Mystery Project–Part 3–Turquoise Heart

For the second of the three hanging heart ornaments, I chose a turquoise and terracotta colour scheme. As I started making this, I decided to give it a suggestion of a Spanish theme, because the friend for whom I was making this one loves visiting Spain. I also wanted to make a more colourful, and perhaps more illustrative and pictorial, frame than for my other friend, the artist, for whom I made the brown frame.

This colour combination as a new one for me, and I was inspired by Zsuzsa of InkyDinkyDoodle blog – she uses a lot of these colours and I’ve always thought how lovely they were! Thanks, Zsuzsa. I’ve been meaning to try these colours for a while now.

I began by getting out various bits and pieces in order to choose what to use for the various embellishments on this frame. I didn’t use the poultry grit (broken up bits of shell) in the end.

I decided I wanted to add a couple of small terracotta pots as embellishments, and knew I didn’t have any such ready-made embellishments in my stash, and slept on it for several nights, wondering how to achieve the look I wanted. When I started rummaging in my mixed media oddments box, I came across a bag of empty silk cocoons that I’d bought several years ago at a craft show, and thought, “Perfect!” Not only were they exactly the right size, but they also had just the right texture, too! I trimmed them down to shape so that I could stick them to the frame.

To create the top edge of the “pots,” I stuck down two different thicknesses of string. This proved to be a very fiddly job and I couldn’t get the string to stick at first, and then I tried doing it with Glossy Accents, which eventually worked. You can see that I have cut one of the little pots to look as if it was broken. They look a bit dirty around the top because the cocktail stick I used to help me stick on the string was a bit grubby! No matter – they were going to be painted anyway.

The first step was to paint them with gesso.

Now they were ready for painting with acrylics. I used Burnt Sienna and created shadows with Burnt Umber.

On a scrap piece of watercolour paper which I’d cut to fit the recess in the frame, I painted a simple seascape and fixed it in place.

I cut a short length of black lace and stiffened it with some watered-down PVA glue and stuck this in place – reminiscent either of a Spanish mantilla or of the black wrought iron balconies so commonly seen in Southern Spain.

To create an impression of sand, I added some pumice gel medium and painted it with acrylics.

The frame was then ready for the rest of the embellishments.

Here are the flowers and leaves I used.

To stick the little pots in place, I filled the backs with hot glue and then stuck them in place with more hot glue.

Here is the finished piece, with all the embellishments stuck down with hot glue.

I shall be giving my friend this little heart in the New Year when we are planning our lunch get-together which had to be postponed from before Christmas. She doesn’t visit my blog so I thought it would be safe to post about it before she receives it!

Here are the first two hanging hearts together. At this stage I hadn’t done more than the basic preparation on the third one.

Mystery Project–Part 2–Brown Heart

The first of the three hearts that I worked on was the brown one. This was for my friend who is an artist, and I thought she would appreciate a more grungey, earthy tone. This turned out to be an excellent choice for her as she told me she is working a lot with these colours at present!

I began by using the original back piece of the frame to trace the shape onto some corrugated cardboard to make the background of the altered heart.

I tore off some of the top layer of paper to expose the corrugations.

I rummaged through a lot of my mixed media supplies to find the right sort of mesh to overlay the bottom part, and eventually decided upon an old roll of scrim which I think was originally supposed to be used for plastering walls – I’ve had it for many years and can’t remember where it came from.

I cut off a length and stuck it down across the bottom of the frame, pulling it as tight as I could.

I then did a bit of experimenting with inks and paints to get the effect I wanted on the corrugated cardboard.

I used three shades of Distress Stains – Pumice Stone, Gathered Twigs and Walnut Stain, creating a mottled effect. When this was dry, I added a little Treasure Gold gilding wax and a touch of Antique White Rub’n Buff to highlight the corrugations. The gold doesn’t really show up very well on the photo.

Here is the corrugated cardboard in place in the frame.

Turning it over to work on the back, I packed out the recess with more corrugated cardboard and secured it in place with masking tape.

I used the outside of the heart frame to trace the piece of cardboard for the back, and distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

I stuck this onto the back of the piece and signed and dated it.

Here are all the brown roses and single-piece flowers that I made for the brown heart. They have also been highlighted with some Treasure Gold gilding wax.

The brown leaves, together with a few of the flowers, ready to be stuck to the front of the frame.

After sticking down the mesh, I added a couple of lengths of different thickness of jute string and tied them in a bow. The overhang of the mesh and the excess string was trimmed off flush with the edge of the frame.

Time to add the flowers and leaves. Here is the finished result.

When she came over and I gave her the heart, she was intrigued by the various processes I’d used, and we had a short session up in my studio where I demonstrated first how the roses were constructed, and then showed her the gilding wax – she has achieved similar effects with dry brushing. It was very interesting comparing notes about how we have achieved similar results in other areas, by using different methods. She has only recently branched into mixed media art from more of a fine-art background and is exploring different materials. Quite an adventure and I am very excited about it, and can’t wait to see what else she is going to come up with! I was so pleased that I’d hit the right spot with her little heart, with the colour she would have chosen, and the different materials and textures.

Mystery Project Revealed–Part 1–Preparation

I can now take the wraps off my mystery project. I made three little hanging heart ornaments for friends, one of whom has not yet received hers, but since she doesn’t visit my blog, I thought it was safe to reveal all!

One friend asked me some time ago if I would make her a hanging heart ornament for her bedroom wall, and I couldn’t find the sort of papier mache or MDF heart that I wanted, with a hollow centre. Eventually I managed to find a set of three little heart-shaped photo frames on Ebay and decided to get these, and alter them, and it worked really well, particularly as I had two spare ones to make up for two other friends. I began with these two, as they were more urgent – we were planning to meet up for lunch but it has had to be postponed until after Christmas.

The three little heart frames as they arrived.

I took them apart and saved the glass and the back pieces for potential use in projects in the future, as I only wanted the hearts themselves.

The next step was to paint the frames with gesso.

After this I painted them with a base coat in acrylic, and added some crackle glaze.

The frames with the top coat applied.

The brown and turquoise ones crackled fairly well, but the silver one did not – I didn’t really mind, though, because on that one the majority of the surface would be covered with roses anyway, and I quite liked the streaked effect of the purple paint showing through the silver.

As seen on previous posts (please scroll further down for details) I made a selection of paper flowers to embellish the three frames.

I also made a selection of leaves.

I didn’t use all of the flowers and leaves, and reserved the rest for other projects.

I was now ready to begin with the first of the three hearts.

WOYWW 422–Infusions, Gesso and Socks

Well, here’s some amazing news from Shoshi – managed to spend some time in the studio this week and actually start creating again!! It felt good, good, good.

My desk on Tuesday evening:

Over on the other side of the room it’s pretty chaotic as well, because I’ve got a lot of knitting stuff out – no point putting it away while I’m still looking for colours for my socks!

I needed to make a card quickly for someone but as it turned out, I knew I wouldn’t get it finished in time, so I found one I’d made some time ago and gave her that one instead, but continued with what I’d started. Unfortunately the Infusions Mini-Album is still on the back burner but I have been working with Infusions again.

Remember this technique using gesso from my mini-album?

I really loved the effect you can get by applying gesso to the surface, sprinkling on Infusions and then brayering over it. It gives a gorgeous subtle streaked effect.

In the four samples above, I did the first one (top left) in the standard way, and the rest were the result of mopping up the mess on the craft sheet, and adding more gesso and infusions. The Infusions subtly colour the gesso the more they are mixed.

I made a selection of die-cut circles from these samples. I’ve started making some card bases with gesso and inked backgrounds to put these on, and they will then be embellished in various ways. This is a stash-busting exercise as much as anything – covering up some over-bright card I couldn’t see myself using, and turning it into something useful!

The outer two pieces in the above photo were done with gesso and some stamping with Distress Inks, and the centre one just with Distress Inks and Infusions. You can see full details of these here.

Toe-vember

The project from our church to provide socks for the homeless is ongoing. I’ve finished the blue pair and am very pleased with the result. They are great fun to do.

I’ve now started on a really bright pair, using rainbow colours with black. Why knit boring colours when you can go a bit wild and make something that not only keeps people’s feet warm but can help brighten their lives a bit too, with a bit of fun and colour?

I am hoping to complete at least one more pair after this, and hopefully if the appeal goes on, I can continue – but even if it doesn’t, there’s an initiative from the local churches to help the homeless in lots of different ways, so there will be an open channel to continue to use.

Kitties

The kittens are still in their little suits.

We are taking them back to the vet’s this week so that Lily’s stitches can be removed, and they can both have a good check-up to make sure they have done OK since their operations. Lily has been on antibiotics since her operation because they found an ulcer in her mouth, and this needs to be checked too. The poor little thing has had diarrhoea since being on the antibiotics and I think we are all keen for her to finish them asap so she can get back to normal! She’s been a bit subdued, which isn’t surprising. Ruby has been her usual bumptious self – that kitty is so full of enthusiasm for life and has the exuberant character of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh stories! It’s very flattering how much she loves me and how she gazes up at me when I’m giving her a cuddle, and she instantly turns on her little purr engine! After years of two kitties who hardly gave me the time of day if my hubby was around, this is such a joy!

I shall miss it when her little suit comes off. She looks so like a little baby in a babygro! That is one dinky kitty.

Lily is definitely more bonded to my hubby than she is to me. I am so glad about that, and the fact that we now have “one each” as it were!

Health Update

Still no appointment from the hospital for me to see my surgeon. The hernia is causing me intermittent problems (slight pain and discomfort, and Kermit, my stoma, is definitely not as settled or easy to manage as he was last year) and it’s now visible. I am most anxious to avoid a repeat of what happened at the beginning of the year – it was exactly in this state when I had the blockage that put me in hospital for 2 1/2 weeks… I really hope my surgeon can be persuaded to get this sorted once and for all.

I had a blood test at the surgery on Monday in advance of my oncology appointment next week. This will be the final 6-monthly check-up, as it is now two years since I got my all-clear; thereafter they will see me once a year for three years, and then, all being well, I will be discharged. I’m not a bit concerned about next week’s appointment as I am convinced the cancer was all dealt with at the time, with surgery and chemo, and also, my latest CT scan in September to check on the hernia also revealed no evidence of cancer.

Backgrounds with Infusions, Inks and Gesso

Returning to my Card Factory for this year, over the last couple of days I have made some backgrounds using gesso with infusions, and distress inks, and have die cut circles from some of these backgrounds.

The materials used to create the gesso backgrounds.

I spread gesso onto a piece of A6 card with a palette knife, and immediately sprinkled on a mixture of Slime and Rusty Car Infusions from set 2, and spritzed it lightly with water, and brayered over it, which spreads the infusions into parallel streaks. This is the sample at top left. There was quite a mess on the desk so I brayered this on to the subsequent cards, adding Infusions as I went. The colour gradually got more blended with the gesso with each subsequent sample and all are useable and slightly different.

The finished samples.

I mopped up the rest of the mess onto an A4 sheet and added more gesso and Infusions as required. For this sample, I brayered over the top of the right-hand side of the sheet and left the other side to dry naturally.

This is the final mop-up sheet, with further Infusions added, but no additional gesso.

These two A4 sheets can be used in other projects.

From the four small A6 samples, I die cut two different sizes of circles and also some larger circles from some printed card I had in my stash.

I am keen to use up quite a bit of stuff that’s been hanging around for years – much of this card is far too brightly coloured for my taste now, or not of a pattern or design that I am that keen on, being part of sets I bought many years ago. With a bit of treatment they can look perfectly reasonable.

I cut a piece of orange card 5 inches by 10 inches and folded it in half. You can see the original colour on the scrap underneath the background piece.

I applied gesso all over, using a foam brush. This left a lot of unsightly brush marks, so I spritzed it with water and then blotted it with a crumpled up piece of kitchen paper. I applied more gesso and repeated the process until I was happy with the result.

I heat dried it, and then stamped it using the Artistic Stamper Harlequin stamp (C349) without an acrylic block, stamping fairly randomly and taking care not to press the whole thing down each time. I stamped using Iced Spruce Distress Ink, and then distressed the edges with Aged Mahogany, using a home-made ink blender.

In the above photo, you can see the matted die-cut circles laid on top. This circle will be stuck down in the centre and the card base folded in half, and I will stamp something on the die cut circle and/or add some form of embellishment.

Moving on to the next piece, I took a piece of yellow A4 card and folded it to A5, In the following photos you can see its original colour, and the results of toning it down with gesso and inks, giving a much softer and more subtle effect.

I applied the gesso, again using a foam brush, but taking care to use only vertical and horizontal brush stokes, and then spritzed it lightly with water. Once I’d heat dried it, I used the same harlequin stamp, this time with Tattered Rose Distress Ink. Using an ink duster I added a bit of Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink randomly, and finally distressed the edges with some Aged Mahogany Distress Ink (visible on the photo above). Again, you can see the die cut circles chosen to go with this particular sample.

I decided to create a different background without gesso on another piece of the yellow card. For this one, I blotted off the Iced Spruce on the harlequin stamp, over most of the surface of the card until the stamp was clean. Then I added a small amount of Slime Infusions (from set 2) and repeated the stamping process, this time using another Artistic Stamper stamp: Calligraphic Mat #12, us9ing Aged Mahogany Distress Ink.

I applied a little Hickory Smoke Distress Ink with an ink duster, and also some Milled Lavender, both with an ink duster and with a home-made blending pad to distress the edges somewhat. Finally I added a small amount of Blackcurrant Infusions from set 1, randomly here and there.

Here are the three backgrounds so far, with the die-cut circles not yet glued down. I am not sure how I am going to embellish these yet, but they will all need the heavy book treatment to flatten them out properly before then.