Tree

Good morning to you.

For today I have an encaustic picture for you. The background was done with the iron on white card. The tree was drawn freehand with the stylus. I hope you like it.

Fuschia

Hi. Long time, no blog. My apologies but my feet have not touched the ground of late.

I hope you like this One Stroke acrylic painting of a spray of Fushia flowers and leaves. It was painted on a hand marbled piece of card. The painting is A5 in size in an A4 mount.

3 Variations on a Theme

Good morning. I know I haven't been blogging much of late but I have been so busy arranging some encaustic art workshops. However, I did have a bit of good fortune this week which I thought I should share with you. Via the shop where I sell some of my work I had a commission for an A4 painting which had to be black with white pearlescent wax and a few touches of red to match the decor of the purchaser. Well to give her a choice, I did three paintings, all variations on the theme. I only had one black mount so I met her yesterday to see which one she wanted so that I could add the mount for her. Amazingly, she like them so much she purchased all three. 

Hello,

I am sorry that I haven't posted much of late but I have been tearing around trying to organise Encaustic Art workshops and things. However, I thought I would take a bit of time out to post this picture of an Encaustic Art abstract that I created last weekend. I love the way the colours have turned out. They have not got "muddy". It is one of my larger pieces being about 10 inches by 12 inches and is painted on canvas board. This is a very different surface to paint on compared with the usual card as it does not bend and so makes it far more difficult to control the application of the wax.

Folksy Shop

Good evening.

This is just a quick note to say that I have opened a shop at Folksy which is a web site specialising in handmade items. If you would like to take a look you can either click here or else click on the encaustic art picture on the right hand bar.

I hope you like what you see. At the moment there are just some of my encaustic art and acrylic paintings for sale but I will be adding other things as time goes on.

More New Encaustic Work

Here are some more of my new works on canvas. This is opening up whole new horizons. Follow this link to my main blog to find out why I am so excited about it. Click here

Trio of Flower Paintings

Hello.

I have just realised how long it is since I made an entry on this blog. I just don't know where the time is going.

Here we have a trio of small canvases. They are
about 6 inches by 4 inches and painted using the Donna Dewberry One Stroke technique. These were painted without the use of stamps as guides. I have to admit that I have really got into this painting lark and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I hope you like the results.

Shaped Easel Card

Good morning. Here is a card for the Sentimental Sundays #68 - Shaped Cards challenge.

The car blank was made from green card using a grand Nestability die. Various layers, cut using the same series of scalloped dies were cut from the yellow card and also a designer paper for the top mat. The main image is hand painted with acrylic paint using the One Stoke Method on mount board which was first painted yellow and green paint and blended well.

The sentiment, by Chocolate Baroque, was stamped in Green Stazon onto canvas which has been painted yellow. I love this sentiment which says " No matter how long the winter, Spring is sure to follow. The sentiment was cut out with a circular Nestie and mounted onto a green scalloped circle. This was used as the element against which to prop the main part of the easel card. It was bonded in place with foam pads to make sure it was tall enough to act as an effective step.

Summer Flowers

A card for 3 challenges:
The Stamp Man #29 - Anything Goes with Summer Colours
Crafty Catz #95 Embossing
The Paper Shelter #26 Stitching (Real or Faux)

I have created faux gold embossed stitching around the image and the pale pink mat.

The main background is hand marbled card in yellows and greens (with a hint of red) to give summer colours along with the pink of the flowers and card. This was then embossed through a cuttle bug so there are two types of embossing on the card. The sentiment is also embossed with the same gold Cosmic Shimmer Embossing powder.

The sentiment was cut out with the Shapeability and the same die was drawn around to give the slightly larger mat as well. The sentiment was edged with Worn Lipstick distress ink before being mounted onto the larger mat with two gold brads.

The main image is hand painted in acrylics on mount board which was first colour washed with emulsion paint.

Flower Card

A card for the Sentimental Sundays Challenge #'67 - Flowers

The flowers are hand painted using acrylic paint, without the use of stamps, onto the blue card which has been matted onto pink card to match the flowers and then onto an A5 card blank.The ribbon and bow ere bonded in place for a touch of opulence. The sentiment is from a Chocolate Baroque stamp -"They are the charming gardeners who make out souls blossom." I kept this card very simple so that the flowers took centre stage.

Butterfly and Flowers

Good morning.

