Sunday 29 May 2016

Powertex Workshop - Angel

Yesterday was my first ever Powertex workshop - and my second play with this fabulous fabric sculpturing medium.  We - Sam, Emma, Lin R, Chris and Lesley - sadly our great friend Lin was poorly and had to cancel - attended a workshop with Allison Turner of Allison Turner Designs in Stapleford, Nottingham.  An early start, but so worth it.

 catch up and then time to get started, it's quite a packed workshop to allow for drying time!
from the right, standing at the window, Sam, Lin, Chris, tutor Allison, Emma and Lesley nearest
 fix your chosen head to the stand with a loo roll stuffed with tin foil and held in place
 wire frame wings

 first layer of fabric Powertex'd
 quick walk round the table to see  how everyone else is doing
Chris and Lin hadn't used Powertex before.. the mess was a bit scary for them!
it's easier to stand up to work...(and at home I tell you it's not easy on the floor!!)
 my angel, fully draped, time to get her dry enough to paint (train home leaves at 4.50...)
 this is Chris's
 got a bit lost going round the table now...

Emma's
 this is Sam's (sorry Sam)
 and Lin's
 Allison demonstrating how to apply the gold paint layer of drybrushing, which I had to do at home
 had to take these photos halfway down the stairs!
love her dangles, even though they got a bit stuck together in the bag on the train home

I've done some more dry brushing on her this morning and think she's finished now...

 back view
 wings
 front
 side




now to find somewhere for her to stand, at the moment she's sideways on the windowsill (the wings hit the window if she faces the room..)


it was a great day, with great company; if you like getting messy this would be right up your street!

Wednesday 25 May 2016

WOYWW 364 - welcome to year 7

Morning and welcome to the 7th anniversary - week 364 of WOYWW - hosted by the delightful Julia (usually) and Jan (for now)   I know I will be joined by everyone who has ever shared their desks on a Wednesday, when I wish Julia a speedy recovery from her operation soon and in the meantime hope she is enjoying some sunshine.  Thanks to you both for keeping this wonderful thing going and for allowing us to make so many friends - some we've met, and some we only know "virtually"!

Once again we are swapping atcs - this year I am afraid I have only done one for my "official" swappee next to me on the list, plus one for Julia which I will send off today. I debated whether to leave them on my desk in view but in the end, have done so!


 with - oops - some shopping!  the stencils from Stencil Girl are by Seth Apter - and truth be told, i thought I had ordered the larger size, but these will be fine... the stamp, by Carabelle Studios, is an image of Paris (one day I will get to journal/scrap some more of my visit two years ago!)


but wait, there's more.... the order that arrived just after last week's desk went live...






yes, more stencils!  I was only ordering the soft gel, really... the others are an "accident"!!  The alphabet cards looked intriguing (I had just taken part in an altered playing card swap, that's what drew me to them!)


you see, once I start again, I can't stop... shopping that is!

I'm off to a Powertex workshop with my friends on Saturday so there may be something else new to share next week too.. who knows!



Sunday 22 May 2016

Paperartsy Challenge - Scribbles and Doodles

the latest challenge from Paperartsy is "scribbles and doodles"  I think most of us doodle unconsciously (those endless "hold" calls on the phone..) and there were some fabulous inspirations on the Paperartsy blog   I loved Penny's sewing machine doodles of Kim's stamps - fantastic!

But, I am no seamstress... I do love to play in my journal though and went back to the big A4 Seawhite journal...

 I started by stencilling this big alphabet which just fits the page (it's by Creative Expressions) and Fresco Caribbean Sea -such a beautiful colour!

I outlined the letters with a fine Micron pen (I only have 2, so it's either 01 or 04)
letters all outlined...

time for doodling. wasn't sure whether to doodle inside the letters or in the spaces...









but there's much more space in the spaces so that was my decision.  I went with flowers.. not very happy with how the daisy type came out today, so I mixed them with some scribbly dandelion types based on some of Lin Brown's flower stamps for Paperartsy   I mostly used the 01 Micron pen for all the flowers
I filled all the spaces and the tiny gaps with brick style patterns, and went round the edges just dotting with my pen.

