Faces, Fimo and Slide Mounts

It's been a busy few days so haven't had time to update the blog.  So this ones going to be bit of a long one :)

Firstly, the 29 Faces Art Challenge finishes today.  I've had a great time trying to draw faces.  It's been quite a journey but a great experience.  Looking back at the faces from the 29 days I'd say there was some improvement in my faces..........obviously still a long way to go but as they say practice makes perfect. 

26, 27, 28 and 29

I want to share this face with you (#21) I'm really pleased with the way she came out and hence I have made her into a greetings card - I took a photograph of the original piece and altered it a little with an online editing software.  The original is painted with Faber Castell Polychromo pencils.  The orange and large green hearts are digi stamps from Handmade Harbour.

#21

In a previous post I shared some air dry fimo clay items I'd made hearts, elephant, key and a couple of mutilated gingerbread men.  Well today I finished making up the gingerbread men.  I painted them with acrylic paint and added some wire and beads.  These are for trading on ATCsforALL.

#Twisted Christmas

Finally I went to the Happy Stampers Festival at Portsunlight.  The village hall is where a collection of Rubber Stamp companies come to sell their stamps and do demos on how to use certain products.  I ended up buying a couple of unmounted stamps, a couple of stencils (these seem to be favour of the month), some modge podge sticks which are used with a glue gun and can be melted straight into molds and a few other little bits.  

#Portsunlight buys

I made these mount slide art pieces today using the rubber stamps I bought yesterday.  The mounts are a sizzix die.  I've painted them with Derwent inktense water colour pencils added some fabric flowers and butterfly also painted with the inktense pencils.

 slide mount art

Well I think I'm up to date. 

Hope you have a wonderful week creating some art.

Anita

Faces 22, 23 and 24 29 Faces Art Challenge

Here are my faces for day #22, #23 and #24 for the 29 Faces Art Challenge.  I can't believe that there's only a few days to go before the challenge ends.

I went back to #21 and added a background to it.  She looked rather lonely all by herself on the blank page.  Once the colour has been added I think it will look better that it was previously.

Before

After

Happy Crafting

Anita

Working With Fimo Air Dry Clay

I've been playing with Fimo air dry clay today I've not used this before and found it to be quite 'wet'.  I used a Teflon sheet to roll it out but it still stuck it.  I think I need to either add some oil or corn flour onto the surface before rolling.  

I found it too wet for using with the molds as well - they didn't lift out as easily as other clays I've used in the past (elephant and key) - maybe if I left it out to 'dry' for half hour it would work better.

I did however like to mold it in my hands (hearts).  I found it malleable and easy to use.  

These will be painted with acrylic paint once they are dry and if I like the final result I will be making some more of the hearts to take to Arizona in January for ARTzona where a group of talented artists will gather for a weekend of art, art and more art. 

Oh and I used a cookie cutter for the gingermen - they are a trial run for a swap over on ATCsforAll called 'twisted Christmas .  Not sure I'll be using these as I have another idea using felt to make them with.

I'm linking these to Handmade Monday over on the Handmade Harbour blog. 

Have a great week.

Anita

Faces 18, 19, 20, and 21 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

Some more faces from this week.  Just didn't have time to upload them so here they are all in one post.

Polychromo pencils on Daler Rowney Sketch paper

#20 polychromo pencils, koh-i-noor watercolour and pitt pen. and rubber stamped flowers on the background

Biro on lined note paper

WIP Koh-i-Noor water colours I wanted to practice with these very vibrant colours. 

Handmade Harbour Mid-Week Paper Craft Party - Happy Hearts

Oh the weeks are flying by.  Here I am running late with my card for the Handmade Harbour design team challenge.  I'm on the last minute this week as I'd been preparing for a textile workshop and had a craft fair on Saturday which I'd booked months ago.

