Gelli Printing day with Sophie - some of the prints she made.

Here are some of the untrimmed prints from the book we made together.  Unfortunately the gold shimmery paint does not show through on the scans so some of them look a bit flat here.

Gelli Printing day with my granddaughter.

Last week I had a lovely crafty day with my granddaughter Sophie.  We did some more mono printing with my 8 x 10 inch Gelli Plate.  I showed her how to put on the paint and use the brayer to spread the paint over the Gelli Plate.

We used lots of different colours and I showed her how to use stencils and pull the prints.  We layered over prints to get more dimension.  Once we had about 10 prints that she liked we let them dry, trimmed them and folded them together to make her book.  She chose a lovely pink swirly patterend one for the cover and then we watched a video on how do do a three hole pamplet stitch and stiched her book together.

She looked through my stash of stamps and chose a different one for each of the inside blank pages to accent them ~ her favourite one was "Keep Calm and Craft On".  We also added a couple of stamped butterflies to the front and added some collaged butterflies as well.

I showed her how to use my Big Shot machine and we die cut some letters for her name and glued them onto the front.  Some paper flowers were added for embellishment and we finished off the centres with some gems.  I found a metal key and tied it onto the book as she had seen one on a picture I had shown her and loved it.

(In between all of this we baked some cup cakes and iced them as well!)

Here is the finished book and a very happy Sophie!!

(I will put up another post later on to show some of the lovely prints we made)

Julie Nutting Canvas - Collage Couture - Postcard From Paris

This week I would like to show one of my canvasses that I have done over the last couple of years.  The first one is inspired by Julie Nutting from her amazing book “Collage Couture – Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art”   

In it she shows you how to draw your own girls as well as lots of projects to try.  I highly recommend it if you like girly art and mixed media.

I did my own version of her Postcard From Paris canvas but I used an image of the Eiffel Tower from a trip there and converted it using the threshold effect in my photo editing software.

The background is some patterned paper from my stash from a pad I bought at a thrift store of all places. Then I laid down some lilac tissue paper with home-made mod podge and some strips of book paper here and there.  I stamped with Stazon ink using a French text stamp.  Around the edge I used a couple of other stamps from my stash.

I then added the Julie Nutting doll that I had made from using the book as a template and dressed her in patterned paper from my stash.  Once she was glued on and dry I painted her hair with acrylic paint using a couple of shades to add dimension.  Her shoes were coloured using a black Sharpie pen.

I made a stencil of the word Paris and used brown paint for the lettering and outlined the letters in a darker shade.  I then added paper flowers, a small metal charm and a butterfly element in similar tones and she was done.

The little plaque was made from air dry clay and I stamped into it with a rubber stamp.  When dry I coloured it with some distress ink in Dusty Concorde and some bronze ink I had in my stash.

Links to her blog etc:
 Julie Nutting Blog         Julie Nutting Art - Facebook Page

Julie Nutting Website

Mission Inspiration - Mike Deakin Art Journal Promps - January 2016

I decided to have a go at Mike Deakins art journal prompts for Mission Inspiration and challenge myself.  I am a bit behind with these but have started with January and will complete the other two soon.  The journal book is the Artists' Mixed Media 8 x 8 by Daler-Rowney 250gsm (or 169lb paper)

This is my first real go at art journalling.  Hope you like it. (Will post process video soon on You Tube and will put link on here when finished) Thanks for taking a look.

Facebook Post - Mission January

Mission Inspiration - Mike Deakin Facebook Group

 

Or you can visit his website Mike Deakin Art at:

 

Papercraftography.wordpress.com 

 

 

First Process Video loaded up to You Tube!! - Rachel

I have just loaded up my first ever process video showing a mixed media canvas in a Finnabair/Angela Holt style.  This is an image of the finished version and you can find the video on YOUTUBE here https://youtu.be/khh0OZv7CbM

Rachel

This is my second attempt at a Finnabair style canvas that I had seen on her BlogSpot and on Angela Holt’s YouTube channel.  I have linked the various sites below so you can take a look at them.  Angela has a couple of amazing videos showing this this style of process.

Aisha - Original Canvas

The original one I did was with a picture of my niece instead of a vintage lady, and I gave it to her for her birthday.  Her mum loved it so much she keeps it in the family room on display.  I took the picture in mum’s garden and got her posing for me until I had the angle of her face that I wanted.

The second one came about at my daughters baby shower.  I was showing some of the guests the original one I did of my niece and an aunt requested that I do a secret one for her daughter’s 18^th birthday.  I was taking pictures at the baby shower anyway so it was no issue to take a few extra shots without her knowing what it was for.

The video shows the process from the orginal painting and gluing on elements to the finished product - hope you like it..

Link to Finnabair: http://tworzysko.blogspot.com/ Finnabair (AKA Anna Dabrowska) 

Finnabair channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ByFinnabair

Angela Holt channel    https://www.youtube.com/user/angelaholtdesigns

This is the link to the Angela Holt video that inspired me:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cfBZpMf2pQ    and this is a similar video of hers which is also worth taking a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDsmxXqfAHE  

Gelli Print Hunting

You know what it's like, you trawl round the internet looking at other peoples' creations and if you are like me think 'I want to try that' and then endeavour to have a go.  That's how most of us learn to do things, you follow the many how to videos and tutorials, you study things and try to re-create them by trial and error and learn lots of different techniques along the way.  

Thats what happened to me when I saw a very talented artist called Lucy Brydon on Pinterest. Her work is amazing, very clever and beautiful.  (you can find the tutorial link here http://lucybrydon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/gelli-print-giveaway-on-my-facebook-page.html?m=1  and her blogspot here http://lucybrydon.blogspot.co.uk/ 

I found this Gelli print of hers which looked very complicated and I wanted to try out the technique just to see if I could do it.  I watched her tutorial and studied her print to try and see which layers went first, and cut out my own templates to use for the trees.

This is my attempt before the drawing accents. I used my lace mat for the background and my hand cut stencils for the trees, and i used bubble wrap for the ground area around the base of the trees. They do seem a little too symetrical though but i quite like it even so.

 I then scanned the image and used that to practice the drawing accents as I didnt want to ruin the original before having practised as my drawing is not very good.

Ahh well on to the next.....

My First Gelli Plate adventures.

For my birthday last year my husband bought me a Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate.  It was completely unexpected and I looked at it and thought "what is that and what do I do with it".  After some research on the web and You Tube of course, I got out some paint and had a go.   OMG so additive I love it!!!

Their website is www.gelliarts.com and you can find many great tutorials on their YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/GelliArts

I have never tried mono printing before but it is amazing what results you can get with stencils and textures and plants etc.  

Here are some of my first attempts on the medium sized Gelli plate which is 8inches by 10 inches.

This one is using a lacy place mat.

For this one I used a cut piece of cardboard to create the wipe out lines. 

From there I went on to experiment with more leaves.  I rolled on some pale paint and pulled a print, spread some pink paint then put the ferns on used some bubble wrap for texture and pulled this print leaving the shape of the ferns.

From there I started cutting some of my own templates and used other purchased stencils for effect.

This is using an "Andy Skinner - French Elements" stencil by Deco Art. After pulling the print I went over the stencil and picked out the Paris word and Fleur de Lys in some gold paint to highlight.

I will post some further images later, thanks for taking a look.

Tracey