Paperartsy - Portfolios Day 4

Today Helen Chilton's tags here feature scraping back through the pastel to reveal the original white layer as an accent, and it is fun (would have been better if I could have found the right tool, of course!  I used the tip of a palette knife.....which worked ok-ish)

Still it was fun having a go, and I like the idea, so will hopefully try it again

I don't have much in the way of coloured Stazon in, which is best for stamping on these pastels, only brown and black, and a pastel pink which I don't think shows up at all...so I am not completely happy with these.  What I do like though, is the scraping away at the pastel to highlight areas.

It is good to try something different, so thanks to Helen again for this challenge!!

WOYWW 189

Welcome to What's on Your Workdesk? Wednesday - week 189. Julia is our gracious host as ever and will welcome you with smiles and - probably - a busy desk!!

I have had a busy week, craftwise and amazingly have blogged about 7 times since you were here last! I finally finished up my original journal and even decorated the cover.  It is still propped on my desk-on-the-floor today, along with my Dylusions one which is seeing some action too! And there's a chunky frame partly decorated too...

I was delighted last week to see that I had won some blog candy from the delightful fellow WOYWWer, Caz, and a huge box of goodies duly arrived - it was so lovingly packed, and there was so much inside; it was like Christmas all over again - look -

Of course I had to spread it all out... A lot of it was carefully packed inside the tissue box cover - ingenious.

So, once again Caz, thank you - and if ever you see that Caz has candy on offer, sign up for it, because you won't be disappointed!

I'm off to hop round some desks now, catch you later!

Paperartsy Challenge with Portfoleo Pastels

This week, the Guest Designer at Paperartsy is the wonderfully talented Helen Chilton and she is playing with Portfoleo Pastels as well as Fresco paints and Paperartsy stamps.... Her tags yesterday were wonderful, but tonight the technique she used really spoke to me and I could barely get to the end of this blog post before I was digging out my pastels.

Helen did two tags, but I just went for one (such was my hurry, lol!) and I didn't take step by step photos as Helen has at Paperartsy (oh, OK, then I forgot....)

I'll let you read Helen's instructions, but basically you blend the pastels, sand back, add some stencilling and then stamping. I love how this looks and intend to use this again and again!  Thanks, Helen, this is so clever!!

Journal cover

Having finished the journal, I decided to play on the cover - it had got a bit mucky anyway!

I started by sanding it down so the paint would stick - I used Paperartsy Frescos, of course!! I went with various layers, starting with Nougat, then partly drying that, but added French Roast, Brown Shed and Chocolate Pudding, wiping away and sanding and mixing. Dried all that, and then painted it Baltic Blue...
Painted a section to enable me to stamp the title, went with Nougat, crackle glaze and Sky.

Using cut and dry foam, added some white to go behind the eyes, and wiped random splotches of white around the rest of the cover.  Added some stamping in black, some stencilling (the harlequin) in Guacamole before covering the whole book with a layer of satin glaze (also Fresco)
Finally, added some ideaology to finish it off.

Getting Dylusional

It was time for another play in my new Dyan Reaveley art journal today. I used mainly postbox red, but also the pure sunshine, lemon zest and a little fresh lime.

Then for some stencilling - used water through the dotty stencil (I only have the small size) to get the ghosting effect, then black marble through the alphabet (again, I only have the smaller one)

 I stamped Lucy from 'Love Struck Lucy' on white card and cut her out, along with several of one of the images from 'Doodle Parts', cut them all out and sprayed them with the postbox red ink. Dried them, and stuck them together to form Lucy's head-dress and stuck the whole lot in the album. Outlined some of the head-dress in white pen (it actually shows up more in the photo than IRL, must be the flash!)

The corner arrows are from 'Doodle Parts' also.

Used the checker board border from 'Around the Edge' and then the leaves from 'Doodle Parts' (I love this set!) and finally doodled some veins on the larger of the leaves in white gelly pen.

it's the first time I've done a page so much in Dyan's style, I only one Lucy from her character range, and think it would be best with one of the bigger faces, but there you go, you use what you have!!

Fabric + Frescos = Fun

I had a sudden idea this afternoon about fabric and JoFY's new stamps for Paperartsy....and had to put it immediately into action.

I cut a piece of cotton fabric, and sprayed it with some watered down Fresco paint (about 75% water to paint) I used a mixture of Hey Pesto and Guacamole, and at the top of the fabric, a watered down Sky.

Then came the stamps, stamped in archival black.

 and a paintbrush! I spent quite a while trying to get some shading and depth of colour on the images, with varying degrees of success...

Truth be told, I really only like the leaves.

To finish it, I took a piece of thick cardboard, and spread some Ferro paste (Iron) around the edges, far enough in so that the fabric would hide the cardboard underneath.









Once the Ferro was dried, I fixed the fabric to the cardboard with some spray mount (taking it downstairs by the front door, to avoid the fumes in the living room).  Finally, I used some Treasure Gold to highlight some of the raised parts of the Ferro.  (I only have 3 of these, I used Aquamarine and Spanish Topaz because they kind of blend with the rest of the colours in the piece but ideally I would have used other colours!).

Hope you like it!

The Craft Barn - Alpha Challenge

The Craft Barn launched a new challenge for 2013 last weekend -

- The Alpha challenge.. Every other Sunday (starting last week on 6th January) they will give you a letter of the alphabet and you decide on a word starting with that letter, and alter the page in your dictionary with that word on it.  Check here for all the important details!!

The first letter is 'V'.  I scoured charity shops for a suitable dictionary - should have got the first one I saw because when I went back they'd ALL gone... so I am using my Dictionary/Thesauras (half of it is a proper normal dictionary, and the back half is the thesauras which gives you synonyms for the word you looked up)

I then had to decide on a word - a word that I could illustrate!!  I went for VEHICLE because I have some stamps of cars (thanks Wendy Vecchi!!) and this is the result.

So, apart from 'journey' (Tim Holtz) stamps are by Wendy Vecchi. I used sky Paperartsy Fresco paint on the page, and blue archival ink, and black soot distress ink.

Took a couple of stickers and an alphabet stencil from my stash supplies to emphasise which letter we're starting with - and I hope YOU come with me on my alpha challenge too... thanks to the Craft Barn - I can see some fun ahead!

Sorry I had such trouble with the camera, it is so gloomy here in Surrey today!