This is a close up of some of my favourite scribbly flowers (I may becoming addicted to this style of flower doodling!)


Entering the Paperartsy Scribbles and Doodles  challenge here 

I had real fun with this one!


The CountryViewCrafts Blog challenge for May, is Use a Stencil, so I am entering this there as well.

Wednesday 18 May 2016

WOYWW 363

Hello again and welcome to another Wednesday desk hopping fun with Julia    for a time whilst she's off having a break before her big op, the link is here with the lovely LunchLady Jan 

I was walking past The Works on Saturday and saw these collapsible storage boxes

You can never have too many storage boxes so I grabbed a couple...
two for £10, not bad!  I couldn't resist the one with the Hungry Caterpillar on, and the London Tube map was my second choice..

there "may" be an order on it's way from Artist Trading Post too... or there will be when they finishing moving house and can get back to packing orders...

The journal page is another one I've been working on with Paperartsy Infusions
like the one in the previous post.
it's not finished yet, will show you when I have though.


I'll get to as many of your desks as I can only Liverpool are playing Sevilla in the Europa cup final tonight so I'll be a bit distracted and more than possibly a bit late..

Sunday 15 May 2016

Two very different journal pages

Been working on 2 different pages in two different journals - the first, my A4 hard cover journal which I started ages ago.. finally finished!
 I brayered Frescos in Blueberry, Snowflake, Bubblegum, errr  probably some other pinks too.. added stamped circles (mostly Emma Godfrey and EverythingArt) more paint, more stamping, more layers..
 Drips (Bombay Ink); added DecoArt crackle paste,
 Dylusions stencils and Little Black Dress Fresco, (decided just to use the two larger stencils) and text stamped on tissue (Invoke Art stamps)  added some more mark making stamps (Emma) and text (Sara Naumann)
 and some black Bombay Ink splatters


 loved the big crackles I got
used some Blueberry paint round the edges too.

I decided not to doodle within the stencilled girls, but I may go back and do that, you never know!








Next up, the A5 soft cover journal I use more regularly, and Infusions over a mop up paint background - before I got up yesterday I watched a You Tube video Leandra tweeted a link to.. and which I now can't find... how annoying.. it was by Vicky Papaioannou for Simon Says Stamps and used Infusions... as soon as I got back from shopping I set to to finish my page..

 this was where it had got to, paint left over and scrapings... lots of layers before I took to the Infusions, but no photos until...
 I had got to the stage where I had my stamps laid out on the background.  I can't tell you how many layers of colour I used until I was vaguely happy (it's still a bit dark in real life!)  Like Vicky, I mixed my Infusions with gel medium. (have now ordered a soft one, my regular gloss was a bit thick for this)
 stamped some of the flowers onto separate card, coloured with Infusions mixed with regular gloss gel again and added some white pen marks on he flowers and bubbles on the background (Snowflake, Lin B's stencil)
Stencilled (Darcy's) a border in LBD Fresco and scribbled white Sharpie round the edge of the black, round the border of the whole page.
 stamped the caterpillar on white card and coloured with distress markers, stamped him on the journal page so I could cut off his antennae safely,
and added the sentiment from the JoFY stamp set the flowers/caterpillar come from.

Had huge fun with the Infusions and gel on this one, might have to do another one now!

Thanks for looking.

Wednesday 11 May 2016

WOYWW 362

Hello and welcome to another WOYWW at Julia's.  
Still no new stuff to share... not sure how this has happened, this must be a record...
I have been playing though; although not with the journal page on show last week.

you may if you look closely, see some atcs - yes, I've got a couple done (not fully finished yet) for the WOYWW anniversary and also some for a FB swap I'm in  (you can click on the photos to enlarge them)

I'll   probably do (or maybe will even have done by the time this is published) have done a full post on the journal page, but for now, here are a few details
 background mo p up from some atcs I've been making

stencilling borders and stamping then white pen doodling...

covered the butterfly in gloss gel and added more doodling


Hope you have a lovely week and I'm off to see if I can find something I "need" to have some new goodies to show next time.. 4 weeks in a row would be too much!!