Playing with acrylic inks

What I like about acrylic inks as opposed to watercolour and distress inks is that they are permanent. While I absolutely adore watercolour textures, sometimes I find it frustrating that they can reactivate and therefore are not always suitable for mixed media applications. Watered down acrylic inks can produce similar results, but once they are dry, they will not go anywhere so you can freely use them as backgrounds.

For my latest project, which I'm not ready to share yet, I've been using acrylic inks to stain cardstock and other elements. Instead of my craft mat (or rather on top of it), I used a piece of textured white card as my work surface. At the end of the process, I got a lovely, grungy piece of paper that I was able to cut into note cards and tags for further use. Unfortunately, in my excitement, I forgot to take a photo of the palette paper before I cut it up, but I can show you the bits and pieces I ended up with. I would have never been able to produce such beautiful, random textures on purpose!

Here's a closer look at the textures: 

I only used three inks to achieve all this: Daler Rowney's Sepia and Prussian Blue and Golden's High Flow Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. 

These are only the by-products of a bigger project, which I will share in the coming days/weeks. Happy Bank Holiday to my UK readers and Happy Monday to my visitors from overseas! xx

Tim Holtz-style Tiny House

I've been eyeing the tiny houses on Pinterest made with the Tim Holtz Sizzix die for a while now and I really wanted to make one, but I couldn't get myself to shell out ££ for something that I would probably only use a handful of times. These tiny houses are actually quite simple to cut by hand, which is what I ended up doing using cardboard from recycled packaging. Can you tell the difference?

I used Kroma crackle medium for the walls and a piece of punchinella to texture the roof with heavy-weight gesso, as I ran out of texture paste. I find the Kroma frustratingly long to dry, but otherwise it produces nice crackles. I need to find a crackle medium that does the same job but dries much quicker. Let me know if you have any suggestions! I decorated all sides with die-cuts, a printed image and some words cut from a book. I did not look for any specific text - I just used whatever I stumbled upon! I believe in serendipity! Here are some more photos of my first tiny house:

 

This was a fun and easy project to make - I will definitely make more of these tiny houses when I get around to it - they look their best when they are in a group. Happy long weekend, everyone!

WOYWW #468: Happy 9th Anniversary!

The much anticipated 9th anniversary of WOYWW has finally arrived! Number 468 - isn't that unbelievable? That's 9 X 52 weeks of blog hopping hosted by Julia Dunnit on the Stamping Ground. I first joined in at #276 in September 2014 and have been a regular (on and off) ever since. Here's a look at my desk earlier this week:

I was working on some tags to send out with my ATCs for the anniversary swap and gelli printed some envelopes as well, while I was at it. I'll keep the final look under wraps until next week by which time they will have been received. It's been lots of fun working on a batch, which I don't normally do.

Now onto some of my experiments this week! I've recently bought some metal filigree embellishments from China and the idea struck me that I could turn them into stamps! I ran them through my Big Shot with a piece of foam, just like I did with the plastic packaging last week. It couldn't have been easier and I instantly made several new pattern stamps to use in my journals and other projects! You can use them with archival inks or acrylic paint as shown below.

Another thing I experimented with was string painting. I spotted a video that Shaz (Silverwolf) shared on Facebook and had a go. It's remarkably easy and I got good results straight away. I used acrylic ink in an A4 notebook. The best thing is that you get two pictures for the price of one - the mirror images of each other. The results are unpredictable and random, which is part of the appeal of this technique. 

I've been working on some other things as well, but they will be the subject of a separate blog post. For now, I'll just leave you with a couple of Oreo photos. He likes to be outside these days but luckily, never strays too far from the house.

I will be sending out my swaps tomorrow as they need some final touches. Hopefully they'll arrive by the end of the week as they're all UK addresses and I look forward to finding out who my PIF is later today. 

Happy 9th anniversary, everyone! Long live WOYWW and a big THANK YOU to Julia for making it all possible! 

WOYWW #467: Altered paint brush

Only one week to go 'till the 9th WOYWW anniversary and ATC swap! I'm definitely feeling the buzz - do you? I've got my ATCs finished and ready to go. See, I can get my act together if I put my mind to it!

I've been quite busy in my craft room as well. This desk shot was taken on Friday when I did some midnight arting - something I hadn't done in ages! I've since posted this project - if anyone wants to see how it turned out, you can find it here. I love it when Oreo just sits there and watches.

However, today I'm going to show you something else: an altered paint brush! When I saw this blog post by Finnabair, I immediately knew I had to try it and I had the perfect brush for it as well. You might recognize those wings from an earlier post. I used diamond glaze to stick down my elements, followed by black gesso and metallic paints. I was quite impressed by the results and how easily it all came together:

I will also give you a sneak peek at my ATCs - just to prove that I have done them. Perhaps a side view of the stack is not too much of a spoiler.  

And here's a photo of my underpaper to show the colours I used. I sometimes get more excited about the underpaper than the actual projects! (not to say that I'm not excited about the ATCs - I am!) 

Happy Wednesday!

I'm free to visit today so I'll be around shortly!

Journal page: Freedom

This is my first free weekend since January and I used my new-found freedom to make a journal page. I haven't made one in absolute ages and it felt so good to just let loose! I used my altered book and went berserk with collage and colours! This is the result of my abundant play:

Here's a list of some of the collage elements I used:

• palette paper (torn into pieces)
• printouts (left over from other projects and scrunched up for added texture)
• used postage stamps (distressed)
• used teabag
• die-cuts (butterflies and plants)
• washi tape (numbers)

I also included some lace pieces made with a silicone mould. These were just some experimental pieces lying on my desk that suited my project perfectly. One of them was made with gel medium, which I painted black and then accented with gold - the other is left-over black gesso with gold highlights. These moulds are marketed for cake decorating but they work just as well with acrylics to create amazing distressed textures for mixed media projects.

Another clever "hack" I discovered is a piece of plastic that I turned into a texture stamp. I was cooking dinner and was about to throw away the plastic chicken tray when the design on the bottom caught my eye. It looked like something Tim Holtz might have designed LOL! I cleaned it, cut it out and ran it through my Big Shot with a piece of foam and, voila, I got myself a fantastic new texture stamp!

Here's my page in more detail to show the individual elements:

I normally gesso my book pages before starting a new spread, but this time, I didn't. This resulted in some words from the underlying text being clearly visible. After taking these photos, I circled some of these words and thought about how they're relevant to my life. The words that jumped out at me were: gravity, gratitude and homelessness. Homelessness in particular made think about how I'm no longer Hungarian but I'll never be fully British either - culturally, I'm somewhere in-between the two and I'm not sure I will ever feel truly at home in either of my countries. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll have to be aware that I will always appear a bit alien to people in both cultures. 

Thank you for coming along on my art journey this Sunday!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! xx

WOYWW #466: Playing with paper clay

WOYWW is hurtling towards its 9th anniversary! I find it incredible that our lovely hostess, Julia, has managed to keep this crafty blog hop thriving for so many years - and hopefully for lots more to come! Here's my desk shot this week:

I've been playing with paper clay, aka air drying clay. I bought a few silicone moulds from China and I still have a block of clay from last year when I worked on this plaque.  I managed to keep it fresh by double wrapping the open packet in plastic bags with a wet paper towel inside to keep it moist. This seems to have worked really well and my clay is as fresh as it was when I first opened it.

On the left side of my desk, you can see the start of my ATCs for the anniversary swap - or rather you can't see them, as I've blurred them out to keep them secret until the big day. The only thing I can say about them is that they're going to be a different colour entirely - that's just the colour of the card stock I cut them from. It's very much unlike me to be so organised ahead of time, so I'm quite pleased with myself.

This is how my paper clay pieces turned out this morning: (I know the faces are a bit freaky - I've had that mould for a while, so I thought I might as well use it  - the other two are new acquisitions.)

That's all the craftiness for this week, I'm afraid. Ooh, I almost forgot to tell you that my stint at The Range has come to an end. I really enjoyed working in the craft section but when they moved me to another section a couple of weeks ago involving heavy lifting and stressful working conditions, I knew I wasn't going to last but I still gave it a good shot. Does it make sense to you to move the only person who actually knows the arts and craft products to another section? I'm so proud that I was able to give advice to numerous customers about what glues, paints or mediums to use, but apparently that knowledge is not appreciated by the management. Anyway, I could write an essay about this, but I won't bore you with details. It will be nice to have some free time until I get another job - who knows, one day I might even find my place? I'll keep looking.

I've been quite busy with my camera this week, so I can show you some arty photos in lieu of any arty projects. The old apple tree behind our house was in full bloom for a few days - I managed to capture it and play around with the photos digitally:

We've done quite a lot of gardening planting a new hedge boundary. I kept both the plants and hubby - who did the lion's share of the work - well watered (or in his case "tead")!

In case you didn't find the clay faces freaky enough, how about this close-up of a moth?

And, of course, there's no WOYWW post without Oreo! Here he is "al fresco" sitting on the fence - he can spend hours sitting there watching the birds.

Thank you for visiting!

I'm off to work for my last day shortly, but I'll visit everyone when I'm back.

xx