Cards from New Year Masterboard

I managed to make six cards from yesterday's masterboard.  

Again, it was just a matter of putting the pieces of the masterboard against various colours of card.  Red was the first colour that clicked for me:

Then burgundy:

I came round to the teal last:

A close up of this last one:

All of the cards have 'Happy New Year' penned inside using gold ink and a calligraphy nib:

And one more snap of them all together:

Happy New Year!

A New Year Masterboard

I've been enthralled by the white fairy lights on trees and windows at this time of year, and so I decided to try my hand at a masterboard of whites and golds.  I really enjoyed the last one and have been itching to do another.

I started with white and buff acrylic paint pulled with an old credit card across a page of A4 prepped with gesso.  I then did a second layer with white and metallic gold acrylic paint.  It would have been good to snap a photo at this stage, but it did not occur to me until later... 😒

I then mixed a bit of golden yellow with white to make cream, and stencilled very small cream snowflakes over the gold bits.  I then stencilled very small acrylic metallic gold snowflakes over the white bits.  Finally, I used individual letters and numbers to stamp '1 Jan' and '2018'.  I also have a stamp that is slightly suggestive of a firework, so I also randomly stamped that all over as well.

These close-ups show a bit more detail:

Next, the tough part . . . cutting it all up:

This next photo show how the gold paint reflects the light:

So now to turn these into New Year cards ...

(...which are now posted here).

A Simple Christmas Card

Work and other things have taken over my last 6-8 weeks, leaving almost no time or energy for card making or other creative endeavours.

This morning I rose early to make at least one seasonal card.  I've had this stamp (made by A Stamp in the Hand) for several years now and I never could figure out what to do with it.  It just didn't seem to combine well with any of my other stamps, and it felt too simple just to stamp it (and possibly layer it) on a card.  

As it turns out, simple is exactly what I needed.  It's probably what I need every year, in terms of how long it's been since I've managed more than one or two hand-made seasonal cards.  

I did edge the top layer with white pigment ink and subtly whitened the snow with white pencil -- gel pen and paint  were too prominent and disrupted the coherence of the image.  

It was nice to get the sleeves rolled up and briefly dip into a bit of creativity.  Maybe I should make a couple more and send a few belated season's greetings...

Two more ...

...autumn envelopes.

There's something about these big envelopes that I really find freeing, in terms of experimenting with Gelli-printing.  I also really like using prints for envelopes.

I stamped the leaves (PaperArtsy) over the top, using pigment chalk ink

I like the contrast of the red and orange against the gray, faded summer flowers.

I'm still working out how to use real leaves in my Gelli-prints.  These served as outlines rather than 'prints':

I started and ended with some ghost layers (before & after the print with leaves) for more texture.  And this is how it turned out:

Autumn Gelli Printing

Autumn leaves and their colours always inspire me.  As a result, I've been a bit distracted from my composition lessons by my Gelli plate and the desire to capture some autumn splendour.  

This first one and a few below were done with a favourite stencil called Leaf Specimens by Joggles.  The next few were done with pressed leaves from outside my home.

I find it challenging to achieve the colours (and colour combinations) I'm aiming for.  Some are a bit too bright and garish:

I think the one above and the one below would benefit from some additional embellishment ... maybe with gold and black pens, or dark brown calligraphy ink.

Others are a bit too diminished by the layers or by the addition of too much brown:

The camera also washes them out (or rather, my lack of photographic skills).  😏

Still, I do enjoy playing with colour and the anticipation of how it will all turn out.

And this last one is merely a unplanned nice surprise -- the result of pulling paint from the holes of a stencil (Balzer Designs Pointy Circles)  for the early layers of a few of the prints above.

Happy Autumn!!

Learning Composition: Lesson 2

I've moved on to lesson 2 of Jane Davies' downloadable workshop The Keys to Dynamic Composition: the abstract landscape.  This  is  a very different exercise than lesson  1.  The first photo is the composition midway through:

I'm glad to still be using up bits of my Gelli prints, albeit small bits, most of which got painted over.

