Art Journal Page–Tyger, Tyger

What is the essence of tyger-ness?

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile his work to see?
Did He who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake, 1757-1827

This has always been one of my favourite poems. I remember having to learn it by heart at school, and from an early age I was captivated by the archaic spelling of “Tyger” – somehow any tiger spelt “tyger” would have to be far more tigery than just any normal tiger, spelt “tiger.” This poem expresses for me the Essence of Tyger-ness.

What better subject to inspire an art journal page? It was a fairly daunting prospect, because I have never painted a tiger before, still less a Tyger, and I wanted to do it justice!

Here is the page with the elements mapped out in pencil. Apart from the tyger head, I knew that most of it would be obliterated by the inks and paints, but I needed to know where everything went, so this photograph served as a guide as I worked.

So that no white paper would show through the background, I began by inking it, using Mowed Lawn Distress Ink (from the Summer seasonal collection), using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

You will see that I have slipped a sheet of scrap paper underneath each page – this is to protect the pages underneath.

Using my leaf trail stencil, I added more Distress Ink, this time Pine Needles, to create some leaves around the tiger’s head. Ink Dusters are great for this, because you can stipple away to your heart’s content with no danger of snagging or moving the stencil.

To get a more jungly effect, I added some more leaves, this time stamped ones, using a combination of Mowed Lawn, Crushed Olive and Forest Moss Distress Inks.

At this stage I freaked out a bit, because the leaves were coming out much too strong! I did multiple stamps with each application of ink, to give an effect of depth, but I wasn’t too happy with it at this stage. I cut a scrap of paper approximately the size of the tiger head and used it as a mask, and sprayed the whole page with my Forest Moss DIY glimmer mist – panic, panic – it came out MUCH too dark, so I quickly blotted it off, and the effect was a lot better all round.

The next step was the painting. I began by blocking out the main colours of the tiger’s head, before filling in the features with a finer brush. This is the only photo I took of the process, because I got carried away with what I was doing and forgot to take any more until I’d finished!

You can see that I also started painting the frame. The effect I was after was a suggestion of flames (“burning bright”) in tiger-stripe colours.

This is the completed tiger. I decided to add some more paint to the background, to darken it a bit behind the tiger, to add some contrast and give a more dramatic effect, and I also added some painted leaves in the foreground, to give the tiger a more menacing appearance as he emerges from the jungle undegrowth. I also painted the border at this stage, and again forgot to photograph the different stages! Then it was time to start on the journaling.

(The colour balance isn’t quite right on this photo – it’s a bit on the blue side – see the following photo for a truer rendition.)

On my last journal page, I did the journaling with white acrylic paint, but as this text is smaller, I wanted to try and make my white marker pen work. It is a broad white Uni-Ball Signo. A major problem I’ve experienced with this in the past is that if you try and use it on a water-based medium such as a Distress Ink background, the marker, also being water-based, blends with the underlying colour and you can’t get a true white. I had thought of spraying fixative onto the work before using it, but in this case there seemed to be sufficient acrylic paint and mica powder to prevent this from happening. I went over it again just to make sure, and I found the pen worked better if I didn’t press too hard, which tended to push the ink away from the centre of the line. I’d be very interested to hear what other people use to achieve such good results with their white text.

Finally I outlined the white text with my 08 Zig Millennium permanent black marker that I use for zentangles – no problem with this as it’s not water-based.

Here is the finished art journal page. The colour is a lot more accurate on this photo.

I hope I have captured the essence of tyger-ness!

Art Journal Page–Music and Flowers

Having completed the front page of my new leather art journal, I have now created a double-page spread in mixed media.

Music means a great deal to me; it has great emotional impact, and I have been privileged in the past to take part in group music activities, especially choir singing, which is an incomparable experience, adding something that merely listening cannot provide. Music is a gift from God and it is like being given a gift of flowers – fragrant, full of variety and colour, bountiful, beautiful, and ephemeral – but the memory lives on. Music is flowers for the ears and for the heart. This is what I wanted to express in my page.

