A Remarkable Find

It seems to be the season for rediscovering long lost things for me at the moment. As I described in a previous post, I recently had returned to me a little book which I thought I had lost for good. Then, this evening, another discovery from the past came my way, of a different nature.

My hubby and I were watching “The Antiques Roadshow” on BBC TV this evening, and someone brought along a rather intriguing picture from the Arts and Crafts Movement, of a seascape in enamel, surrounded by a repousse frame made of silver, depicting various forms of marine life, and a circular-shaped piece of mother-of-pearl inlaid at the bottom. Embossed in the silver were the first two lines of a poem, “The sea hath its pearls/The heaven hath its stars,” which rather intrigued me for some reason, so on the spot I decided to google this and see if I could find the entire poem.

The first site I visited was “Writing and Ruminating: One Children’s Writer’s Journey.” I discovered that the poem was Das Meer hat seine Perlen by the German romantic poet Heinrich Heine, translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as follows:

The sea hath its pearls,

The heaven hath its stars;

But my heart, my heart,

My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea, and the heaven;

Yet greater is my heart,

And fairer than pearls or stars

Flashes and beams my love.

Thou little, youthful maiden,

Come unto my great heart;

My heart, and the sea and the heaven

Are melting away with love!

On the site, I also discovered a painting of the same name, which had been inspired by he poem, by William Margetson, an English artist who lived from 1861 to 1940. On another site I discovered that the painting was purchased from the artist by The Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1897, where it still resides.

As soon as I saw this picture, my heart leapt. I had completely forgotten about it, but many years ago my grandmother had a reproduction of it in her home in Cambridge, where we spent many happy holidays. She came to live with us in 1963 when I was 10, and I don’t remember seeing the picture after this, so presumably it was among the many things she had to sell when she moved.

It was always said in the family that the young lady in the picture bore a striking resemblance to my grandmother when she was young, just after the First World War, probably because of the colour of her hair. Looking back, I remember now that I always believed that it actually was a picture of my grandmother!

I decided to make a new desktop wallpaper with this. Using a combination of Serif PagePlus (my desktop publishing software) and PhotoPlus (photo editor), I created a blue background on a layout to match the proportions of my computer screen. I took one of the texture overlays I created ages ago, from a photo of some tree bark with interesting swirling patterns on it:

and overlaid this on top of the blue background using the “screen” blend mode, and adjusted it until I was happy that it produced a subtle wave-like pattern in the blue, which would not interfere too much with the visibility of my desktop icons. I added the painting as a new layer, resized it and moved it to the right-hand side and added a vignette effect to it so that the edges would fade into the background. I exported the whole thing as a new image and set it as my desktop wallpaper.

Now I can enjoy it every day.

To stumble across this picture out of the blue like this, is amazing, and I feel as if a long-lost treasure has been restored to me. Isn’t the Internet wonderful? It is such a beautiful picture, and it ties in with my love of the sea, and my own lifelong delight in finding treasures on the seashore – maybe not actual pearls, but certainly many beautiful shells and stones, sea glass and driftwood, and it links me back to the past, with happy childhood memories.

This has quite made my day.

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What’s on YOUR workdesk [this] Wednesday? If you want to share it, however tidy or messy it may be, click on the link in my sidebar which will take you to our hostess Julia’s blog, where you can sign in and join the fun.

I’ve had a pretty busy and traumatic week, with Dad being very poorly indeed in hospital, and on Sunday we really thought we would lose him in a day or two, but he has rallied again and is now a lot better. He is still not medically fit for discharge, but my hubby has sorted a nursing home for him to go to because his old residential home is now unable to take him back because of his increasing needs. He has dementia, heart failure, and recently a chest infection, and his speech is incoherent, but he knows us, and lights up when we visit.

This week is a friend’s birthday and until now I have been unable to share what I made for her in case she saw it! My next post will be all about it. Since making her card, I have cleared my desk again and only one background remains on it – watch this space for a post about that, complete with the video I have made.

I have now got my new video camera set up, and a brand new look to my Youtube videos to celebrate my new ARTHaven and a new beginning. I hope you will enjoy these videos, as I should be posting more of them now that it is so much easier to do so.

Here’s the title frame of the video which I spent some time creating this week – you can see that it is based on my blog background, to give continuity across my online presence.