A card for 2 challenges:
Sketch and Stash #67
Sentimental Sundays #66 Garden Party

Here we have an A5 pale blue blank card. The two backing cards are two different hand marbled cards which have been put through a Cuttlebug and two different embossing folders to give lots of texture, The top one is a fancy flourish, the bottom one vertical foliage. These were matted onto silver mirror card.

A Martha Stewart punch was used to make the lattice border in silver mirror card, which was threaded through with pale blue organza and satin ribbon to cover the join between the backing cards.

The main image of butterflies and flowers was created using Sheena Douglass' Paint Fusion Stamps and techniques. This was created on a circular piece of crackled mount board. Stickles glitter glue was used as an edging n the flowers and on the butterfly for a bit of bling. The plaque was edged with platinum embossing powder as was the body of the butterfly.

The stash element was the sentiment stamp from Chocolate Baroque which was stamped on another piece of hand marbled paper. The stamp had a different type of flower so to keep the same theme I covered this over with three hand painted flowers which I cut out, glitter glued and bonded in place with Pinflair Gel glue. I have had this stamp for about 4 years but this is the first time I have used it. The sentiment reads:
Kind hearts are the garden, Kind thoughts are the root, Kind words are the blossom, Kind deeds are the fruit. This is a quote from John Ruskin.

Flutterbies

A card for 4 challenges:

Crafty Cardmakers #50 Flutterbies
The Paper Shelter #24 - Anything Goes
The Stampman #28 Show Us Some Stitching
CES Challenge# 47 Feeling the Blues

Well, there are certainly some butterflies (flutterbies),  there is blue on the backing paper, the fabric, the stitching, the butterflies and the flowers, and stitching on the fabric so I think I have covered all the bases there.

All of this started life as white card or fabric.

Two sheets of hand marbled card were used for the backing card and the butterflies. Both started out as white card. The butterflies (Chocolate Baroque) were stamped onto one sheet of the marbled card and cut out. Wire was used to produce the antennae as they were far to fiddly to cut out .

The fabric swatch was white and coloured with dye based ink before being stamped with swirls by Sheena Douglass. This was trimmed to size and edged with blue blanket stitch.

The main image of the flowers was done on white mount board which was "crackled" using the Sheena Douglass method but the picture is hand painted without the aid of stamps using the Donna dewberry method of One Stroke painting. The edges were embossed with silver pearl lustre embossing powder from Cosmic Shimmer.

These were all mounted onto an A5 white base card and finished with a white organza bow.

ATC - Flowers

Good morning

Here is my entry for the Spotlight Challenge - ATCs

This is made from mount board and is 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size.

The picture is hand painted using the Donna Dewberry One Stroke Method of painting with acrylics. When dry, it was edged with a gold pen.

The 6 little flowers were made from copper coloured Friendly Plastic. Small squares were heated with a heat gun, the sides dragged in with a fine embossing tool to give the petal shapes and flat backed crystals and pearls were pressed into the soft plastic to form the centres. These were bonded in place on the ATC with Pinflair glue.

Flower Tag

Good morning. Sunday is with us once again. A bit of a wet one at the moment - shame, I will just have to spend the day crafting!

Here is a Tag Card for the Crafty Catz #91 Tag challenge.

I am totally absorbed with one stroke painting at the moment. I love it! The tag, made from mount board, was "crackled" using emulsion, PVA glue and more emulsion as per the Sheena Douglass technique. Once the paint was dry I added one small stamp - Art by Chocolate Baroque which was embossed with Bronze WOW powder.

The painting was done from scratch, no stamps to help as a guide, using the Donna Dewberry One Stroke method.

I used a large Martha Stewart flower border punch at the bottom of the layer tag and on the side of the card to continue the flower theme. The inside of the A5 card blank was lined with the same card as the tag mat layer.

Suitably coloured mixed fibres were added to the tag before it was bonded to the card with Pinflair Gel .

Paris. Ooh, la, la!

Sunday again already.

A picture for two challenges - I cannot call it a card as one of the challenges was for anything but a card!

Crafty Creations #126 - Paris theme with anything than a card
Sentimental Sundays #63 - Inky Fingers

The inky fingers aspect is more unusual stamping techniques.

Therefore I used a resist technique using Versamark ink on glossy white card. When it was dry, a brayer was used to apply ink from the Spice Big ' Juicy pad. The two stamps used - the Sacre Couer and The sentiment are stamps from Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque).

When dry, the two images of the Eiffel Tower and the "Ooh La La" were added in Brown Stazon.

This was then mounted on a canvas, to make a piece of wall art, which had previously been painted with peacock emulsion paint.

