LifeBook Week08: Treasure Seeking

Week 08 of LifeBook comes with a lesson by Mati McDonough. The lesson features an intuitive painting process on a canvas, which I didn't have the confidence to attempt. Instead, I created a journal page for my LifeBook and used the paint over collage technique for my background. I did borrow the symbol of the boat in the ocean from the lesson, which ties in perfectly with my word for this year: progress.

I used Tim Holtz tissue paper to cover my entire background. This tissue paper is wonderful to work with; it is not at all fragile, yet quite translucent. Next, I added some colour with my newly acquired Golden fluid acrylics in teal and phtalo turquoise and distressed the look with white acrylic brayering.

Next I added my elements and painted a large sun with Golden's Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold on a gessoed base layer. I only needed a few drops of paint to get amazing colour depth! You can tell this paint is in a different league to my regular craft acrylics.

The boat shape was cut from a toilet paper roll - only because it was handy and I couldn't be bothered to look for cardstock! I used DIY polyfiller to create the texture, painted it with indigo blue acrylics and used copper gilding wax to make it look metallic. This project called for gold leaf, which I do not have, so I substituted it with the gilding wax, which I also used to outline the sails and the make a thin border all around the page.

I happened to find a metal charm of a ship wheel, which was just the right size for my boat. This symbolizes the steering of my boat in the right direction, so I can make progress. My quote ties in with this sentiment. The sea might be choppy, but I can steer my boat and set my sails to take me where I want to go!

As a finishing touch, I added some pieces of washi tape and stamping and shaded around the elements. This page is very meaningful to me and will be a valuable addition to my LifeBook. I might recreate something similar on a canvas later, perhaps trying the intuitive painting technique when I feel a bit more confident about it.

WOYWW #298: Recap and peek behind the scenes

Hello deskers! We are just two weeks away from that all important 300th WOYWW! How exciting is that? Are you getting geared up? Make sure you don't miss it!

I'm in-between projects at the moment, so I don't have anything in progress to share. I'll start working on my next LifeBook project soon, probably later today. For now, I'd just like to share some of the projects I completed this past week.

Last week's projects and some new Golden Fluid Acrylics

The umbrella page is my interpretation of this week's DLP prompt: Undercover. If you would like to take a closer look, you can find this post here.

The Gratitude page is the representation of my HeArt Community. I made it on a mixed-media background with torn paper pieces. If you would like to read more about it, please see my blog post.

The colourful square picture was made for a challenge for the Kraafters Kommunity. You can find out more about it here.

And, yes, I've fallen off the bandwagon and invested in some Golden Fluid acrylics. They are amazing! I will only use them for special projects and not waste them on Gelli printing. The Gelli plate gobbles up paint like there's no tomorrow!

By the way, I was going to show you my Gelli printing station in the conservatory (which also doubles up as our general dumping area for toys, cardboard boxes, recycling, etc). I use my son's old toddler table for this purpose and I have my Gelli plate permanently set up on it. I used to religiously clean it and put it away, but I got tired of doing it after a while. Now I can Gelli print any time it tickles my fancy!

My Gelli printing station

I use these cheap acrylics I picked up at Hobby Craft for Gelli printing back in the summer for just £2 each. They were half price! - I haven't seen them at that price ever since. I'm so glad I stocked up when I had a chance! I keep my acrylics in this plastic drawer unit, which is very handy!

My stash of acrylics for Gelli printing

Thanks for visiting today peeps! I'll visit everyone who leaves a comment and will try to visit as many others as I can! Happy WOYWW! xx

DLP Week07: Undercover

Today I'm sharing a very simple page I did for week 07 of the Documented Life Project. The challenge was to cover up some artwork we liked. The journal prompt for this week was 'going undercover'.

My page features a gelli print, that I really liked. I'm always at two minds whether I should cut these up for page elements or use them as background or collage pieces or just keep them intact to enjoy as a piece of art in itself.

I covered my entire page with the gelli print and sketched an umbrella and a letter U with a pencil. Then I covered up the entire page with dark blue (Liquitex Basics Indigo) acrylics, leaving only my shapes untouched. I removed some of the paint with a wet paper towel to achieve some variation in the texture. I like how the underlying bright green has changed the tone of the dark blue. I used black and white pens to sketch an outline around my shapes.