This is the card I made for my friend. It was on my desk until yesterday! Hope that counts for a WOYWW!

This is the video I have done of it:

I hope to be back more regularly with you all on WOYWW from now on, as we are now settled into our new home and I am well on the way to getting my ARTHaven properly organised, but ongoing problems with my very elderly parents have to take priority, of course.

Woven Cane

When we visited my sister yesterday I noticed that she was working on a chair seat that she was redoing with woven cane. In the bin beside it was the old piece, which had evidently split down one side. I fished it out and asked if I could have it and she readily agreed – my motto plays out every day: “One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure”!! I knew I could do something with it – it’s a very decorative pattern with loads of potential, and definitely too good to throw away.

My original plan was to use it as a stencil, and also to press into gesso or Polyfilla (joint compound) to create a texture, and I still intend doing this, but then I thought I could get some mileage out of it as a digital image, so I started off by scanning it, and then created a texture overlay in Serif PhotoPlus. This file has now been uploaded to my SkyDrive – link in my sidebar – in my Texture Overlays folder (big surprise, that! Shoshi’s nothing if not logical…). If you want to download it and use it in any digital imaging projects, please feel free.

Then I added it to a couple of backgrounds in Serif CraftArtist. I like the pale, washed out greyscale-on-white one but I ended up adjusting the colour balance in PhotoPlus because I wanted it a more beigey-brown colour – I decided I would make a thank you card for my sister, using her woven cane.

I printed these digital images out, together with a sheet of 3-inch square pictures of the piece. These squares have had their background removed, and blended with the beige texture background. The remaining squares can be used in other projects.

Here is the card I made, using the beige texture background.

I cut out one of the smaller squares out, and cut around the edges of the printed design, and inked the edge with a small amount of Walnut Stain distress ink to hide the cut white edges.

I cut the beige background piece in half to A5, and printed the “Thank You” sentiment onto it. I trimmed it down by 1/8 in all round, and then distressed the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink. I took a sheet of plain white card for the card base, and distressed the edges with Old Paper distress ink, and then matted and layered the texture piece and the small square, which I added with foam pads. Finally I added a couple of leaves that I’d made from my stash, and a purchased butterfly embellishment as a finishing touch, and a small splash of colour.

WOYWW 149

Well hello again everyone – it’s Wednesday again, and that’s Desk Day!! Julia over on the Stamping Ground organises us week by week and we show off our messy (or otherwise) work desks for the world to see – click on the link in my sidebar to join in the fun.

My “Choc-a-bloc” mixed media project is progressing slowly. The first choccie box insert has now had its depressions between the projections filled with Polyfilla One Fill and it’s been in the airing cupboard all week! It’s had its first coat of gesso. The one on the left is ready to be filled with Polyfilla when I get time, and meanwhile it’s sitting on top of my hand-made paper from last week, and my Indian flowers. I have got a clay extruder coming from Ebay, and when this arrives I will be able to pipe some stems onto the project and really start to develop the piece.

Busy day today – we went into town this morning and went to the art shop where my hubby bought my birthday present (I’ve got to wait a while for it!) – he’s giving me a set of Derwent Inktense pencils – these are totally awesome! There will be more on this in due course. I also bought some nice heavy paper for mixed media work, and on the right of the desk you can see the new pens I bought for my Zentangling, together with a lovely fat 8B soft pencil for shading, and just beyond them, some cheapie little rollers and sponge applicators for my mixed media work. I bought a nice big tub of gesso too – less expensive than my Golden gesso. (That’s the tub that looks like ice cream lol!) Just beside that, the small white objects are some old fridge magnets that I’ve painted with gesso and which I will Zentangle eventually.

Finally, on the left, propped up, is my latest sheet of Zentangles – I’ve done a separate post about these. I am very pleased with how they are going!

I haven’t put my knitting on my desk this week because it looks pretty much the same as last week, only a bit longer!

The main thing I’ve done this week is revamp my blog background, which I hope you all like! It’s still a work in progress – see the post I did yesterday on it – and hopefully soon it will be as I want it.

Happy WOYWW everyone, and thanks to everyone who visited me last week – I hope to visit a few more people this week.

New Blog Background–Work in Progress!