I glued a sheet of music onto the left-hand page and trimmed it down to size. For this I used Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive as it’s the strongest wet glue in my possession and it dries quickly. I then sprayed the open page with some DIY glimmer mist (a little Wild Honey Distress Re-Inker and some Perfect Pearls mixed with water in a small spray bottle). I sprayed a small amount in another colour (Chipped Sapphire) and immediately blotted it so the dark colour didn’t dominate. After drying it with my heat gun, I applied some Salty Ocean Distress Ink (from the Summer seasonal set) with an Inkylicious Ink Duster through my Increasing Circles stencil. Over the yellow of the background, this blue distress ink turned a good shade of green, which was the effect I wanted.

You can also see some of the embedded petals in the hand-made paper of the right-hand page. This detail shot shows the shimmering effect of the glimmer mist nicely.

I sketched the outline of the text, and the border, in pencil, and started to paint the text with titanium white acrylic paint.

This is not brilliant quality paint, and needed three coats to give decent coverage.

To finish the text, I outlined it with a black Zig pen (08 size) from my zentangle set.

The next step was to start painting the border, for which I again used the titanium white acrylic paint (3 coats). While doing this, I also painted some flowers in white over some of the stencilled circles.

To finish the border, I filled the gaps with black acrylic paint (this went on a lot better and needed only a single coat), and outlined the border with the black Zig pen. I added a row of white dots in acrylic paint just inside the border, and again outlined them with the Zig pen.

To complete the page, I added a butterfly from my stash. This was cut with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, and had been sprayed with Dylusions ink sprays. I hand-embossed the wings from behind to make them slightly convex, and added some spots of white acrylic paint, and then attached it to the page with Pinflair gel glue to prevent the wings from becoming flattened.

The glimmer mist gives a gorgeous silky feel to the page, and the acrylic paint can be felt as a slightly raised texture. When embellishing the page, I tried to avoid the petals embedded in the hand-made paper, so that they became part of the design.

WOYWW 176

It’s simply aaaages since I’ve been on WOYWW – thank you everyone who has contacted me recently to see how I was, and I’m grateful that I was missed! I was going to give it a miss for yet another week, but feeling well enough to be creative this afternoon, I thought I could sneak one in quickly – very near the end of the WOYWW list this time, but better late than never!

My hubby bought me a gorgeous little hand-made leather book full of blank pages made of hand-made paper the other day, and I’m making it into an art journal. You can see it here.

Today I started working on the first double-page spread. I had glued a piece of music onto the left-hand page and this afternoon I sprayed it all with some DIY glimmer mist and then stencilled some circles with distress ink. I have started doing the text, painting with white acrylic paint – I want to add a border and some flowers.

On the right-hand side of the photo you can see a little green butterfly – this was one that I’d sprayed with my Dylusions inks a while back and thought the colour went pretty well, and then I must make up some flattish flowers to embellish the page.

I shall be dedicating a blog post to this page once it’s finished, so watch this space!

The book is sitting on a sheet of heavy white card. I’ve decided to take a leaf out of Jennibellie’s book and start working on a white card background rather than directly onto my craft sheet, because the mess you make gradually builds up into a unique background – I may use different sheets for different colour schemes. (Jennibellie is one of my favourite artists online and one day I may do a post featuring this wonderful, enthusiastic young lady who never fails to inspire me – she is the Recycling Queen of Planet Earth lol!!)

I’ve missed you all. The past few weeks have been very tough for me, and will probably continue to be so for a while, as we deal with the problems of my elderly parents, which takes its toll on my health, but hey, I’d actually got something on my desk worth sharing with you this week, rather than it being the dumping ground it’s been of late!

Hope you have all had a great WOYWW, and that most of you won’t have completely forgotten me!!

Hand-Made Paper

Whenever I smoosh with my distress ink pads on my craft sheet, I either use a piece of scrap card to mop it up, and save these to make backgrounds with, or if I’m feeling lazy, I just mop it up with paper towels. I am careful to use separate sheets for different colour combinations, and decided when I had enough, I’d start making something with them as the blended colours are so gorgeous.

Tonight I made my first one. This is only two layers thick, and may need building up a bit from behind if it proves too delicate. I first took the sheet with the blue colours on it, and added a bit more distress ink, using all the blues, smooshed and spritzed with water on my craft sheet, so that no white remained. I then laid this out flat, carefully, as it was quite wet, and took another sheet, with mostly purples and bits of green, and again added more distress ink to ensure complete coverage.

