Recycled Packaging!

We seem to have bought a lot of books just lately, acquiring as a by-product lots of those cardboard sleeves that books come wrapped in. So when I looked at Kate Crane’s 21 Secrets 2013 Class and saw that it was about trying out lots of different techniques, I thought the book packaging would make an excellent base for these projects.

For the first project I started off using spray inks and stencils. Because I sprayed them directly onto the cardboard, the colour was not as bright as I was hoping for. I could have painted over with gesso and started again but I decided to go with it and see what happened. Next I added acrylic paint using a variety of stencils, bottle tops, cards and stamps (including one of my home made foam stamps). I decorated a “dinner money” envelope with strips of old scanned artwork and stitched it to the board then added some ribbon and some more stamping. Lastly I added some cut out quotations to the envelope, and stuck one of them to the card.

For the second project I started off with some old sheet music which I glued to the cardboard. I covered this with acrylic paint, then used a selection of hand made foam stamps to create more interest. I finished it off with a collage of a painted stamped image and a die cut butterfly joined using a tiny split pin, and a quotation which I outlined using a Pitt artist pen.

Four more projects to go – this is fun – I’m off to do some more. See you later!

Connections!

I’ve got a bit behind with the Life Book 2013 Classes, so I was quite pleased when I managed to finish Mindy Lacefield’s lesson today. I had great fun with it, but was a little unsure of how the whimsies would turn out using Mindy’s draw in paint technique!

I started out by writing 7 quotations about connections on the right hand page, then used various stencils with homemade ink sprays to create a background and partially hide the journalling. Next I used various stamps with distress ink pads to add some more detail to the background and did some acrylic finger painting. Lastly, I painted the whimsies with acrylic paint and used a pilot gold marker to add belts to their skirts.

This is my first ever attempt at drawing people using paint, pretty scary, but I’m quite pleased with the result!