Thanks to my friends Wendy and Rachel, I have now been able to get my newly designed blog background and header to work. It’s still a work in progress and I apologise if some of the headings aren’t yet that easy to read – for some reason the background is coming out much darker than my original design – it’s as if a dark semi-transparent layer comes down over it immediately after you open the blog. Hopefully we will iron out this small difficulty and you will soon see it as it should be.

Details of the Design

The header consists of a montage of photos (from left to right) of some knitting I did ages ago (now awaiting unravelling and knitting up again) – Kaffe Fasset style in yellows and purples. I love that tunic top, but unfortunately it is now too small for me, but one day it will be knitted again in all its former glory!

In the middle is a snippet of an interesting rock formation at the Bullring in Oban.

On the right is my first piece of hand-made paper made from recycled paper towels (kitchen roll), distress inks, DIY glimmer mist and gilding flakes.

The butterfly is an image I had on my computer, and the flowers are photos I took of several hibiscus flowers I made last year according to Penny Duncan’s cut file of the hibiscus flower – I extracted them from the background and they are now useful as digital elements in my projects.

I did the design of the whole blog background in a combination of Serif CraftArtist Platinum and Serif PhotoPlus, and the faux embroidered border along the bottom of the header was an element from CraftArtist. The montages were done by using different blending modes and transparency settings.

The main body of the blog consists of photographs I took last year of some ancient parish records dating back to the 1600s, from which I have created some vintage backgrounds. You can see some of them on this project – the book-style card I made for my mother’s 90th birthday last year.

Top left is a photo I took of some honeycomb, with a bee on it, and underneath this, and on the right as well, are some photos of a wonderful old cracked pot I photographed years ago when I got my first digital camera.

At the bottom on the left is a photograph of a beautiful wall that I photographed at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire when we were on holiday there several years ago.

I have also made a texture overlay of this.

Bottom right (but not really visible, I’m afraid, as it seems to be a bit cut off!) is a photo of a glorious Norfolk split flint wall. (I also made a texture overlay of this one.)

I love taking photos of walls, tiles, textures…

On both sides, I have added to the montage some of my recent digital backgrounds created from a still-life painting in oils.

Unfortunately, while the dark layer is still over the background, these are not visible.

I think this new blog background expresses far better the sort of person I am than the previous one, which I chose when I first started my blog. The new background incorporates my love of colour and texture, and photographing such things, and also some of the creativity I enjoy. It’s been a long hard slog to get it up and running, and hopefully over the next few days we’ll iron out the final niggles and you’ll see it in all its glory!

My Horrible Blog

My blog is looking HORRIBLE at the moment. I’ve been thinking for ages how fed up I was getting with the old background – I’ve had it since I first started, and it’s feeling pretty tired these days, and really doesn’t express who I am, so I decided to revamp it. I’ve designed a nice background in Serif CraftArtist Platinum, using my own photos, including some pictures of my own work.

Some time ago my friend Wendy sent me some instructions how to change the background, and I have been trying since last night, absolutely without success – the picture is coming out much too small, and if I try and change the size of my blog and the columns in the layout editor, nothing will fit.

I’m at the hair tearing stage now, and have emailed Wendy for some urgent help – and if I can’t sort this out, it will either go on looking quite ’orrible, or I’ll have to resort to another pre-made one, which I really don’t want to do.

So my apologies everyone for allowing such an eyesore to appear in my name in Blogland!! Hopefully it won’t be for too long.

Backgrounds from Oil on Canvas

Today I have created some new backgrounds to share, for use in digital art, or for printing out and using in other projects.

In the course of my parents’ clearing out their house in preparation for moving, they have been passing a lot of stuff our way, either for us to keep, or for us to take to the recycling centre for them. Amongst the last lot was a still life in oils that they no longer wanted; it’s rather dark and uninteresting, and certainly not worth much. We will probably try to sell it at a car boot sale along with various other items, but before it goes, I thought I would take some photographs of various parts of it, and create background images from them.

These were taken from the background of the painting. In each set, the first photo is the original, and subsequent ones are examples of the manipulation of the colour that I have done. I may also work on some other digital manipulation such as adding various filters, but that’s for another day. For this project I have been using Serif PhotoPlus X3 and using a combination of different Hue/Saturation/Lightness and Colour Balance settings, and converting the images to A4 size.