This weeks theme is Happy Days (the title reminds me of the Fonz does anyone remember watching Happy Days?  I used to love it.  Anyway I'm going off topic.  So I've been wanting to use the heart stamps but the opportunity hasn't arisen until now.  I love hearts and I think this stamp fits in perfectly if you are using to make wedding cards, gift tags or invites.  The stamp is very versatile and as the hearts make me 'happy' I thought I would use it for the challenge.

I've used Koh-i-noor water colours to paint the heart, added some tiny pale blue heart buttons and then added some buttons onto wire and attached them to the back of the heart to make them look like they are shooting out of the heart.  The tiny hearts are punched from some background paper I had painted. The background lined paper is some scrapbook paper which I've added some ink with inkpads and a touch of silver glitter to finish it off.

If you would like to see some more of the design teams cards why not pop on over to the Mid-week paper craft party and join in the fun.  

Happy Crafting 

Anita

Faces #16 & 17 for #29 Faces Art Challenge

A little late with these but it's been a busy weekend. 

#16 I used Derwent sketch palette charcoal/graphite wash pencils

#17 Pencil sketch 

Anita

Face #15 of 29 Faces Art Challenge

#15  Today I'm sharing a picture I drew nearly 10 years ago when I took a drawing class.  This was from a picture in one of my drawing books.  I'll see if I can find the original so you can compare the 2 faces for likeness.

See more artist work here

Anita

Face #14 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

#14 Ball point pen drawn on the back cover of my receipt book in between seeing to customers and the bracelet make & take for children at a craft fair today.

Faces # 11, 12 & 13 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

Catching up today on posting the faces for the last 2 days and today's face.  

Quick pencil sketch #11

Ball point pen on copy paper #12

Hot pink and white acrylic paint on acrylic paper #13

See more here

Anita

Face #10 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

I worked a bit more on the face from this mornings sketch. I'm liking the eyes on this one. Still need to work on getting the nose correct not just on this drawing but on all my faces (not literally my face )

See more here on the 29 Faces Art Challenge.

Anita

Face #9 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

So here we are at day 9 and another quick sketch with some added colour with my Polychromos.  The shading isn't as good as the last couple but this was a quickie.  

See more here on the 29 Faces Art Challenge.

Anita

Face #8 for 29 Faces Art Challenge.

This did start off as a human face but I drew it too big for the size of paper so this is what it ended up as.  Coloured in with Faber-Castell Polychromos not used these in a long time as I've been hooked on the Derwernt Inktense water colour pencils so makes a change and a challenge to get the shading correct. I've taken a couple of pictures of the outline so hopefully I will be able to try different mediums out.

See more here on the 29 Faces Art Challenge.

Anita

Day 7 Face #7 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

Face #7 for the 29 Faces Art Challenge.  I took some time making this one as I wanted to see if I can draw and colour/shade her in correctly.  I don't think there are any hard and fast rules but I struggle with highlight and shadow so I looked online for some shading inspiration.  I obviously need more practice and try to erase the outlines so they don't show up as much.  But all in all I think she's turned out okay.  

I've added some punched flowers to the hem of her dress the background is stamped and then some pearl gems to finish her off.

You can see more artists work here.

Anita

Faces # 5 & 6 for 29 Faces Art Challenge

Yesterday and today have been just a little bit busy for me to get any drawing done so I'm cheating and posting a couple of very rough and quick sketches I did some time back...............hope I'm forgiven and I'll get something new done for day 7.

Want to see what the other participants are doing?  

Then pop on over to the 29 Faces Challenge Blog.

Angelberry and Robin

Here is my card for the Fairy Time digi-stamp challenge over on the Polkadoodles blog. I was sent a lovely free digi-stamp called Angelberry and Robin.  I printed our one image onto acetate and one onto cardstock. On the acetate wings I've added sparkly glitter which has tiny little stars in it.  I painted the card image with inktense watercolour pencils added the same glitter to the skirt edge and the boots.  There is a tiny gold heart brad on the skirt pocket and pearl gems as buttons on the jacket.  I was going to sew on some red beads in the hair but after cutting out the card image it was too fragile to put a hole in the card so I've added some red paint.