This piece I tore into smaller pieces, and gently spread soft matt acrylic gel medium onto the backs, and laid them onto the background, adding more gel medium as I went. When it was covered, I coated the whole surface with the gel medium and sprinkled on some gilding flakes (variegated green, although that doesn’t show up much – they just look gold!) and gently flattened them onto the surface with a large soft paintbrush. I dried it to almost dry with my heat gun, leaving it to dry completely overnight.

I love the result! I think this could be used for different things, according to what you mounted it onto. You could use it to cover three dimensional objects, gradually building up the layers like papier mache. I’m certainly going to use it to cover those small papier mache boxes you can buy – they are so irregular that it’s hard to cover them with ordinary paper. This first sheet was just done to the size of a single sheet of paper towel, but you could build it up into as large a sheet as you wanted, and whatever shape, too.

You could add anything to add texture and interest – bits of thread, leaves, angelina fibres, anything really, covering each layer with gel medium.

You could also use a gloss or semi-gloss gel medium to give a more shiny surface if you wanted.

Watch this space as I make up more of this!

Indian Floral Motifs

Today I cut some floral motifs that I designed from my Indian floral border. I used some off-white cardstock that I bought at a craft show, and I have no idea what make or weight it is, but it appears to be medium weight. My sample cut worked well at Force 50 but as usual, the actual cut didn’t do so well, so next time I shall increase the force to 60. As it was, I had quite a few small pieces which needed help to get them out, and on more than one occasion, small pieces were lifted by the blade mid-cut and interfered with the cut – I paused Sheba and pulled them out. I am surprised this is still happening because I re-stickied my mat again today and the card was extremely well secured – so much so that I had to exercise caution when removing it, so that I didn’t damage my flowers. (I seem to go from one extreme to the other – very sticky, or not sticky enough – one day maybe I shall get the adhesion of my mat correct!)

However, back to my floral motifs. Each petal is taken from the design of the border, and I made two versions – one solid and one with separate petals, each having five petals. Here is a bitmap of the svg file I created (now on my Skydrive for free download – see sidebar).

As you can see, in this file there are three sizes of one design, and one of the other. Of course, you could make them any size you like, but I thought for the purposes of layering, these sizes might be good. You will notice that I have made a hole in the centre of each part. This is so you can use a brad to secure the flower pieces if you want.

Here they are immediately after cutting (and tidying up – which took a long time…) – I have coloured them with three colours of Distress Inks: Spun Sugar, Broken China and Dusty Concord, using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters, blending the colours at their junctions.

The colours I used were Spun Sugar, Broken China and Dusty Concord.

Next, I sprayed them with some of my DIY Glimmer Mist (the link to this will take you to one of my early Youtube Videos, made before I had my ARTHaven). It is made from water, with as much Distress Ink re-inker as you need to obtain the colour you require, and some Perfect Pearls in your chosen colour added, and the liquid shaken gently in a spray bottle before each use to ensure that the mica powder is suspended evenly in the liquid. You can make these in any colour combinations you like. In this case I used Spun Sugar with Perfect Pearl coloured Perfect Pearls (the silvery one).

As usual, it’s a bit difficult to see the shimmer, but they really are quite shimmery, believe me!

The next step was to paint the edges with Perfect Pearls. First I used Forever Velvet, and finished the edges with Heirloom Gold, mixing them on my non-stick craft sheet with a fine paintbrush and a little water.

I love Perfect Pearls! These mica powders are so versatile. They have a binding agent in them so if they are applied with water, they do not rub off when dry.

After this, I hand-embossed the flower pieces gently, with a large sized embossing tool, to curl up the petals somewhat.

Finally, I layered the large and small pieces with the divided petals, and decided to leave the other two pieces separate. I glued the two layers together with a spot of Scotch Extra-Sticky adhesive

The final step was to add some Stickles as embellishments. In the above photo, the Stickles are still wet. When they are dry, they will become flatter. The colours I used were Purple, Turquoise and Fruit Punch.

I think if I make up a border using these colours, I could use these flowers to make a very pretty card, or they could be used to embellish the lid of a box, with the border going around the sides.