Finally, I added my title. white acrylic drippage and splatters. A very simple and very quick process, which is what I need my DLP projects to be at the moment. Thank you for visiting my blog today!

Kraft Shaak February Challenge: Colouring

This month's challenge in the Kraaft Shaak is to create a project involving colouring. Oooo, who doesn't like colouring, right? There's something about colouring that takes me right back to my childhood and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

I've created this picture with simple shapes arranged as a 3X3 grid. My first step was to create a stripy border with some black and white washi tape on a piece of watercolor card about 8 X 8 inches in size. Then I marked my grid with a pencil and drew a rough sketch of the shapes. I coloured my shapes and my background with Inktense blocks and watercolour paints. At this point, the picture didn't look much good, but once I added the black and white outlines and doodles,  it came alive! I used Uniball Signo gel pens for the outlining.

This project is so simple - anyone can do it! Why don't you have a go creating something similar and post it to the Kraafter's Kommunity marked #KSCFEB15 for a chance to win this month's prize, a canvas bag ready for you to alter with your own colourful designs!

LifeBook Week07: My heArt community

Week 07 of LifeBook included two bonus projects. The first one was the Magic Cottage, which I shared earlier and this second one is 'My heArt Community' demonstrated by Jill Berry.  I deviated from the lesson by creating a journal page instead of the 3D figures in Jill's lesson, but I used the same sentiment and the same paper tearing/piecing technique as the original lesson.

The simple figures represent my sharing communities on the Internet: the two G+ communities I frequently visit (the Kraafters Kommunity and Mixed Media Sharing Community), the Facebook sharing groups I belong to and a blog hopping community called WOYWW. These four communities pretty much keep me occupied full time and I'm so grateful for all the love, inspiration and sharing that takes place in these art circles. I love you guys (and by that I mean girls)!

I started my page with a collage of book papers, napkins and pieces of washi tape. I added some Neocolor II water-soluble crayons followed by some white acrylic paint applied with a brayer. I then added some of the colour back using the same three crayons: cobalt blue, malachite green and ocre. The photos below show the development of my background:

Initial collage

Neocolor II crayons added and activated with water

White acrylic paint added with a brayer

More Neocolor II's added 

Next, I stuck down my elements: torn paper pieces to make the four figures and some triangles for bunting. I roughly outlined these with a black marker. I used texture paste for the word 'gratitude' from a stencil gifted to me by one of my blogging friends I met in the aforementioned communities. (Thanks Shel, I love it!) Similarly, I used another stencil with the tiny dots to make a border. Finally, I added some words with small alphabet stamps and shaded my elements with a black water-soluble pencil.

You can see my final page below, including some close-up photos. It's a simple little page, but came straight from my heArt!

WOYWW #297: Week in review and yet another altered tin

Hello again WOYWW deskers! It's Wednesday yet again! Yay! Actually, I'm writing this on Tuesday night, otherwise I wouldn't stand a chance of posting this on Wednesday morning. If you've never heard of the What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday phenomenon, just mosey over to the Stamping Ground to find out all about it.

I have two shots of my desk again this week. One staged with all of last week's artwork neatly laid out and another one I took in the middle of a project, showing the naked truth in all its glory. I'll show you the messy one first to get it out of the way. This was taken on Monday night while I was working on a LifeBook assignment.

Messy desk on Monday night

And here it is again a few hours later on Tuesday morning! 

I'll give you links to each of these completed projects on my desk, in case you want to take a closer look:

1. Word of Inspiration Wednesday journal page
2. Documented Life Project journal page
3. LifeBook Week06
4. LifeBook Week07
5. I made this tin with the same technique as my altered journal cover, using texture paste, scrap die-cut shapes, inks and gilding wax. I'll show you some additional photos below.

First layer of ink - two more to follow

I had a green thumb for a couple of days - eeks! People
must have thought I was turning into an ogre!

Final look with the gilding wax added

Shown from a different angle

I used a stencil with texture paste for the dragonfly

Same stencil with a butterfly design

Die-cut shape - a left over piece from cutting stencils on the Cameo

Another piece of scrap die-cut - textured cardstock works best!

Thank you for visiting my blog! I won't be able to return any visits until later today (I have a job interview to attend! wish me luck!) but I promise I'll visit everyone who leaves a message. Take care and keep crafting!