Mixed Media Madness!

I’ve been working on a mixed media piece in my new journal for the last couple of days and experimenting with the camera on my iPhone as well.

Inspired by this post from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, I spent a while cutting out this quotation to use on my new page.

After I’d finished the cutting out, I downloaded the Snapseed app and took this photograph to play with on my new app!

Today I was working on the background, and scanned in the different stages to use as future collage material. As is often the case, I got sidetracked into doing some digital blending 🙂

This is the result – pretty colourful, yes? You’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see the finished page as the final layer is still drying at the moment!

Kaleidoscope Mandala!

I have been busy painting and working on Rae Missigman’s 21 Secrets 2013 Class, but I have nothing to show yet, so I thought I’d share some digital playing instead. I was catching up with my reading list yesterday and came across this post from iHannah about creating digital kaleidoscope mandalas. Well – I just had to give it a try, didn’t I!

I decided to use my Face Emotions image as the source and had great fun playing. iHannah’s instructions are very helpful. I created four mandalas, but that wasn’t enough for me. After downloading the results I had to play digital blending to take it that little bit further! This is the result.

Thank you iHannah for the inspiration, and thank you SumoPaint for a nifty piece of software.

Riot of Colour!

Today was such a beautiful day, I went out for a walk with my camera. Everywhere was a riot of colour: roses, bluebells, campions, clover, wild garlic, buttercups and daisies, to name the few flowers I know the names of, all showing off their vibrant colours in the long overdue sunshine. I took over 100 photographs! – but you know me, that wasn’t enough, when I downloaded them onto the computer I had to play digital blending with them!

These are the three flowers that I played blending games with. I started off with the rose, then added the dandelion seed head, finishing up with the red grass like plant whose name I don’t know. Each flower was blended separately before I blended them together. Can you spot them in the final blend?

Funky Blending!

The other weekend we went to York to visit a friend and were taken to visit the city’s nature reserve. Always on the look out for a photo opportunity, I noticed these unusual plants growing just behind a bench and had to get down in the dirt to photograph them. Later, playing on the computer, I thought they would make a good subject for some funky blending.

I started with the photograph of the plants, then blended lots of layers of a scan of some leftover paint. By this time it was looking very funky, but the plants had disappeared. So I cut them out, duplicated them on top of the pile, and added some colour and blending to make them fit in with the rest of the picture. I’m very pleased with the result. What do you think?

Playing Games

I’ve been busy altering tins and making game cards for Diana Trout’s class on the 21 Secrets 2013 course.

I took two old cough lozenge tins, sanded them and primed them with gesso, then painted them with acrylic paint. It was not a success – the paint started to flake off! So I covered the paint with tissue paper glued on with gel medium. Success! I still wasn’t happy with the way they looked, so I added several more layers of acrylic paint in different colours and another layer of gel medium. Once I was happy with the tins I created their labels using a stamped flower and a digital label. I coloured both of these using Twinkling H2O’s. I made the game cards from double-sided scrapbooking paper, then used the same stamped flower and digital label for the instructions.

I found this class to be quite a challenge, but I’m glad I did it – I learned a lot. Thank you Diana.

About a week ago I posted this blended image and said I didn’t think I was quite finished with it yet. This is why – I just turned it into a kaleidoscope! I love the colours and all the faces in the patterns. How many faces can you find? I keep losing count!

Totally Addictive!

The trouble with playing digital is that it’s totally addictive! I’ve always loved kaleidoscopes so I had to have another go.

Using the same original images as yesterday, this is today’s version! I think this is my favourite so far. What do you think?

Playing with Blending!

I’ve been so busy drawing and painting lately that I haven’t had time for playing with digital blending. So today I thought I’d rectify that omission!

I started out with an artwork scan and two photographs. This was the first result. I really like this one, but decided to have a go at making a kaleidoscope style mandala.

This was the result! Which one do you prefer?

Time Flies!

Doesn’t the time just fly by! I can’t believe it’s a week since I last posted here. In between a very special birthday, the celebration of which got delayed by snow over the entire country, followed by a nasty tummy bug which laid me out for a day, I’m only just catching up with myself now!

It all began when I had some leftover paint from creating cards for this week’s Life Book lesson. As usual I painted a page in my notebook with what was left of the paint. Then the postman brought me some very special paint that I’ve been coveting for a very long time – some Golden fluid acrylic paint! Well – I just had to try that out didn’t I? Isn’t it lush!

With two pages of abstract paint marks scanned I just had to play digital! So much fun and such beautiful colours!

Today I finally finished my game cards, the first part of Kelly Hoernig’s Lesson from Life Book this week.

I created my own playing card size cards using glossy white card, then painted them using acrylic paint (the old paint!). I used collages of stamped images coloured using watercolour pencils to decorate the front of the cards, and luggage tags coloured using distress ink pads to write my goals on the back. I obscured the titles of a couple of them as I am not ready to share them at the moment.

So now I’d better get back to completing the rest of Kelly’s Lesson! I hope to be able to post it in the next day or so.

Blended Mandalas

I just had to play with Wednesday’s Mandala! Do you like my animation?

If you missed it, click your browser refresh button to see the animation repeat. Not brilliant – but not bad for a first attempt!

I started off by inverting the original, then added colour changes and blends to the mixture.

Celebration of Light

I’ve been a bit caught up in the mechanics of website maintenance for the last few days and have been neglecting my mess-making creativity! Thank goodness for the Monday Life Book lesson from Dion Dior this week – it was just what I needed to get back into mess making again!

Starting with a piece of black paper, I drew a handprint and mini mandala using a white watercolour pencil, then shaded between two using an assortment of dry white media which included a neocolour crayon, a soft pastel and a jelly roll pen. It was great fun and I think I’ll be playing with this concept some more over the next few days!

Just to add a bit of colour to the post, I had to show you this.

It happened when I was preparing this image for uploading yesterday. I accidentally pressed a few extra buttons … well maybe I did mean to press them … but it looks rather pretty, don’t you think?