Hibiscus Factory

I have decided to embellish the shadow box I am making for our nephew’s wedding present with some hibiscus flowers made from Penny Duncan’s cut file – see my blog list for a link to her blog (thanks, Penny!).  I’ve been quite poorly recently and ultra brainfogged which probably explains why this has turned out to be a much lengthier and more protracted exercise than it should have been, but I’m getting there at last! What I should have done was to refer back to my original blog post on the hibiscus flowers that I made back in September of last year, before I had Jiminy Cricut and had to print them and cut them out by hand. Although I didn’t give a lot of detail as to colours etc., at least I did mention that they came out too light, and needed further attention.

This is what I have experienced this time, too. After some considerable messing about with them, I’ve now got them to the rich, dark colour I was after in the first place.

Anyway, back to the beginning. These are the pieces I cut first of all, in two sizes, from 140 lb/300 gsm smooth-surfaced watercolour paper. It is essential to use watercolour paper for this project because the pieces get very wet during the colouring process, and normal cardstock tends to disintegrate. This picture shows them in the process of being accented with archival black ink, both the flower and leaf pieces, and as they were so small, I used a surgical needle holder to hold the smallest ones.

Here they are, after I’d coloured them with some DIY glimmer mist I made from Chipped Sapphire and Forest Moss Distress Inks respectively. They weren’t dark enough, so I applied the DIY glimmer mist again once they were dry, but I was still not really satisfied with them, and the small ones are really much too small for what I want anyway (and as it turned out, much too small to manipulate), so I shall keep them for other projects, and not make them up into proper hibiscus flowers but use them as they are.

I decided to cut another whole sheet of flower pieces – some of the flowers were about 2 inches across (I didn’t mean to cut them this big!), and the majority 1 inch, and I cut a few more of the 3/4-inch ones (the larger size in the original batch) because they are useable for my current project. In this picture you can see them at the accented stage, with the original batch on the right.

The next picture shows the leaves being spritzed with the DIY glimmer mist. Immediately after this, I mussed them around in the liquid, spraying on more as necessary, until they were completely coated, and then I set them aside to dry.

This is what they looked like when they were dry.

I was not impressed. They are too light and wishy-washy looking, and also I felt the green was too yellow for my project, so I decided to work on them further.

The same applied to the flowers. Here they are after spritzing and drying.

I decided to make up a couple of batches in other colours while I was at it. The ones on the left are done with DIY glimmer mist using Spun Sugar Distress Ink, and they are barely pink at all! The middle ones were done initially with DIY glimmer mist using Wild Honey, and I accented the centres with a little Barn Door Distress Ink straight from the pad, applied with a cotton bud. The ones on the right are those done with the Chipped Sapphire DIY glimmer mist.

All much too light! Very unhappy Shoshi! Decided to do what I should have done in the first place: smear the ink pad onto my craft sheet, spritz with water, and muss the pieces around in the ink. This way I got a lovely rich deep colour which is what I wanted all along! I am pleased to say that the Perfect Pearls in the DIY glimmer mist is still showing now that they are dry – if it had not, I’d have spritzed them again, just to get a bit of iridescence. Using Spun Sugar, the pink ones were still too light, and I tried with Victorian Velvet, with the same result, so in the end I used a mixture of Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany and came up with a gorgeous rich pink colour. The others were done with their original colours, i.e. Chipped Sapphire and Wild Honey. On the yellow ones, the Barn Door that I dabbed on is still visible, and now just shows as a deeper shade of orange, which is the effect I wanted.

Here they are now they are done. Happy Shoshi.

As for the leaves, I didn’t like the colour after the original spritzing with the DIY glimmer mist, so I mussed these in Pine Needles Distress Ink on my craft mat, and I love the effect – lots of colour variation, and the underlying colour shows through quite nicely. They’ve got a lovely subtle shimmer from the Perfect Pearls, which of course doesn’t show up very well in the photos.

So, after a lot of unnecessary messing about, I was now ready to hand-emboss the pieces, using my embossing tool and a piece of funky foam. This gives them the dimension they need. The pieces need to be completely dry before this step, or the paper will disintegrate.

I used a stylus to form the central vein of each leaf, on the right side, then flipped the leaf over and embossed each side of the vein with my hand embossing tool, and then formed the leaf with my fingers.

For the flowers, I hand-embossed the reverse of each petal in turn, using my hand-embossing tool, and then flipped them over and used the embossing tool to depress the centre of the flower.

The following photos show in close-up first some leaves, and then some flowers, embossed on the left, and not yet embossed on the right, and you can see what a huge difference the embossing makes to the realistic appearance of the flowers.

Here is the whole of the second batch, embossed and ready for assembly with the hot glue gun.

To assemble the flowers, each one needed to be pinched at the base so that the petals formed more of a cup. The cut file has a small hole in the centre, and this needed to be poked out a bit first, especially on the small pieces, and then a stamen had to be inserted through the hole.

I bought these little stamens in the cake department of our local kitchen and hardware store. They can be coloured but I prefer to leave them as they are as they make a nice accent.

Each one is double-ended, and for this project they need to be cut in half. I poked the stamen through the hole in the centre of the flower, and put a dab of hot glue on the base to secure it in place, and also to prevent the petals from collapsing back out again. Once the glue was set, the petals could be manipulated so that they formed the correct shape. This is what they looked like immediately after glueing.

After trimming off the backs of the stamens, to finish the construction of the flowers, I glued the leaves onto the base of each flower; this placing doesn’t have to be exact, but it gives a pleasing base and background to the flowers. If you wanted to group the flowers, the leaves could be overlapped if necessary.

The largest sized flowers that I made measuring approximately 2 inches across:

The medium size, about 1 inch across:

and the smallest size, measuring approximately 3/4 inch.

I think Penny has done a lovely job with this particular flower design. It’s a lovely embellishment for lots of different projects, and shouldn’t take too long as long as you don’t mess about getting the colour all wrong like I did!

Hibiscus Flowers

I've been feeling really frustrated lately, because I've SO wanted to get into my ARTHaven and have some Fun but was prevented from doing so by having to do other things and then having no energy left over.

However... Today I was determined, and after spending some time setting up my hubby's laser printer and printing off some music for my dad (the printer is a dream and is going to be soooo useful in my creativity!!) I was able to sit down and do something creative, just for the fun of it - with no particular end in view.

I am soooo grateful to Penny Duncan (see her blog: http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com/) for her wonderful tutorials, and have been wanting to try some of her flowers recently. Today I made some of her hibiscus flowers. Until I get my Cricut cutting machine, I have to cut these by hand from her .pdf file, and this wasn't hard as the shapes are very simple, but it did take a long time. Also, colouring the flowers took me longer than expected, because I initially chose colours that were too pale, and had to go over them again with darker ones to get the effect I wanted. After accenting the petals and leaves with purple and green ink pads respectively, I then spritzed the flowers and leaves with my Tim Holtz DIY glimmer mists in spun sugar (pink), wild honey (orange) and chipped sapphire (blue) mixed with Perfect Pearls (in perfect pearl colour) for a bit of sparkle. The petals and leaves were assembled with hot glue from my glue gun, and the centres were the ones I bought the other day in the cake department of our hardware store.

I am very pleased with the result, considering this is my first attempt, and I am sure I will get better at it (and quicker) with practice.

When I spritzed them, there was quite a bit of glimmer mist on my craft mat, and I didn't want to waste this, so I got some card scraps and mopped it up on them - with some quite interesting results. I am going to keep these pieces for use in other projects.

Tim Holtz DIY Glimmer Mist

I haven't posted for a few days because I've been trying to deal with a backlog of videos I've done - loads of editing required, and not much space on my hard drive! This first one is part of an afternoon I had experimenting with my new Tim Holtz stuff. I decided to follow his Youtube tutorial on making your own glimmer mist with his distress inks and perfect pearls. I really had no idea how this would turn out - but in the end I wasn't too disappointed!

Although my first attempt is a bit blotchy, the colours are lovely, and this technique gives the most gorgeous silky feel to the cheapest of card. I tried doing some on black, which you will see on the video I've done on using Tim's masks (not yet edited) and although it's got a nice shimmery finish and again feels lovely, the colour hasn't shown in the way I wanted, unfortunately.

It seems to be pretty much trial and error, but that's exciting in itself, because you don't know what you're going to end up with!