Card Factory 2015–Florabunda Mandala Cards with Perfect Pearls

The first of two posts for today.

My next collection of cards is the Floral Mandala design, which I decided to colour with Perfect Pearls, to give a rich, jewel-like shimmering effect which would emphasise the complexity of the design, which has a somewhat Islamic feel.

The original design, printed on the laser printer.

Some time ago, I created a Perfect Pearls palette to make painting easier. I used a Tim Holtz ink palette, and followed the instructions from Creations by Christie. Here is my palette, together with the first Mandala that I painted, using a fine brush dipped in water, and picking up the colour from the palette.

The completed painting.

A word about one of the amazing properties of Perfect Pearls. Some of the colours exhibit interference properties. A good explanation of how this works can be seen here. The mica flakes in Perfect Pearls and other pearlescent/iridescent or interference pigments act like a diffraction grating, and the same principle  can be found in action in the iridescent and shimmering colours of peacock feathers and certain butterflies’ wings and beetles – these are not actual pigments but are visible as the result of how light is reflected and refracted off different surfaces at the microscopic level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Ts7CsJDpg

I suppose it’s because I am such a fan of bling and shimmering and metallic colours that I love this effect so much!

I recently had a foray into Twinkling H2Os which work on the same principle, but I did not find them as satisfactory as the Perfect Pearls in my palette – with a moistened paintbrush you can apply these fairly thickly and you get a very rich, iridescent and shimmery effect.

Several of the Perfect Pearls are labelled as “interference” colours, such as “Inteference Red,” and “Interference Blue,” but some of the other colours exhibit this property too, such as “Berry Twist” (one of my favourites) and “Blue Raspberry.”

When viewed at one angle, the colours appear somewhat dull and dark, but turn the piece into the light at another angle, and the shimmering colours emerge. I have photographed each of my pieces in turn, showing first the duller version and then the bright, shimmery version, so that you can see this principle in action. Some of the colours just appear brighter, while others actually change to a different colour. Compare the two pictures and see. These photos also serve to give you a close-up view of the drawing and painting.

First, the card with the red mount (the first one I painted).

The card with the blue mount.

The card with the purple mount.

Finally, the card with the orange mount.

Now a picture of each of the finished cards in turn, with details of the matting and layering.

For the red one, I opened a pack of decorative papers that I bought simply donkey’s years ago – so long ago that the shop closed a long time ago! This paper is rather thin, but it works fine for this. This card first had a 1/16-in matt layer of gold mirror card.

For the blue one, I created a 1/16-in matt layer with green mirror card from my stash. I didn’t think I’d be very likely to use this one, which someone gave me some time ago, but it turned out to be perfect for this card, with its blue-and-green colour scheme. The wider mount was created from a piece of scrap blue card which is quite thick and excellent quality, with a slight hammered texture, which had been the cover of a brochure (never throw anything out lol!).

For the purple one, I chose a piece of gold wrapping paper for the 1/16-in matt layer. The gold Perfect Pearls I used for this design was “Heirloom Gold” which is a softer, less bright gold than “Perfect Gold” which I used for the others, as I wanted a more subtle effect, and I thought that regular gold mirror card would also be too bright. This gift-wrap paper is quite thin compared with the gold mirror card, but it worked just fine. For the wider matt layer I used some more of the glitter card that I used for the narrow matt layers in my Brusho Trees cards project the other day.

For the final card, with the orange mount, I again used gold mirror card for the 1/16-in matt layer, and some orange glitter card as above.

By using different colours, and emphasising different areas of the same design, it is amazing the different results one can get, which makes them look almost like different drawings! It has been great fun experimenting with this, and certainly something I would wish to continue with.

Two Adult Drawing Pages

The second of three posts for today.

I have done a couple more adult drawing pages, both downloaded from here.

I wasn’t that thrilled with the first one, to be honest – not such an interesting picture, and I did it with coloured pencils which didn’t come out very bright. Being poppies, I think I would have done better to use my Sharpies to get more intense colour.

Here is the original printed drawing.

This is what I did with it.

The second one, however, I was very pleased with. For starters, I much preferred the picture, which had lots of potential for shading and different colouring.

This time I decided to use my Inktense pencils, which, true to their name, have intense colour. Being ink, once dry, they do not run and you can add more layers on top if you want, without re-activating what you have already done. Not that I did that in this case, though. I love the way they blend so well together with the application of a little water on a brush. They are quite sticky and waxy to use, and don’t run on as smoothly as regular coloured pencils and I certainly wouldn’t use them if I wasn’t going to add water afterwards. Adding water with the brush reminds me of another favourite childhood activity – magic painting! Who remembers that (or am I giving away my age!)… You had a greyish looking page with outlines drawn on it, and you would paint it just with water, and the colours would spring to life!

If you look carefully, you can see that I added some lines to the drawing, to make the trellis weave over and under, and added some little nails to hold it together! I think that makes it look better, particularly with the shading.