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

These are just a few of the backgrounds I’ve created from the oil painting. They are now all on my SkyDrive (see link in my sidebar) and can be downloaded free, if anyone wants to use them. You can also see them all in my Photobucket album:

http://s496.photobucket.com/albums/rr328/shoshiplatypus/Backgrounds/Backgrounds%20from%20Oil%20on%20Canvas/#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ24

Finishing the 3-D Silver Butterflies Card

Having completed the front of the card, I have now made a card insert and a box for it.

First of all, I wanted to finish the complete-cut butterfly svg with a mat layer, and here it is, cut in some fairly heavy silver-grey card with a bit of sparkle to it. This card is quite dense, so I used Sheba’s 60+ degree blade, designed for thick, heavy or dense card, and it cut really well after numerous tests – it was the first time I had used this blade which looks absolutely lethal, and I didn’t want to cut a hole in Sheba’s mat! All was well, though, and it cut fine.

This is the card insert I have made.

It is printed on vellum. The image was a free download from the Internet, originally in a very garish yellow colour. I desaturated it, and then replaced the colour with blue, and reduced the opacity, in Serif PhotoPlus. The sentiment is text on a path. The card insert is stuck down onto the left hand side of the card, up against the fold, using a narrow strip of double-sided tape. On the bottom right, you can see a butterfly cut in silver mirror card, stuck down onto the card itself, so that it just shows through the vellum.

Having finished the inside of the card, I moved on to the box. I made this from the same card that the mat layer of the butterfly was made from, and I covered the lid with a printout of another free digital image downloaded from the Internet. I didn’t alter this in any way apart from adjusting it to fit the proportions of my box.

Lifting the lid, the inner wrapper is revealed.

This is a single sheet that I had left of some printed vellum someone gave me ages ago – I really didn’t think I would ever use it, and then I suddenly thought it would do for this project! It is stuck down into the bottom of the box with some double-sided tape, and the two sides fold over the card. The butterfly on its mat is used as a closure. On one side it is stuck down firmly with extra-sticky double-sided tape, and on the other side is a glue dot which is enough to keep the wrapper closed, and can be pulled open by lifting the side of the butterfly.

Here is the box with the lid removed. I really love this vellum and wish I had some more!

Opening up the inner wrapper, the card is revealed.

Finally, here is the box, standing up, showing the 3-D silver butterflies card inside. I wanted to create an adequate presentation for a special card.

I am seeing my sister tomorrow and am going to give it to her then, although her birthday is not until the beginning of March. This is a combined card/present as a lot of work has gone into it!!

WOYWW 142

Another week gone by! On my desk this week is a continuation of last week’s project.

Having finished the 3-D silver butterflies card, I wanted to make an insert for it, and a box. I decided I would give it to my sister for her birthday at the beginning of March. We are seeing them tomorrow and I thought she could have it then – it’s really a combined card and present!

On the left is a piece of fairly dense silver-grey card with a bit of sparkle to it, which I bought at a craft show last year. It feels rather similar to the very stiff dark blue card that I blunted my blade and damaged my mat trying to cut when I first started with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, and not wanting to risk any such thing happening again, I used her 60+ degree blade, which is a heavy-duty version of the normal 60 degree blade. The small cuts at the top of the sheet are all the test rectangles I cut, starting with very low force and gradually working up until I was happy. I was then able to cut out the mat layers for my silver butterfly – I designed the mat layer in Inkscape today so that butterfly svg is now complete – the revised version is now on my Skydrive for free download if anyone would like to use it.

On the right of my desk, at the front, you can see the small butterfly on its mat layer. I did two of these; one of them is used as a closure for the inside wrapper of the card box. I am doing another post about the completion of the 3-D silver butterflies project.

At the back of the desk on the right are a couple of doilies that have been hanging around – I am going to use them in project sometime, and they need to be put away till I’m ready!

In the centre is the box I’ve made for the card, made from the same card as the mat layer of the butterflies. The lid is covered with a printout of a free butterfly background paper I downloaded from the Internet today. In front is the 3-D butterfly card open, with its card insert fixed in. This is made of vellum, printed with another butterfly background image I downloaded and altered the colours – I first desaturated it and then re-coloured it blue, using Serif PhotoPlus. The sentiment is text on a path, in grey. I have stuck down one of my complete-cut silver butterflies under the card insert, bottom right, and it shows through the vellum in a nice subtle way – so subtle you can’t actually see it on this photo.