So here she is Angelberry and Robin.  I hope you like what I've done with her. If you'd like to see what other artists have made with their stamps then pop on over to Polkadoodles blog.

Happy Thursday crafting

Anita

Face #4 29 Faces Art Challenge

It's day 4 of the 29 Faces Art Challenge.  Here is today's face.  Thought I'd go with the flow and try something not so structured or proportioned.  I'm going to print this onto water colour paper before adding any colour this will allow me to have a play with different mediums and maybe even add a bit of collage or rubber stamping............we'll see.

You can see the other artists involved in the challenge here.

Face #3 For the 29 Faces Art Challenge

Another quick sketch which started off as doodled flowers while waiting for the computer to upload. I added the facial features in my lunch hour.  I added a slight wash of water colour to the flowers.  Water and cartridge sketch paper doesn't marry very well :)

29 Faces Art Challenge

Face #2 For 29 Faces Challenge.

Today's face was sketched very quickly in my lunch hour at work.  I'm sure the rest of the office think I'm a bit mad - better to be mad than sane in my opinion.  You can see more artists work on the 29 Faces Challenge blog

Happy Crafting 

Anita

Witches, Spelling, Potions and CAKE

So this weeks theme for the Handmade Harbour Design Team challenge is "smile or laugh".

As I couldn't decide which stamps to use I asked Wendy to choose a couple for me..........so she sent me over "The Young Witch with Spelling Book", "One Cake A Day" and "Save Water Drink Wine".  3 very different stamps I'm leaving the 'wine' stamp for another day.

I've used the Young Witch and the "Witch or Wizard Potions on a Shelf" for the first card. I made the witch's hat just little bit bigger than my original print out so it looks like she's playing at being a witch.  Then I added the potion bottles to the base of the card,  added some words correct and mis-spelt.  Some punched out silver stars to finish off.  There's a slight gold shimmer to the edge of the card I used some watered down gold acrylic paint.

With this card I used "Witch or Wizard Potions on a Shelf".  The celebration glasses is actually just one rubber stamp that I have stamped twice with black Stazon.  I've added a few 'squiggles' in the glasses to look like earth worms (that was my intention anyway).  The edges of the card has been coloured with inkpads in a direct to paper technique (simply just rubbed the ink pads along the edges until I was happy with the colour.  Over that I have used a slightly darker shade to stamp on some 'bubbles'.  To finish off I've added some glitter to the bubbles coming out of the glasses.

Finally to my 3rd card..........well what can I say I really think this is a 'smile' card.  I LOVE cake, making, baking and eating it so it seemed apt to make this one to.  I've kept this one simple because I wanted the main focus to be the ladies trying to look innocent while eating cake.  On the main picture I've used frosted glitter as the icing on the cake - it's been cut out and mounted onto foam pads to give it some dimension and texture.  I also printed and cut out some smaller cakes but cut out 'chunks' to look as if they had been bitten into.  

You can find all the above stamps over in the Handmade Harbour shop.

If you like to create things with paper then why not join in the fun with the weekly Papercraft Party  and if you use one of Handmade harbours digi stamps in your design you could even win yourself a prize.

I hope you've enjoyed my process into the world of digi-stamps.

Until next time keep crafting and creating.

Anita

   

Face #1 for 29 Faces Challenge

Okies so here is my first attempt for day one of the 29 Faces Art Challenge.  As you can see it's not the best but it's far better than what I thought it would come out like.  So I'm pleased with it and hopefully you will get to see some improvements over the next 28 days.  If you fancy having a go or just having a browse at the other artists - who are way way better than I ever will be then pop on over to the 29 Faces Art Challenge blog.  

I'm also going to include this in the Handmade Monday over on the Handmade Harbour blog.

Happy Crafting 

Anita