when they dried on the glue. Windows were cut into the cards so the image is adhered to the back of the card. The images are from art magazines.

With this technique some of the card colour shows through the paint. This card was a black background with pink and gold applied. 

This is the same colours of pink and gold but it was done on a white background. 

This card looked like textured linen and some of that shows through the glue background. I highlighted some of the texture with metallic paints.

Absent

I have been away from my blog for a lot longer than I intended.  I had an unexpected visit from a family member that stopped me blogging for a little while. I did manage to get some art work done though, nothing would stop that, lol.

This is the first page in a small book of flowers that I am painting. It is copied from a photo I took in my garden of a favorite camellia. It is a little too realistic and I am working on developing a looser style of painting. It is going to take some time though.

I made some ATCs at a class recently. First you cut a magazine image out and glue it to some cardstock to make it sturdier.  Then lightly dry brush gesso across it, up and down first, then side to side. This gives the card a linen look. You should still be able to see the original image a little so you can use that as an outline. You then outline the image using a permanent marker or pen. You can change the image if you want to, giving a face different hair or changing the background.  Next use acrylic paints to fill in the picture and your card is done. You can add other embellishments like glitter or diamantes. Usually people choose pictures of people for this technique but I also wanted to do some other objects. The only other magazine photos I could find were of food. I still like the way they turned out.