Fabulously Finnabair !!!

Hello my friends.....

I have had the most fabulous weekend at Art from the Heart taking two workshops with the amazingly talented Finnabair!!!

Ania is an amazing teacher and a super cool lady who is obviously very passionate about what she does. 

I attended two workshops on Saturday and created two lovely canvases.....

I don't usually create with lots of dimension but Ania explains everything so clearly it makes it easy to achieve spectacular results.....

Haha beavering away adding all the elements for the texture before painting !!

 

The second workshop was my favourite, a three dimensional canvas called 'The Artifact'

We covered lots of techniques and I got to try lots of products that I hadn't used before (the graphite sand was amazing)

Work in progress!!!!

Ta dah ...... All finished. Everyone did a fab job. 

If you've never been to one of Finn's classes and get the chance I would highly recommend them. 

A fabulous day with a fabulous teacher and a fabulous bunch of ladies in the class......it doesn't get better than that !!!

Decorated file folders !!

Hello all you lovely people out there, Tracy here with today's mixed media Wednesday for The Mixed Media Mojo design team.....

I was recently involved in a 'Happy Mail' swap with some ladies in the USA and we had to send a decorated envelope with some goodies inside for the recipients. I didn't have any envelopes big enough for the items I wanted to send so decided to decorate some file folders and use those as my envelopes...

I started by gessoing the folders on all sides, once dry I started adding random colours of acrylic paint covering all of the outsides of the folders. 

I continued by adding some stamping and stencilling and painted in some circles to add interest. I then painted in a white panel on the front for my address label....

I used a white gel pen to add some finer details like highlighting the stars and scribbling some words into the background. 

I finished off by using a photocopy of  a previous red haired girl from one of my journals cutting her out and gluing her down on the front of my file folder. I finished off by going over the whole thing with matt medium to seal everything and make it more hard wearing for the long journey across the pond. 

This was such a fun project to do and I can let you know now that the recipients were over the moon with their decorated file folders and even better they can recycle them into a storage solution for their 'most important' papers of course. 

Thanks for dropping by today. I hope I have inspired you to give this great project a try

Bright and painty hugs

Tracy

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Painted Canvas Shoes

Hi lovelies !!

Tracy here with today's post for the 'A Sprinkle of Imagination' Design Team !!

So I've had a few days off from the day job this week to have a bit of a spring clean and whilst going through the wardrobe found an ugly pair of black pumps that had hardly been worn (because they were ugly, I don't like ugly things....see where I'm going with this !!). Well I was just about to toss them away and thought I might be able to do something with them........

Ta da !!!........

Not looking so ugly now ay !!

I started by covering all of the canvas parts with a couple of thin layers of gesso allowing the layers to soak into the canvas and build up slowly....

Once completely dry I added my base colours using Dina Wakley's fab acrylic paints in Lime (used for the tongue see pictures of completed shoe), Turquoise and Magenta, again applying them in thin layers to build up the colours, I used Dina's fabulous brushes for this job. The bristles are stiff enough to get into to all the fabric of the canvas and give a good coverage .....

Once I was happy with my colours I started to sketch my design, first in pencil and then went over in a black waterproof marker, I decided for my first attempt not to try anything too complicated and just go with simple shapes and patterns....

When I was happy with my design I took a small brush and black and white Dina acrylics and began painting in the detail tidying up after with the black waterproof marker.....

I used a splatter stamp and some black archival ink to stamp onto the pink parts surrounding the lace holes and down the back of the shoe and then used a white fine line paint pen to add my finer details, sealed with 3 thin coats of modge podge and allowed to dry thoroughly, finally I raided my ribbon box and found the perfect piece to use as my laces

I'm sure you'll agree that they certainly don't look ugly anymore !!!!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you are inspired to give it a go. Have a fabulous week

Tracy

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Doodles with Dylusions !!!!

Morning my lovelies, this is my latest post for the 'A Sprinkle of Imagination' design team..... 

WOW !!!!!

Have you seen the new dylusions acrylic paints yet ???

Fabulous colours, very versatile and work perfectly in conjunction with the existing sprays !!!

Just got my set and couldn't resist having a play to see what they could do.....

These colours are just amazing !!!

For these pages all I needed was the fabulous dylusions paints along with a black, white and gold gel pen. 

I painted the colours on randomly in my large dylusions journal and allowed to dry completely. Once dry I started to add doodled flowers with a black gel pen, continuing with white highlights and adding some more of the paints in some of the flowers to make them pop. Easy peasy and you don't need lots of supplies to give it a go !!!

I love these new paints, the colours are vibrant and fresh and the consistency is perfect for drawing and sketching over. I think I'm going to have a lot more fun experimenting with these !!

Have a fabulous day my arty friends

Tracy

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Feeling Distressed !!!

