LB2015 : Treasure Seeking

This Life Book project was created by Mati Rose McDonough and involved incorporating gold or silver leaf into your project. My last couple of projects (Life Book and Documented Life) involved moments and layers where I didn't know which direction to take, or things took a bad turn, and although I ended up loving them in the end, this piece came together quickly and easily which made it an especially joyful experience. Most of my Life Book pieces are being worked on watercolour paper. Because that is quite expensive, I use alternatives when the watercolour surface isn't used. This time I used a piece of cardboard packaging. Mati Rose's sample was a simple sail boat and after some consideration of another subject, I decided I would keep it simple too. 
First layer was acrylic paints. There are two dark blues in the background - the first added with a credit card scraping, and the other to fill in gaps with a paintbrush. Then I added some pattern for the sea using bubble wrap and that lovely swirly roller. I had decided I would  make a night sky so I could add more metallic ideas - here I've painted in a simple moon shape as well.

I wanted some movement in the sky so sprayed and dripped some starburst spray - this is delphinium turquoise. They have a divine shimmer. 

When I turned it the right way I had a lovely wispy cloud-like pattern. 

 Then I needed stars and glitter to create a night sky.

I have had some metallic flakes for quite a few years in my cupboard. Put them in a plastic jar to store but never really used them because I wasn't sure how.

The instructions say to use a special metal adhesive, but I didn't have that and didn't want to stop creating to buy something new! So I just used a heavy gloss medium and applied gold flakes to the moon (as seen in the photo above), and the various colours for the boat.

Not sure if it would have been more even/flatter effect if I'd used the correct adhesive but I like the effect I got. I am really happy that I purchased the rainbow flakes. The purple is glitter that I sprinkled to fill in the gaps. For the rest of the boat I used fabric for the sails and machine stitch to put the boat together.

I used gold metallic thread in the top and plain black cotton in the bobbin. I increased my stitch length and stitched a bit slower than normal and had no problem stitching through the thicker cardboard. This was a fun lesson and something I wouldn't have done without this class :-)

You can see all my posts about Life Book HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my Life Book projects HERE. 

Indian Wall-hanging

Last week my focus was on stitch and I spent my arting time adding to my Indian Wall-Hanging. My base was created in the online Mixed Media Melange workshop with Julie Prichard & Chris Cozen - highly recommended.

One of my friends mentioned it looked like a base for a Beryl Taylor-inspired piece...so that's where I've gone with it, but in bright indian colours and themes. I shared some of the initial play here. After a week it now looks like this (click on the picture to see it larger)

Love that I have been able to include lots of pieces from previous playdays.

Metal here

Fabric paper here

Tyvek beads here

Wax here

Enjoying the mix of stitches and materials

Cardboard and seed beads on Sari Ribbon on Felt

The pieces below were made with black sculpey - oven bake clay

In a playday inspired by Laurie Mika and this book

Click here for a peek inside via amazon

Looking forward to gathering more ideas and adding to this again next week.

Ornament play day

Had to have a play day with some lovely friends to finish the year.
We made sweet little ornaments with 2"x2" glass slides

The edges are taped, not soldered. This YouTube tutorial is similar to what we did but we used silver scotch tape and copper slug tape for the edges.

I only made 5 but they are double-sided - below are the other sides (click on photos to see larger, altho the 2nd is a little blurry)

They are then wrapped with wire and have small attachments for hanging on the tree. But I am tempted to make some into necklaces.
More Christmassy goodness : Joanne Sharpe has a FREE artsy holiday class Five Golden Letterings - open now.

Metal Play day

I have been wanting to do something more with this

to develop it into a wall-hanging in Beryl Taylor's style and to make an indian-themed piece. These ideas are finally coming together....you might remember I started playing with some indian themed pieces here.
Last week some friends & I had a play day with metal so I will be able to add some more elements to the above.

We tried embossing copper shim, Silver Scotch Tape, coke cans and copper slug tape all through a cuttlebug. Pretty designs.

Then we coloured them

The above examples are mainly using alcohol inks
In this close-up shot the 2 narrow strips are the slug tape, the wider is the silver scotch tape, and the heart was cut from the metal shim.

Pleasing colouring on all of them. And the coke can worked just fine too

We also tried copic markers

and nail polish - need to get myself some more colours

Looking forward to seeing what happens to these lovely indian themed cut-outs when I colour them

But this, I think, needs nothing else - alcohol inks on embossed copper shim

I will just be adding some stitching around the edge of this to attach it to an appropriate background. I tried punching and stitching a piece of the coloured metal to sari thread and felt as an example of what I mean :

One other technique that was fun and a variation was to add a layer of gesso for a distressed look. This is a piece of alcohol-inked silver scotch tape

and here it is after I covered it with a layer of gesso and rubbed it off again with a paper towel.

Really keen to get stuck into developing the piece now - this was my first play with laying things on the background a couple of months ago.

So many more cool ideas to add now :-)

If you want some more inspiration, Judy Coates Perez has some cool posts about embossing and playing with metal. Also if you're on Facebook, check out photos from a Beryl Taylor Magic Metal workshop held at Valley Ridge Art Studio.