For the butterflies, I used a combination of Twinkling H2Os and Perfect Pearls. I bought a couple of little packs of the former at Hobbycraft recently and hadn’t yet tried them. Frankly I was a bit disappointed, after reading raves from people about them online. For starters, the packs I got seemed only to have pinks and browns in them which wasn’t terribly useful for butterflies. When I started using the Perfect Pearls instead, I think I was getting more intense colour and more shimmer from them than from the Twinklings, which surprised me a lot. Maybe I need to experiment further.

After I’d added the shimmer colours to the butterflies, I went around the outlines again with a permanent black marker because some of the lines had become indistinct where I’d gone over them.

Anyway, I was very pleased with the results – the butterflies are really shimmery! They stand out in contrast against the background. Of course, most of this doesn’t show up on the photos, but I’ve done my best to do them justice.

I am having fun experimenting with different media for these adult colouring pages. I must try good old-fashioned watercolours, acrylics, mixed media, foiling, embossing, pastels and chalks… the possibilities are endless! One thing I have learnt, especially from my experience with the poppies one, is that you need to choose the correct medium for the picture, so that you do it justice. Soft, subtle colours do not work on an image which calls for bright, vibrant shades.

A Spoily Day

Today I had a day of spoilies as my hubby calls them – he has been waiting to give me a spoily day ever since I’ve felt better after the last chemo, but I’ve been too busy with my mystery projects and had no time to go out.

Our first port of call was the Ricky Grant Day Unit for my bloods (not that that was particularly spoily!). For once I wasn’t kept waiting very long at all, and a nurse I hadn’t seen before called me in, and in no time at all, she had the gripper needle in, the port flushed, and the blood out – I hardly felt a thing! It was the most painless and hassle-free ever. She was very nice (as they all are) and very friendly. I asked her for more of the cow cream and she gave me a new pot, and I handed in my MRSA swabs. Back again tomorrow for chemo session #5.

Last time I was there for my chemo, I got into conversation with a lovely nurse who told me that her husband and her daughter were in the army, in the Royal Engineers. I told her that my grandfather had been in the Royal Engineers in the First World War, and she was very interested in that. Before going today, I had a rummage in my buttons box and found the Royal Engineers uniform buttons I’d inherited from my grandfather with all his other buttons, and took out two to give to her. She was totally overwhelmed and thrilled with this, and said her daughter and husband would be thrilled too – she said I had made her day! Actually her lovely response made my day – it was so touching!

Over a year ago I started making a large album about my dad, but had to set it aside in favour of the smaller one that I wanted to make for our niece. This large album is a project I want to take up again as soon as I can. All I have done so far is the ancestry pages, one of which is about Grandpa in WWI, and I am going to take this page in for the nurse to see tomorrow. On it is one of Grandpa’s buttons!

After this we came home, and made plans about our lunch out. My hubby had suggested we went out for lunch today, and our original plan was to go to our favourite place on the sea front, and then trundle along looking at the sea – it would have been the first time I’d been out on my buggy for months! However, the weather was awful today and it was more like November than August, so we had a change of plan. I asked if he would take me to Hobbycraft in Newton Abbot so I could pick up some of their own brand polyester filling for my angels project – I’ve been recommended this as one of the best around, and it will certainly be better than the awful lumpy stuff I’ve got!

So we went to the Passage House Inn, right down on the River Teign, where we have eaten lots of times in the past. My hubby had the carvery, and I had steak and otter pie – I was a bit worried about eating otters until they reassured me that it was Otter Ale!! It was absolutely delicious. I was very good and didn’t have a pudding – I’ve put on 4 lb in the last fortnight and I’m anxious not to gain too much weight. Although I have abandoned my diet until I’m through all the surgery and chemo, I have been trying at least to maintain my weight at a constant level!

Hobbycraft was brilliant. I hadn’t been before, and there was loads of great stash there! I got my polyester filling and then had a good old rummage through the whole shop. After a while my hubby went and sat in the car to read his book, and I am afraid I succumbed to temptation despite my resolution not to spend any money on more stash this month lol! There’s no hope for me – I’m an addict.

Here is what I bought.

At the back, the polyester filling. Middle row L-R: Tim Holtz tissue tape, Twinkling H2Os (I’ve wanted these for years!), a glue stick, some clippy attaching thingies by Tim Holtz. Front row: 2 packs of fat quarters with small prints to make angel clothes. Love how they are packaged with the ribbons and labels!

I signed up for a loyalty card and got £5 off my order.

In the shop they had quite a few different embossing and die-cutting machines, and I saw the Sizzix Big Shot Plus for the first time – what a dream machine! I am soooo tempted… I have had an old-style Cuttlebug since I started and it works just fine, but it is very small, and the idea of being able to emboss up to A4 is extremely attractive! Has anybody else out there got one, and what do they think? I’m not thinking of doing anything straight away but it did look gorgeous.

Then it was time to come home. I was pretty tired by then, and had a cup of tea and a sleep.

I saw something that amused me today – while I was waiting outside the hospital for my hubby to come with the car after my appointment, I was sitting outside the Physiotherapy Department and through the open door I saw this crutch:

You can see it propped up against the wall in the corner. Anybody using a crutch like that must need physio lol lol!!