Morning my lovelies, Tracy here with a new post for the 'A Sprinkle of Imagination' design team....

Most of the art I do nowadays involves acrylic paints but having recently been on holiday and not being able to take my beloved paints with me I was forced to step out of my 'comfort zone' and experiment with other mediums. I loved the challenge of using things I hadn't used before and whilst the first couple of pieces weren't the best they did give me the opportunity to play and get a feel for the materials.....

Anyway this got me to thinking about when I started out with mixed media art and one of my favourite mediums was distress inks (of course I brought as many colours as I could afford) and how I hadn't taken them out and played for a long long time !!!!

So I decided to get them out and dust them off and see if I enjoyed playing with them as much as I remembered.....

I cut 3 ATC cards and a 7x5 postcard from a piece of 300gsm watercolour paper and started to add colours from the distress ink pads with a sponge distress tool. I used pickled raspberry, peacock feathers and mustard seed as my starting place.

For the postcard.....

I then used a Dylusions flower stencil and a Dina Wakley alphabet stencil to add interest to the background again using the distress pads and an inking tool. I used a small script stamp and stamped with black archival ink. 

I stamped one of the Dina Wakley's 'Face in the crowd' girl stamps directly onto the background using black archival ink and then coloured directly over the top using crayons blending with my fingers. 

I added some white acrylic dots, a sentiment stamp and then finished it off with some machine stitching. 

For the ATC's.......

I started with the same background process, layering the distress ink pads and adding some stamping. I then cut out hearts from some vintage French magazine pages and added to the cards

I stamped onto a scrap of card with the fabulous dylusions quotes stamps and coloured with watercolour crayons. Cut them out and added to the cards. To finish off I machine stitched around the edges and also around the hearts.

I had so much fun playing with my distress pads. The colours are amazing and so easy to work with...... I will definately be using these again very very soon !!!

I hope you are inspired to give distress pads a try and have as much fun as I did this week

Tracy

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Documented life - Watercolours!!!

Well what a stroke of luck that this weeks Documented life prompt was to use watercolours !!!!

As I'm on holiday that was pretty much all I brought with me and have been experimenting and playing with them all week, it just goes to show that you don't need lots of supplies to make art, I felt like I was gonna have a breakdown not having my beloved acrylics to play with but with practice and perseverance I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of them and creating art I'm pretty pleased with.....

I used my tube of black acrylic that I brought with me to do the outlines, making sure they were completely random and not thinking about it too much, I then too a wet paintbrush and went over the lines to create a grungy grey look in places.

Once this was completely dry I used my neocolour watersoluble crayons as my watercolour medium and started to colour allowing some of the paint to be stronger causing shadows, I took a creative impression Rex stamp and stamped with black archival ink inside some of the circles and did some random stamping around the page using my paperartsy ink splatter stamp and my artistic stamper bubble wrap stamp. I added a few dabs I'd white acrylic with my fingers to create dots...

I then cut out some shapes from a scrapbook pad I had with me in complimentary colours and stuck these down, outlining them with the stabilo black pencil and activating with a water brush to blend them into the rest of the page.....

To finish of i scribbled some outlines with my ranger fudeball black pen and used my pilot parallel pen for the zebra stripes. 

I'm really pleased with the final result and reaffirms to me that it's all about the practice and perseverance with a medium 'if at first you don't succeed ' springs to mind. 

Here are a couple of practice pieces using the same technique......

Thank you for stopping by and visiting me. You can also follow me on facebook at www.facebook.com/myjournallingjourney 

I hope to see you there

Have a great day

Bright and painty hugs

Tracy

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Dina's Art Journal Courage !!

I recently purchased Dina Wakley's new book Art Journal Courage and have been saving it to take on my holidays (the temptation to have a sneak peak has been huge but I have resisted....yay me for self control lol !!!!)

Anyway........the book is full of ideas to get you art journalling and dispelling all those common myths....

I can't paint, I can't draw, I can't write, I don't like my handwriting etc !!!

With fabulous step by step guides it really does open up endless possibilities.

So I decided to take the bull by the horns and get to work, however being on my holidays and having only brought 3 tubes of acrylic paints with me I had to start improvising right from the start and get out my watercolours ( using my art journal courage right ??)

Used my only 3 tubes of acrylics for the background on this one and then used the stabilo 'magic' pencil to sketch and shade the face, not my usual bright colour pallet but I love the dark slightly moody feel to the finished page !!!

Another one of Dina's lessons again I substituted the acrylics for watercolours, I really like how this one turned out and I used my neocolours to emphasise the colours...

Great lessons and the fact that I tackled the projects without the 'correct' materials proves Dina's point ......

Once you grab hold of that 'Art Journal Courage' nothing is impossible

Go and grab your courage and create happy art !!!!!

Bright and painty hugs

Tracy

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