Thursday 30 May 2013

Another little detail


I took this photograph of rusting metal during a walk along the beach in West Sussex.  I loved the texture and the colour.  I like how the seaweed is soft and encroaching on the hard metal.

I'm sharing this photo today as part of Caroyln's weekly meme, Messy Little Details.  You could join in too!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Tuesday 28 May 2013

mud luscious

On 12 Months in View the challenge was to use the e e cummings poem as inspiration for a journal page.

I used one of Anita's giveaway papers.

I put the jpeg into Publisher and then put the poem over the top and printed it out.  I stamped the Tim Holtz umbrella man and some balloons and collaged them on the top.  I coloured in the balloons with Glaze pens.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Monday 27 May 2013

Celebrating masking tape!

Today on 12 Months in View we are celebrating masking tape with an art challenge.

I watched the videos and then worked on this page.  I put the masking tape on in a grid format and cut some circles.

I scraped  4 colours of acrylic paint across the page - 2 shades of green and 2 shades of blue.

I poured out some metallic Distress paint but forgot that it is very thin so an enormous amount rushed out!  I spooned quited a bit of it back in.  I thought it was too thin for what I wanted to do so I mixed some gesso into it which of course made it much paler.  I stamped with it.  I pulled the masking tape off and it took some of the page with it.


I added some of the metallic direct from the bottle with a brush and managed to tip a large dollop of paint onto the page!  I put the masking tape circles I'd peeled off elswhere on the page and stamped the word Spring.

At this point the page was not doing a lot for me. I put a large plastic doily over it and sprayed liime green ink.  I moved the doily slightly and sprayed yellow ink.


I still didn't much like it so I added 3 different types of washi tape.

Then I added some writing.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Guest post

How exciting!

I have contributed to Marit's Big Road Trip.  Nip over there to find out what I wrote about Florida and find out which famous river this is!

Sunday 26 May 2013

Introducing Valerie's new class

I met Valerie through An Attitude of Gratitude where she astounded me with the beautiful journal she made from the prompts I had devised.

Here is a video of her journal:

And now you can learn how to do it!  And for only $15 or just over £10.

I've already signed up.  I hope you will join me.

Friday 24 May 2013

Yorkshire

On Tuesday I drove up to Yorkshire to meet up with my daughter-on-law's sister, Lisa, who is visiting the UK from Texas.  I had lunch with the girls (Lisa and various of her in-laws) at Cave Castle Hotel.

Then I drove on to Linton on Ouse where I was staying the night.  Before going to the N&N I visited Beningbrough Hall.  I wandered around the house and the gardens and took a few photos.



Then I went to The Manor House where I found that I was staying in this room!

On Wednesday morning I drove the 30 minutes to Art from the Heart to take a workshop with Dyan and to meet up with Carolyn.

We made a journal in a day using watercolour paper, canvas, tags, paints, inks and stamps.  I came home with this.
Front Cover

One of the inside double pages

Today I decided to finish the journal.  I needed to remove the edge from each sheet of paper where it had been torn from a pad but then decided that I didn't like the proportion of the book so cut off the edges all round to make it slightly smaller.  Then I distressed the edges of the pages.

I painted the leaves and added more doodles, stamped phrases and words, and generally added to the journal.  It is finished for now!  But the joy of this type of journal is that you can keep coming back and adding more.

I hope you enjoy my pages.









Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Thursday 23 May 2013

Little Details

I'm not sure how it is that time is speeding up, but it is time for another of Carolyn's Messy Little Details meme.

Everywhere we went last week in West Sussex there were tulips and they were all magnificent.  And on this day the sun was shining which made them better than ever.


Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Saturday 18 May 2013

Messy Little Details Meme

Here's this week's contribution to Carolyn's new meme: Messy Little Details.

We spent the last few days in West Sussex and between the showers we had some beautiful sunshine.  As a result I now have 2 or 3 photos to share on this meme and here's the first.


The sun was shining on the viewing screen on my camera so I wasn't totally sure of what I was going to get other than the duckling.  I am so pleased with the 'texture' of the water and the stones on the bottom of the lake.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Spring Tag

We're almost half way through May and coming to the end of our three months of Spring themed projects on 12 Months in View.  Today's guest post is from Nicola and is a Spring tag.

I decided I would use a #12 size tag but I'm in the midst of a big tidy up and I can't find where I put the packet I bought so I made one from a piece of manila card.

Nicola loves to sew and I'm 'not so much'!  So I drew my word and then drew dotted lines with a black pen to look like stitching.

I do have the Tattered Florals Die but decided I would use some of the flowers from my stash.   I used the Tattered Leaves Die and dictionary paper to make the leaves and then coloured them with Distress Ink.  I don't have a cloud stencil so I cut some clouds from a spare bit of paper and used them as a mask.


I inked the tag with Distress Ink and stuck the assembled flowers on with Glossy Accents.   I drew 'stitched' lines on the leaves.

The top of the tag looked a bit empty - partly because it didn't have a hole punched in it - so I stamped the little birds flying away.

I shall stick this into my journal.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Sunday 12 May 2013

Alcohol Inks Technique

This month's technique challenge on 12 Months in View is Blowing Alcohol Inks.

This can become very addictive.  I tried out various surfaces to do this on.  Some worked.  Some that I hoped would work but knew wouldn't, didn't!  Alcohol Inks work on glossy surfaces such as gloosy card (which I couldn't find, although I know I have some), acetate or glass.  However I wondered whether the surface on a manila tag was sufficiently non-porous.  It wasn't!

I tried putting the alcohol ink on my glass mat, blowing the ink and then putting the tag down on it but that didn't work too well either.

I used inks on acetate.

The gold ink didn't really work too well so I put some Blending Solution on it.  Plus some red.

Then I tried on the cellophane that came round a bouquet of flowers I was given.  It already had a pattern on it.

I was wondering whether the pattern would show through.

I tried blowing the inks on top of a page I had made with acrylic paint and the Gelli plate.  It sort of worked!

Then I went back to the acetate.

And put Blending Solution on.

Different colours on acetate.

I turned one piece of the acetate over and stamped butterflies with Archival Ink and then cut them out.

I cut up all my samples and stuck them into my journal using Glossy Accents.


I hope you've enjoyed looking at my experiments.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Friday 10 May 2013

Ssshhh! I've got a secret.

Well 21 of them actually.  At the beginning of the year I signed up for 21 Secrets - an online art journalling workshop which has 21 classes with 21 different teachers.

Circumstances have meant that although I had briefly looked at what was available I hadn't actually done any of the classes.  So I determined that today I would do one of them.  I chose 'Doodling Our Way' with Cathy Bluteau.

I don't doodle very much and then you know from reading my blog I really don't follow instructions well.  Cathy's idea was to start by collaging flowers.  So what did I do?

That's right!  Not flowers.

Butterflies!

Here is the page in progress.  I used some turquoise washi tape.

I used stencils to draw the shapes but I did draw the leaves freehand.  I have a limited range of Brushables that I used to colour this. 

I had some Kaiser rubons which have deteriorated - as in parts of the words are on the backing sheet - but thought they would look fine on this.

I think there's too much solid colour but at least I've done a class!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice