Swapsies

Do you get together with friends and swap papers?  Talking to my friend Mell online, she was saying she didn't have anyone close to get together with, she suggested we do a Gelli paper swap.  We did a little pile of papers each and posted them, I received mine today and love, love, love all of them.

They were all wrapped up in this lovely file ..

Full of yummy papers ...

This is the full pile I received ...

and Charlie inspecting all of them!

I was inspired! I had to dash off to my craft house and use them!  Cutting parts and using some to stamp onto, these are the finished pages in my mini Moleskine journal ....

Stamped birdie onto the Gelli Paper

Stamped Flower on Gelli Paper

Circles cut from the Gelli Paper

Collage Gelli Papers and stamped bird

Thanks Mell for all your lovely papers, hope you like the one's I have posted to you.

Why not get together with friends and get some happy post!

It's Dina time again!

One of the best things about having a Birthday in March is that I get to go on Dina's classes at Art from the Heart!  I had three classes for my Birthday, Art Journal Folio, Random by Design and Awesome Acrylics.

Day one started off with a blank Tim Holtz Idealogy folio, after adding lots of paint and stencils with a bit of Dina magic you end up with a fab folio filled with pages of journalling and images, all in a days work!

Day two was all about random, I arrived at the class with my brand spanking new Dylusions journal in hand, what's the first thing Dina says "rip four pages out of your journal"!!  After some muttering that I had a new journal I ripped them out and covered them in gesso ready for the random by design day.

Day three was all about techniques, reverse stenciling and masking, image transfer, using Vaseline as a resist, dripping paint, glazing plus others, I found this day very useful, especially for when you are stuck for something to do, just refer back to these techniques to jump start creativity.

This weekend has inspired me to try and create more in my journal and use different techniques. Here are a few of my pages completed since the weekend.  Some of the pages below are using the new Dylusions paints.

Thanks Dina for another fun and inspirational weekend.

Adventures in Dina Land

A couple of months ago Art from the Heart put an announcement on Facebook at they were having a surprise visit by Dina Wakley, 3 days of classes at the end of October.  I did classes with her back in March so I knew they would be amazing.  I didn't have to think about it for long and as soon as they went on line I signed up for two of them, Playful Printmaking and Make Your Mark.

As we didn't have loads of holiday left we drove up after work on the Thursday and stayed in a Premier Inn in Wakefield.  Mark had planned out some things in Leeds he wanted to see, he went off on the train from Wakefield and I carried on up the M1.  I love going back up to Yorkshire, going into Harrogate feels like going home!   

Playful Printmaking was the first class, we started by making prints from collaged tags, one was covered in molding paste, one with corrugated card and one with thick watercolour paper, other things we used were funky foam, acetate sheets anything we could find.  We used these to tear up or cut shapes from to use in our art journal pages.

Art journal pages using the deli paper and card from the print making.

Using the Collage Tag on a journal page

We stayed in a lovely little Bed and Breakfast in Harrogate for the Friday and found a fab Chinese Restaurant.

After a hearty breakfast the second day was all about Mark Making.  Dina got us to soak a length of string in black paint, you can tell its going to be a messy day!  What do you do with the wet string, throw it at pieces of card of course, being careful not to cover the person in front of you!  After we finished making marks with the string, bottle tops and many other things we had a session of what can you see in the marks, just like looking at the clouds to see pictures in them.

Everyone could see something, to make it come alive we added for a few extra lines and painted out the marks we didn't need.  There were some amazing paintings made from just from throwing string!

These were my string paintings.

Mark had gone to Barnsley to watch Bristol City, he wasn't back until 6.30 so I had some time to kill in Harrogate.  I had a wonder around the shops, made a few purchases in The Works and the little art shop.  Waiting at Harrogate train station who should walk towards me but the lovely Kate Crane, what a lovely surprise, and I had someone to talk to for a while.

Tonight's accommodation was a pub near Ripon Racecourse, The Black a Moor Inn, lovely room and a great Lasagna! 

One more page to finish off.

Can't wait for next years classes!

October Calendar

Well I am well ahead of myself this month, October page is all finished.  I loved doing this one, full of orange and blacks, with pumpkins and spooky cats, looking forward to Halloween now!

Happy October!

Finnabair Workshops

Last weekend I took two great classes organised by Tracey Hudson with the very talented Anna Dabrowska aka Finnabair at Ansty Hall in Coventry.

The journey to the hotel seemed to take forever, lots of roadworks and traffic, the sat nav arrival time seemed to be going up before my eyes!  Eventually I reached the hotel to meet up with Alexa, check in and get some dinner.

The Saturday started early with breakfast then met up with the other ladies to start the first class at 9.30 am.  Each class was 4 hours, she worked us hard but somehow managed to kept everyone at the same point.  The morning class was a layout using lots of metal embellishments, inks and paints.

We had a break for lunch which was baked potatoes, soups and salads, once we were all fed and watered we headed back for the second 4 hour class.

In the afternoon class we made a shadow box from a canvas, used fabrics and lace for the background, then covered this with inks, added the embellishments and the chipboard rocking horse.

Another stop now for dinner with all the ladies staying over night.  We had another canvas we could work on after dinner with the techniques we had learnt through the day.

Some photos of my finished projects: -

My goodie bad and kit for the first class

Layout from first class

Me with my layout

Shadow Box with chipboard horse

Evenings free project

Me, Alexa and Finn

Alexa outside Ansty Hall

Had a great time on both of these classes, look forward to Finn coming back again!