Altered book and Halloween Treat Bag

I have made a (singular) halloween treat bag today.  I think I might need to make some more or the neighbourhood kids will be fighting over this one, lol.

I found out how to make it whilst blog-hopping today on 'Scrap Time' - Creations by Christie.  There was a step-by-step video which you can follow here (it also has a halloween blog candy offer).

On mine I also added a hole and threaded through some co-ordinating ribbons.

I think my sizing was a little out, so when I do them again I won't make them quite so tall.

The other activity I did tonight was to paint some abstract colours in my 'New to You' altered book:

I just love the dry brush effect:

..and I also like the fact that you can still see the original writing in between the colours.

I may have a problem doing my journalling on all that colour though, so will need to think of a way of toning it down.

* * *

Regarding 'True Stories', Shimelle's writing course that I started today, I have had a bit of a think about the questions people ask me and the one question that I get asked the most is, 'Where do you come from?'  The answer to that is England but I am really only Half-English, as my father was yugoslavian (as was then).  I have the look of an Eastern European, with olive skin, which I guess is the reason people ask, but I have only ever lived in this country. 

Sorry for the lateness of this post, technical problems,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Free Style Painting

Thanks for the kind messages on my last post.  My son has still got a temperature which I am keeping an eye on and he's still not able to eat properly yet either, but he is glad to be home when he's not feeling well.  Not that he was naughty on purpose, of course.  He was sent home for apparently being 'disruptive' and kept people awake giggling and being noisy with other mischevious characters in the group.  They were also sent home.  In his ill state, my son is being very subdued and sorry to me, offering to help doing the housework (from his sick bed), something he never normally does! 

In my previous posts, I have spoken about how I would love to do work in the style of Dina Wakley, whose work I greatly admire.  In order to even make a start on doing work anything like the work she does I need to start freeing my artistic style, be prepared to make a mess, be able to freely paint and splatter.

This is what I have done tonight:

Detail:

I used some texture printing tools that I got from Hobbycraft a while ago:

I also did another:

I love the unpredictable look of paints running into each other but they don't always dry as you want them to.

This is of course, another idea for the Summer Holidays with the kids, freedom painting, painting just to make interesting marks, not worrying about making a realistic representation.  You can use them as they are or cut them up to make interesting backgrounds for other artistic purposes.

Thanks for reading,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Family Gift

You know when you are doing art or a present for someone else, you try and think of what they would appreciate?  In my case its how far can I take the distressing effect without them thinking 'that's a bit scruffy,' lol.  I don't know about how your relatives and friends are, but very few of mine are into art or craft so its difficult for me to give them anything thats not too 'straight', if you know what I mean (hopefully, or I'm just rambling!)  I did try, with this family picture I have made for one of my brothers:

When we met recently, I was sad to hear that he was suffering from depression and I thought I would like him to think his family was thinking of him as he tries to come through it.  So I made him this family picture set  (I have left the tags blank to add some personal journaling). 

The background is foamboard (nice and light for posting!) painted with gold paint first and then blue on the top.  I then added the photos and the buttons.  I was thinking of adding paper flowers but realised that my brother would not appreciate those at all! So buttons it was. Then I started inking the edges of the board and the tags.  I love adding gold to deep blue, its such a rich combination that works so well together.  I could have stopped there, but no, I just couldn't resist adding some more gold, the rub-on transfer scrolls, that ended up being much more shabby than they should have been, because they wouldn't come off where I wanted but other bits came off on parts where they shouldn't.  Maybe it was because I used a pencil rather than the proper tool?  

Seemed to work OK though.  I just covered the errors with more rub ons!

Hopefully the finished piece will be 'straight' enough for him!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

How do I.....?

On with the drawing theme from yesterday and here is another one of my pictures from a while ago:

This one was drawn and painted with gouache paints.

Today I did a little cartooning.  I decided to make a colouring in picture for my friend's daughter, Megan.  I had a go at colouring it in too, but I desperately need some Promarkers to do the job properly!:

   

These are just made-up characters.  I would love to know how people go about making and selling characters for greetings cards.  How do you put drawings on to pdfs?  Is that how people sell digital stamps?  Hopefully someone will come along and tell me all I need to know!... 

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

First Post - Acetate Cartoon

For my very first creative post on this blog, I went back to a cartoon artwork that I made way back in 1997! It was a fun, (original) piece made by drawing characters with a permanent marker onto acetate and then colouring them in by painting on the back of the acetate with gouache paint. A patterned paper or picture is placed (can be stuck) behind the acetate for the background. The idea for doing this I got from an old art book that was written by the very talented children's TV presenter, Tony Hart. When painting this one today, I decided to explore further the feeling of depth so I drew the characters on the front of the clipframe glass instead of onto acetate. The characters were painted on the back of the glass with a mixture of gouache and pva:Some of the smaller characters were painted onto another piece of acetate to create the impression of disappearing into the distance and I placed holographic patterned card into the clipframe for the background. Apologies for the quality of the photo of the finished picture (1st photo) but holographic paper does not photograph well.

This picture shows you how the characters were drawn: A successful day creating my first piece of artwork for 2010.

P.S. Just thought I'd add this picture of what my DH and children have been up to today!:
Weather was freeeeeezing today, so what did they do? They went out to fetch some fallen branches and twigs to make a fire in our garden firepit and then cooked the pasta for their tea in this great big cooking pot!  Me? I stayed in the cosy warm indoors!