Tag! You're it!

I received my new Tim Holtz Alterations dies this week. The halloween dies are being released in a short burst and then, once sold out, won't reappear until after the turn of the year. I was worried that I was not going to be able to get hold of any but luckily one British company had them on pre-order. Yippee! So, when they arrived on Tuesday devoted the day to playing with them. I only ordered the Witching Hour and Raven/ Scaredy Cat dies (along with Reindeer Flight which I have to wait a little longer for) but guess who is regretting it now? I have already decided that I need the row of houses, the Once Upon a Time alphabet die and at least one of the Texture Fade embossing folders. It's just as well my birthday isn't too far away.

These are some of the tags I made this week. Lots of distress ink and alcohol ink - not to mention plenty of mess. But that's the fun of playing.

Challenge Gillian - August experiments

I'm very late posting my challenge efforts this month. It has been so busy that I kept forgetting. But while my challenge has been about producing a finished piece of work every week for a year (with the exception of the mid summer bust) this month has been about experimenting with new techniques I have read about. Each is a finished piece but to mind hideously ugly. But as they are experiments I'm not going to beat myself up about it - they are entitled to be ugly as a first time effort.

The first piece, of the robin, was to try and mix coloured pencil to produce realistic colours for birds. Birds often have multi tone feathers, e.g. those which look greenish or brownish. The British robin is one such bird so it was an idea subject.


The next piece is of a dog rose rosehip and was done using markers and coloured pencils. I read about a technique where you lay down a coating of solvent based marker (in my case, Promarkers) then shade over the top of it with the coloured pencil. While the colours are fantastic and vibrant the coloured pencil can lead to rubbing through the surface of the paper and spoiling the image. I think the paper I used might have something to do with it though. The article I read mentioned that it was done on smooth watercolour paper and I was using heavy drawing paper. There is also the problem of the markers bleeding outside the drawn outline. While you have the option to not draw right up to the outline with the marker it is still a bit hit and miss. Which is a pity as I LOVE the vibrancy of the technique. The brown outline was added at the end to disguise the bleeding of the edges.


The final piece is of a sprig of olive and began as a detailed pencil drawing. I wanted to see if I could add a watercolour wash to a detailed drawing and still have it look like I wanted it to. It didn't work too good so I added some black ink to the outline. Unfortunately it didn't improve things too much either. It seems that the watercolour just washes out the pencil even though the pencil was quite dark in places. However, I won't give up on that technique yet. I will try again with an animal drawing. The problem I have is that I love drawing in graphite and feel that it is a stronger point of mine that watercolour. Unfortunately, graphite drawings do not sell as well as watercolour so I am looking for a compromise.


However, I am one piece short. With all the buzz around the house finding time was not easy. Hopefully I will have the full four pieces to show next month.

Ooooo!

Polymer clay has been playing a big part in my creativity over the last week. Last weekend I made the beds shown below. The photo doesn't do them justice. They are sparkly and partially see through so you can see layers of clay through the translucent polymer clay. This weekend I made more beads, this time in the shape of birds, cakes and acorns. They still need an acrylic wash to pick out the details but I'm quite pleased with the shapes. Now I just have to decide what kind of project to use them on.

Birthday biz

There has been a flurry of big birthdays in my family recently with more to come so making birthday cards has been top of the agenda. My Gran was 91 at the end of August and my Uncle and Aunt will both be 70 this month. However, to top off the birthdays this year is my Grandfather's at the end of the year. He will be 100. It is hard for me to imagine what that would be like. He still lives by himself and is fiercely independent so it even more amazing. Anyway, I have added a couple of the birthdays cards here. The first uses K and Co papers but the photo doesn't show it off at its sparkly best. The papers are foiled and I added some glitter and a shiny blue peel off to match the foiling. The other card is made from a kit bought from QVC UK and designed by their resident craft expert, Dawn Bibby. It's a lovely kit, pale and soft but with foiling and lots of butterflies and dragonflies.

The other photos include some of my Halloween themed swaps - a ribbon fairy/witch swap and a recipe card swap. But, not content with paper crafts I have gone back to making some jewellery. The pictures here are some of the pieces I have uploaded to Etsy. I enjoy making jewellery very much but I don't wear jewellery very often. So I figured maybe I could make a little money selling it. We shall see if it works out that way. The final photos are of a couple of Halloween bookmarks made using Cosmo Cricket papers and some of my own zany skulls which were then laminated. One is for a swap buddy and the other is currently in my copy of The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. You can never have too many bookmarks.

Attention spammers!

My apologies to my regular readers but this is just a note to all the spammers who leave comments about how great my forum is - please don't waste your time filling out the comment box. I monitor all my comments and any that seem to be dodgy are not published. I do not have a forum. I have a blog and it is here so I can share art and crafty inspiration with other arty crafty people - not to act as an advert for some underhand website. Many thanks for you time and remember I WILL NOT PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT IF YOU ARE TRYING TO ADVERTISE.

UPDATE: It's hilarious. You have to laugh at the idiocy of these spammers. They are sending me comments for this very post. Needless to say they won't be published. What a terrible nuisance.

Spooktacular downloads

Yes, I know. I'm obsessing over Halloween. So many of my recent post have been about it but I guess it's too late to go back now. Soon October will be here. Yippee! But this week I created some new digital downloads for my Etsy store - spooky ones with plenty of creepy action going on. The first set consists of four small envelopes made using my own photos and some digital images I created. The second is a collection of three small envelopes with images by Harry Clarke. Both sets are ideal to print out and give little treats or spooky notes in. The larger set is ideal for ATCs too.

New gadget

I am currently sitting in my sister's house while she is away in Greece sunning herself. Her dogs needed a dog sitter so I obliged - who could say no to those gorgeous, brown doggie eyes. Unfortunately there has been very little work getting done. With all my stuff back at home I never have what I need when I need it. I did get some sneaky craft shopping done though - new distress ink, pearlised watercolours, craft sticks to decorate and collage sheets. Yeah!

Anyway, while surfing the web I came across a new widget for Etsy that can be used on blogs and web sites. It is called Pocket Shop, has been produced by Craft Cult and is endorsed by Etsy so I had to have a play with it. It is so simple to set up. Just type in your Etsy user name, choose a theme and, hey presto, you have a widget for your Etsy store. What makes it different from Etsy's own widget is that it also gives info on who hearts your store, previous sales and the feedback left by customers as well as what is for sale in your store. So with the click of a mouse button you have access to a store's basic information. Mine is on the right hand side of the blog here. It looks quite nice and I love that people can see recent feedback. Feedback is a great guide to the shopping experience with a seller. Now the question is whether it will generate any extra sales.

Challenge Gillian - July

Only three photos of my July art this time. I drew a little rabbit then gave it to someone without scanning it first. Doh! I did the same thing this week with a dotee doll for a swap. I was so busy trying to get the packet packed and sent out on time that I forgot to photograph it. Double doh! If this is what my mind is like at 37 I dread to think what I will be like at 67 or 87.

Anyway, the pictures are of a mouse called 'The Nibbler' (he sold quite quickly so I am pleased someone liked him so much as I wasn't sure about him), the elephant with no name (also sold) and a crested tit among the ivy.

Gothic art

I finally got round to finishing up my final piece from the Mixed Media Gothic Art workshop I mentioned last time. It is painted in acrylic and markers with collaged elements. The bats are a Sizzix die, the skull, crow and girl were all drawn by me and coloured with markers. I had great fun with this short course. This summer has been spent trying out new ideas and techniques for my art but most of it has been done by myself, without any guidance. But I have to admit that it is nice to have a course material to follow and videos to watch. The videos are a great help. You can actually see how lines are formed the artist and that makes a huge difference when you don't have confidence in your own mark making ability.

The mermaids are coming along too. At the moment though they have the shoulders of Olympic swimmers and the hands of boxers. I am going to have to work on giving them a little more grace and finesse. But I will post some pictures once they look a bit more like mermaids.

Skull skill

I signed up for an Art Trader online workshop a couple of weeks ago and have been having such fun. I started with the Gothic Art one and have been learning how to draw little goth girls and associated goth bits and pieces. The course covers how to draw basic features, bodies, how to put together a goth girl, clothing, themes... the list goes on but you can find out more by visiting this link.

Anyway, the goth scene often involves skulls so I thought I would put together a little tutorial on drawing zany skulls. Skulls are often seen as white, cream, grey or even black but my idea is to make skulls that are a little more, well, zany. I love colour and don't see why skulls should always been the same. So this idea just seems to be a little different. If you look at the photos you'll be able to follow along with the text.


In the first photo we have figure 1. - the starting point. Draw a letter 'C' lying on its face, i.e. lying with the open end of the letter facing downward. You can vary this shape to be long and thin or short and fat. In figure 2. half of a slightly rounded rectangle is added to the opening of the 'C', extending downward. That's not a very clear description but I hope you can see from the photo what you have to do. You can make this rectangle as long or as short as you like or even make it slightly more triangular like the two skulls beneath. Figure 3. shows the features that I added to mine. Eye sockets don't have to be round or equal in size. Just do whatever you fancy.

Now, this is just a basic skull (drawn with a rather shaky hand too - sorry) but what makes them zany is that you can either fill them with colour using acrylics, markers, coloured pencil, etc or draw them on patterned paper like scrapbook paper or paper you have painted yourself. I have included a photo of some that I have made using both techniques.

The last three photos are of skulls I made and used in some creations. The first is a collection of inchies, the second two are collages I did for the Gothic Art course.



By the way, I loved the Gothic Art course so much I signed up for the Whimsical Mermaid class this week ;o) Even if you don't want to take a class you might want to check out their FREE online magazine. It's brilliant, full of information on ATCs, journals, altered art and related techniques.