Magic!

This piece has magic built into every part of it from the background to the magical font making app.

First of all there’s the magic of the water-soluble neocolour crayons and the way the colours blend together when you add water. There’s the magic of what happens to those wet colours when you add sea salt crystals and leave them to dry. Then there’s the magic that happens when you add digital elements and start playing with blending options!

But do you know what the biggest magic of all is? This iPad app at iFontMaker that enabled me to create my own font. A big thank you to Elsie from A Beautiful Mess who blogged about it last week. I was so excited when I read her post – I bought the app and sat up till 3 O’clock in the morning playing with it! It was so much fun!

If you like the font in the image click on the link Funtime font to download it.

Altogether a truly magical piece!

Playing…

Today I felt like playing digital! I took the last two hand drawn mandalas that I created and played digital blending with them – great fun! I think my favourite is the top right one. Which one do you like best?

Newspaper Collage

Newspaper is one of my favourite materials – it is so versatile! You can use it to protect your work areas, you can cut it up and make things with it, you can build things with it, you can use it for papier mache, you can take prints from it, you can use it in collages – and those are just a few of its craft uses!

To create this image I completely covered a sheet of watercolour paper with torn newspaper, then added acrylic paint using a variety of implements including bottle lids, bubble wrap, sequin waste and old credit cards. Next I added some carefully chosen, strategically placed leaf prints and a few stencilled footprints. Finally after scanning the image into the computer, I added a quotation using distressed digital text.

I love the way the newspaper peeps through the layers in places!

Autumn Blues!

I love the autumn when the leaves turn such beautiful colours on the trees. As they fall to the ground it’s the perfect time of year to satisfy the child in me by doing some leaf printing. A few mornings ago, I came back from my early morning walk with a large bag of assorted fallen leaves ready to spend the day playing!

By the end of the day I had paint everywhere, together with a stack of images in a variety of styles and colours. Having scanned them all into the computer, I am now in the process of going through them. Some of them like the one above, immediately suggest something to me, but others may sit neglected for months before I discover a perfect use for them.

Autumn Blues was created using a base coat of black gesso, acrylic paint leaf prints, followed by some digital text and a bit of blending.

The observant among you may have noticed that I’ve just acquired a new badge on my right sidebar. I’ve just signed up for this years Art Every Day Month – the challenge of being creative every day for the month of November. I really enjoyed taking part last year from my Face of Love blog and am looking forward to being part of it again. Why don’t you give it a try – it’s great fun!

New Identity

As part of re-creating my identity back here at Artimess, I decided to design myself some business cards. The front was no trouble, but I thought I’d like to put some of my artwork on the back.

I started by creating this Artimess zentangle:

I used A6(105mm x 148mm) white art board and drew with my trusty Rotring Rapidograph .25 Pen.

Then I found this photoshop tutorial from 10 Steps and thought it looked like fun – I love digital blending! So I gave it a go:

I love the result – mainly because it makes me look a lot younger than the original! So now I have 2 backs for my business card. Which do you think I should use?

Mouth Writing!

Every year about this time I receive a pack of beautiful cards, prints of pictures painted by mouth and foot artists. I have always admired their work and wondered how they manage to paint such beautiful pictures. I now have even more admiration for them having just completed this page of mouth writing for my journal …..

…. it was so hard to do …. it says “I don’t think I’m very good at this! It looks like Chinese. How do people paint pictures like this? I’ll try. Do you like my stick people?” …. I think I need a lot more practice 🙂

Not content with just making a beautiful mess in my journal, I love taking the scanned images and blending them to create more beautiful images. I started with this pen drawing …

…. and blended it with the scans of the “Document Your Dinner” and “Sample Various Substances” journal pages with these results ….

Finally … I just discovered this JigZone site that makes jigsaws out of your images. How cool is that!!! I just had to have a go 🙂

I’ve made two so far and posted them on the Pick a Puzzle page. Have a go and see how long it takes you to do one!

Keep checking … I’ll add some more later.

Macro Camera Shoot

I took my camera out for a long overdue photo shoot the other day …. not the pretty picture kind mind you … more an up close and odd angles shoot!! This is a macro shot of one of the handles on my (rather rusty) wheelbarrow.

Then I started playing blended images …. a brick blended with a piece of angle iron ….

… a rusty tin blended with a sycamore seed …

… and late at night I managed to capture my first spiders web!

It took a bit of doing – I had to get my daughter to stand outside waving at the motion sensor on the security light … but I think it was worth it! I hope to get some better web pictures once we get some frosts later on!

Wrecking Havoc!

On Saturday morning ….

… this book landed on my doormat. If you’ve never heard of it, check out the website! I think it’s a really brilliant piece of creative inspiration. Since it arrived I’ve been busy following instructions on how to wreck it! Here are a few of the pages I’ve worked on so far 🙂

The Instructions Page was coloured with water colour pencils, brushed with water, imprinted on the opposite page, then stamped for added texture.

Following the instuctions I attached to the Office Supplies page: treasury tags, staples, paperclips,hole reinforcers, labels, post-it-notes, elastic bands, corrugated card and large split pins !

I had great fun poking holes with my pencil in this page. I drew some flowers on the page, then brayered some ink over it all to give it some colour.

It’s becoming an addiction … I just don’t want to stop!! So watch this space for further developments!

Celtic Knots from ‘Thursdays with Earl’!

I have been following ‘Thurdays with Earl’ on the Jessica Sprague website for quite a few weeks now and have really enjoyed the different lessons he has taught. Last week Earl taught us how to make Celtic Knot Designs, something I have wanted to have a go at doing for ages!
So I drew my grid, then carefully followed the instructions (except I changed the shape!) with this result ….

But when I looked at it … it was just crying out to be blended in with something else. So I tried it with this …

Then I just had to do something messy after all that concentration. I used a pop-up butterfly template from RobertSabuda.com then got out some newspaper, clingfilm, alcohol ink and blending fluid. If you haven’t tried squirting alcohol ink onto cling film… you really should!! It’s very messy – hence the newspaper, but if you lay your paper on top you get some fabulous results! This is mine … framed of course by my Celtic Knot Frame!!

I have great plans to try out some more complex knot designs … so watch this space 🙂

A mess, a scan and some blending …

It started with an A4 sheet of acetate. I added a generous covering of pva glue followed by a dash of alcohol ink, some lumiere paint, a few sprinkles of glitter and some torn pieces of newspaper. I covered this with three layers of tissue paper (and some more pva glue) then left it to dry overnight!! This morning I assembled my own collage stamp using a selection of unmounted stamps stuck on a large piece of perspex and stamped the front of the acetate using a staz-on ink pad. Result …..

Most people would stop there …. but me …. I had to scan it into the computer …. and then I had to try blending it with something else!! I think it looks quite good blended with last nights Sail Collage. There were two that I really liked …


What do you think?