Not sure how many desks I’ll get to visit tomorrow as we are going to my parents’ in the afternoon and I may be too tired later. I am not sleeping at all well at the moment and spend most of the morning in bed!

Happy WOYWW, everyone!

Valentine Card for my Hubby

Following on from yesterday’s post, I have now completed the card for my hubby for Valentine’s day, based on the digital layout I did last year, using Serif CraftArtist:

The first thing I did was to cut out the three layers of card with heart apertures, using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. Since learning from Black Cat forum members that setting the blade higher results in better cuts, I cannot believe how much better Sheba is cutting, and how much less force I am needing. I am now setting the blade two CDs’ thickness above the media on the mat. Of course, the card I am using has proved itself to cut very well – I have used 3 colours from the Tim Holtz Distress Core’dinations stack, not because I want to avail myself of the benefits of Core’dinations paper, but because the colours were more or less what I wanted – Aged Mahogany, Victorian Velvet and Milled Lavender. The effect is slightly less mauve than the digital layout.

I printed out a background on some 100 gsm paper, from the same digikit that I did the layout from – “Valentine’s Day 2011,” and cut a small piece from that, which I stuck behind the aperture in the Aged Mahogany paper, which is the back layer. (I also printed out a sheet of this background on some heavier card to go on the back of the finished card, to counteract the weight on the front of the card, and to finish it off nicely.)

I cut out some small hearts from red cardstock that I had – from an online paper mill, unknown weight but cuts really well – I cut 3 different sizes, ranging from 3/4 in down to just under 1/2 in. Some of these would be stuck down, and others would float above the surface on narrow acetate strips.

I thought I was going to have to make some new flowers for this project, but I had four pink roses left from my mother’s 90th birthday card that I made last year, and also various odd flowers that I’d made at various times, and with the addition of a few leaves and some dark red and white feathers, these would provide the embellishment for the bottom of the card.

Here’s a mock-up of the card pieces and the flowers.

Assembling the card was interesting. I wanted a good, deep dimensional feel to this card, to follow through from the digital layout inspiration. I used a double thickness of double-sided foam tape between each of the layers, and when they were all stuck together, I ran some double-sided tape around the edges and adhered some narrow pink satin ribbon with pretty picot edges to cover the rather unsightly edges.

Before I stuck it all together, I stuck some of the small hearts onto the background paper in the central heart, and stuck the rest onto narrow acetate strips, which I then glued between the layers, using Scotch Quick-Dry adhesive – a wonderful new find, thanks to Lucy on the Black Cat forum – it really does dry quickly, and it gives a very good strong bond, too. (Can one ever have enough different types of glue? One needs so many different ones for all the different things one does!)

The flowers and feathers were stuck down using hot glue, which has to be my favourite glue for this sort of thing, as it gives a more or less instant, very strong bond, and really is the only thing for making, and sticking down, flowers.

I had some difficulty cutting the small scalloped heart with the word “hugs” in the centre, as there was really too much detail to cut very small without the detail blade for Sheba (which I haven’t yet got). In the end I made it 2 inches across, and then made a mat layer for it in gold mirror card to show off the cut better. (I have just learnt how to do nesting shapes in Inkscape!) This embellishment was finished off with a small bow to match that on the floral embellishment, and also a tiny charm I bought at the recent craft show.

Here is a picture of the main design of the card. It measures 6 inches square.

To mount this whole design, I matted it onto some dark red card, and created a narrow mat layer in gold mirror card, which in turn was glued down to the main card, also made of the same dark red card. As the finished card is 8 inches square, I had to make this of two pieces, but the join is round the back, and mostly covered by the back printed background piece, so it is not obvious.

Here is a picture of the finished card.

The following pictures show various close-up shots, showing the detail of the embellishments etc.

The last two photos show the ribbon covering the unsightly edges of the layered card and foam tape.

After all my misgivings about not being able to make my dear hubby a special card this year, I have managed it after all! He is so wonderful, and does so much for me, and I am so grateful to have him as my lifelong companion and soul-mate, and I wanted to make him something special to let him know how much I appreciate him. I hope he likes the result!