A Trio of Canvas Board Flowers

Good morning.

I hope you like these three canvas board paintings. The backgrounds have been created with emulsion paint. The flowers are painted with acrylics. They were done using the Sheena Douglass Paint Fusion method so I admit I did not draw the flowers but used rubber stamps and Stazon ink so that the image would not smudge.

Piano Time

Well, I have made a start. You can see the full picture in the side bar. This is 2 weeks of evenings on and off. It does stop me from nodding off in the evenings following a busy day at work. I don't think you can tell what it is yet though so watch this space for further up-dates on progress!

Flower Tin

 Good morning.

This tin is for the Crafty Cardmakers #48 challenge - Altered Food Container

The base container is a tin that had my favourite tea in. The unfortunate thing is that I used to buy this tea when I lived in France and you cannot get it here in the UK. My stocks are dwindling fast. So some people go on a Booze Cruise but it looks like I shall have to go on a Tea Tour!

Anyway, enough of that, and on to more important things.

Looking at the picture below, the side view.... The tin was already orange, yellow and red so I did not alter the tin itself. The lid was a lovely gold so I kept that too.

I stamped a piece of orangey/yellow card with a script stamp from Stamp addicts and covered the front and back sides of the tin.

The main card wrap was marbled with the same sort of colours. Two panels were cut and the eyelets added after carefully marking out their positions. Red and gold 3mm ribbon was used to lace up both joins (The tin is the same at the back as you can see for the front in the lower picture.) The ribbons were laced up tightly to hold the wrap in place.

For the top a Nestie was used to cut out a label shape to suit the size of the lid. This was bonded in place with Stick and Stay.

The flowers and leaves were cut out using my Cricut Create. The flowers were over stamped with a background stamp and aged with Distress ink. These were layered up and allowed to dry. Pinflair glue was used to bond the flowers and leaves in place and a crystal gem was used for each of the flower centres.

To butterflies were stamped onto Acetate with Black Stazon ink. The stamp was by Elusive Images (Now Chocolate Baroque). These were coloured with Promarkers, cut out and bonded in place on the lid with more Pinflair glue.

Bookmark

Good morning. Happy Sunday.

Here is my entry for the Crafty Catz #86 - Bookmarks challenge.

This bookmark is made on a mount board tag which has had a crackle background created prior to stamping the border using a stamp from Sheena Douglass Simply Sweet set of stamps. The stamp was embossed with gold and then the rose buds and leaves were added using acrylic paint.

The sentiment "Be the change you want to see in the world" is a stamp from Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque). This was also embossed with gold. Worn Lipstick and Tattered Rose Distress inks were used to give a bit of age and colour over the cream crackle.

The fibres for the end of the tag are some that I have had for ages and the little rose buds were part of a prize won on another challenge.

A Trio of Mini Canvases

Good morning.

I really like Sheena Douglass' Paint Fusion techniques. I cannot paint or draw to save my life but this allows me to make mini works of art which I love!

These were all done on mini canvases which measure approximately 2.5 x 3.5 inches. I love the way they come with their own little easels for ease of display.

The stamps used came from the Simply Sweet, Poppies and Berries sets.

Once the backgrounds had been set up using the crackle (for the Poppy and Berries) and vaseline (for the Bouquet) techniques I had to pack out the back of the canvas, with layers of mount board, to give a firm enough surface on which to stamp the images. These were stamped using Forest Green Stazon ink. The paints are acrylic and were applied using the Sheena method. Once the paint was dry, which doesn't take too long, Distress ink was applied around the edges to age the art and finally gold embossing powder was applied around the edges to frame the pictures..

Path to the Castle

Good morning.

This is one of my favourite encaustic art pictures where I used the hotplate technique to create the sky. For this you melt your chosen waxes on a large hotplate and then swish the top of the glossy card through it, lifting it up at the end of the stroke, to give the beautifully streaky sky.

In this picture I just loved the way that all the colours melded together as you work down the picture to give an almost spring  or early summer like scene.

This picture was created on A5 size card and mounted into mount board ready for framing.

Sleepy

Well here is the first entry for my new, non-paper crafting blog.

This gorgeous cross stitch picture was actually completed about 4 years ago. The reason I have added this here is because I have just started another one in the same series called Piano Time. This time the kitten is standing on the keyboard of a piano. Both are kits from DMC and I just love the way they are worked all in shades of brown.

I only started the new one on Sunday so I hope that by the end of the week there will be something I can show you.