A Couple of Tags to Share

Thank you for your kind comments on my last post. Seems the world loves a nerd :D

Anyway, not one tag to share today. Oh no! Can you believe I have two???

Both use the same silicone mould of a male torso from FPC Sugarcraft. One of my creative play times was to grab a pile of the moulds I've accumulated over the years and slap some clay into them. So now I have a small box full with clay pieces waiting to be painted and used.

The above tag was me playing around with texture paste. Plus I'd just bought some bright pink paint which I wanted to try out.

The other tag found me playing around with gluing wrinkled tissue to the background and painting over it. Looked brilliant so I covered the majority of it with an embossed card which I inked up with orange. Go figure.

Now off to have a think about how to use the rest of my moulded embellishments.

Because Nerds love ATCs too

This is a scheduled post. That's because on the day I'm typing this out, the little beauty above has only just gone into the post. The recipient hasn't seen it yet. But he should have by the time you're reading this.

You see, I made this for the sweetest Nerd in all the world (thx Scritti), and mixed media guru, Mark Gould. What he can't do with a brush and a pot of crackle paint, ain't worth knowing. And when I call him a nerd, it's affectionate. Go see Nerd Fitness if you disagree.  Nerds rule. I'm a nerd.

I'm a horror nerd first and foremost. There's not much in the genre I don't know about. But I do love a superhero, a comic book, graphic novels, sci-fi, my Playstation (how many times can a guy watch Tomb Raider's Laura Croft die at his own inept hands?) and so on.

And Mark, as anyone who knows him or reads his blog, will know, confesses to having a nerdy streak. So when it came to swapping ATCs with him, I thought I'd go for the superhero vibe. Red and blue - well you know who's colours they are. And a green torso, with the word Smash. Seriously, do I need to explain any further? It's as subtle as a brick to the head.

The ATC is made from MDF by Calico Crafts. The base was inked up in blue colours and stamped in black with a Seth Apter texture stamp. Then I coated it in Triple Thick gloss (an idea I learnt from Mark). I added the Smash Label, added another layer of Triple Thick and squished the torso into it before it set. Same for the top frame. The torso was clay, painted green, and varnished. I stamped black archival ink onto white tissue paper and glued this over it. The frame I covered in texture gel by Reeves (love this stuff) and painted in acrylic red. And that's all it took.

Hope he likes.

Take Three Things Challenge

There's a new blog in town, the Creative Carte Blanche and they hold a monthly challenge. I missed out on their first but I like the idea behind the latest. To use three elements which, they state, normally don't go together. These are, corrugated card, lace and metal. 

Now that's the kind of challenge I can dig my teeth into. Making art work, when it shouldn't.

I took a white die cut tag, and added blue Colour Burst from Ken Oliver.  I added more blue with a selection of distress inks and blending tool. The flower was made by die cutting the flower pieces from corrugated card and colouring with acrylic paint. I took a selection of Seth Apter's stamps and added to the flower pieces with black Archival ink.

I attached the metal tassels to the flower and glued the whole thing to my tag. I spritzed a piece of lace with Dylusions spray and once dry, glued to the bottom. I added the label and dotted a line of black Nuvo Crystal Drops to finish it off.

And yes, I know my blog has taken a quieter turn recently. The reason being is that I have been quietly creative and playing with all sorts of mixed media stash. And because I'm mucking about and trying out new ideas and techniques which I'm rusty with, the results have been...well...how can I put it...not "blog-worthy". There's a vast chasm of difference between the ideas in my head and the finished pieces.

However, they are all valuable, in that I'm learning more each time. The endless cursing and bad language heard from my craft room is not in vain.

Time will come, when I produce something which I'll be pleased to photograph and share lol. In the meantime, I'm having a lot of fun just messing about :D

Mission Inspiration - February 2016

It's February and time for Mike Deakin to hold another Mission Inspiration!

Now I won't lie. This page is my second attempt. My first try was certainly educational but aesthetically, not my cup of tea at all. It certainly won't be going on this blog lol. I'm trying to straddle that world between arty and designer still. I love me some clean and minimal but when playing around with ideas for art, I can sometimes find my efforts beginning to stray into cluttered.

Especially when the challenge looks like this

The idea is to add the ten challenges, in the order they are numbered. Ten different additions to a page can look fairly full, lets say. Brilliant if that's your oeuvre. But you know me, if it isn't graphic and clean, I'm not happy.

So I had a rethink and went at it again. It's not quite got there yet but it's a million miles better than it's predecessor. You'll have to take my word for it :D

My process was to add Dylusions paint, in red and yellow, with my fingers. Then I cut out the fella from an advert for Whey protein powder, into fragments and glued on. I cut a circle out of card and used this as a stencil to apply a thin wash of black gesso in the top right. Over this I applied texture paste through a bamboo stencil from Seth Apter. I dabbed a comb into orange paint and added to the right hand side. I die cut the hearts from a book page and glued on. I stamped my two text images in the bottom left. I added a yellow doodle over the circles. I cut out the three words from the same ad the fella came from. I loved the irony. Finally, the easy bit, I added a border using black patterned wash tape.

And it still manages to look clean. Phew!

Smash Book Page

Another week, another art journal page. It amazes me how slowly these things take to make. Don't read me wrong, I love making them. It's just that I have the perception that it will only take an hour, two tops, to make a page like this. In reality it takes around 5 or 6. Maybe practice and experience will speed up the process. Or maybe it's supposed to be slow. Maybe the point of it, the joy of it, is in the effort and time required to put into it.

And do I like the final page? No. Not yet. It's not perfect. It's anything but perfect. It's riddled in imperfections. The lines are not strong, confident ones. They look irregular, wobbly, diffident. Maybe in a day, week, month or year, I look at this page and love it. Just not right now. It's time to draw a line under it and move onto the next one. And yes I'll probably enjoy putting it together and still feel unhappy with the results. 

Believe me, the day I'm content with a page, I'll shout it out loud and proud :D :D :D

Teesha, Sarnaty & Hattie - A Trinity of Inspiration

I'm continuing to fill up my Smash book with further pages. I'm still mixing up ideas stolen from other artists. Not quite found my own style and confidence yet. I know if I try out different techniques, keep the ones I like, lose the ones I don't, it will eventually come.

These pages are a mash up of the artists Teesha Moore, Sanarty & Hattie Stewart. I love the mix of collage and doodling these three women employ.

And behind the scenes - thanks must go to Aaron & his Imperfect Impulses. His encouragement and inspiration have urged me on. He's been gently stroking  my mojo and slowly bringing it out :) Check out his videos on youtube.

Kate Crane Inspired Page

My first post of the year! Hope you all had a pleasurable break. I know, it seems a lifetime ago now. Who can remember it?

Anyways, I'm here with an art journal page. It's not the only one I've made in the last few weeks but it certainly is the only one I'm happy enough with, to share. Mostly because it's a CASE'd design from Kate Crane.

Over the break, I enrolled on Wanderlust, a year-long, online, art journal class. Week one is a series of videos by Kate showing her process for making pages for a mini album. Now I didn't want to make a whole album but I was quite happy to pick one of the pages shown and make my own version of it.

Yes it's a bit messier and freer in style than I'd like but I wanted to try making a page as instructed, in order to learn a different approach to mine. After all, I can now incorporate what I discovered in the process. Keep the aspects I enjoy and leave out the parts I don't.

After all, as I previously mentioned, left to my own devices, my pages are a hot mess and not fit to be uploaded to the web. At least when I'm following a class, I'm not too ashamed of the result.