The finished version (I think):

I can't say I'm satisfied with it, but that's not really the point.  I'm learning.  Perhaps one of the most important things I'm learning is to tolerate results that are less than satisfying.  While I've always known this is important and that I'll need to do a lot of 'meh' stuff to develop the skills and knowledge to make stuff that is really pleasing to me in its final form, knowing this in the abstract and knowing this in the doing have been distant relatives for me.  This has meant I haven't done a lot of doing!

Importantly, I also found the process enjoyable.  

It feels like it needs something further, but I don't know what that might be.  I'm also not sure about the maroon top; it's possibly too strong and though I tried to knock it back, I didn't want pink.

More to come...

Two More from Lesson 1: Learning Composition

Two more attempts from lesson 1 of The Keys to Dynamic Composition, Jane Davies' downloadable workshop.

None of them look quite the same in the photos.  I'm sure knowing how to translate pieces into truer photos is a skill in itself.

I like the yellow one the best of them all, and it is the one in which I deviated most from the instruction -- or perhaps just stretched the instruction the most.  This is good learning for me about what I rely on for visual interest and what I am less adept at.

An enjoyable process of learning so far.  I also really like that it gives me a use for my Gelli prints (bits of which are incorporated into both).

I'm looking forward to lesson 2.

Learning Composition

I know very little about composition and so I often get stuck when trying to do collage.  As a result, I rarely do collages even though I really love them.  So I decided to try the workshop from the Jane Davies Studios called The Keys to Dynamic Composition.  She's got a bunch of downloadable workshops on the page, and you can find this one if you scroll down a bit.

So these are my first clumsy efforts from lesson 1.  Without giving too much away, one instruction from this first lesson is to work with a limited range of one colour.  My first two involve working with warm reds:

My next two efforts involved working with cool greens:

By the time I got to that last one, I had run out of ideas.  In fact, this photo is an upside-down version of it, which looks better to my eye than the original, right-side-up version.

So far, I really like the approach; it combines: 1) reading content (in a downloaded pdf), 2) short video demonstrations, 3) doing the exercise(s), and then 4) considering some reflective questions.  

In fact, I intend to do one or two more having written a bit (on a different journal page) based on the reflective questions.

It also feels really good to be using my art journal to experiment, learn, practice, reflect and just enjoy playing with shapes and colour.  There's something particularly freeing about the very focused approach and not needing it to be a little masterpiece (which isn't really realistic for me anyway).

Gelliprinted Envelopes Using Leaves

It's autumn where I am and I'm inspired by the leaves turning colours.  These large envelopes are the perfect medium for leaf prints on the Gelliplate.

I've got this one addressed and about ready to go...

Last Cards from First Masterboard

My intention with this first masterboard was to stick with it until I made cards from all of the pieces.  Too often, my attention is drawn to something else before I really learn what I've set out to learn from the current project or technique.

I played with pieces of paper, card and masterboard and got stuck for awhile (my normal pattern).  Got unstuck today and put these last three together:

I'm still debating whether or not to add anything else to the one below.  Maybe the textures and colours can stand alone...

Not really keen on how this last one (below) turned out.  I tried a variety of things, and nothing really seemed to work.  Still, happy to have completed the exercise.

And the last three together. I've not made envelopes yet, and I actually don't have any gelli prints from my overflowing folder that would work.  So...must get out the gelliplate!

All in all, I like the masterboard approach.  I'll definitely be doing it again.

Card 4 from First Masterboard

Card 4 has involved stamping and painting over the top.  I received a Tim Holtz Stamping Platform as a belated birthday gift a few days ago, and it made this effort possible. 

I did learn something from my first attempt, which I'll pass along.  The stamp stuck to the paper, possibly from the amount of pressure I applied combined with the multiple layers of paint on the base page (from all that masterboard activity).  This resulted in pulling the paper out of its original position and the second stamping wasn't perfect (which is the point of the platform).  For the flower's stem (a separate stamp), I applied more ink to the stamp and less pressure, which meant I had to do a couple of pressings, but that was fine.

So I'm in the zone of using up old Gelli prints.  The size of this card required a larger size of envelop than could be made with a single piece of standard size paper (A4 here), and so I had to extend the top a little bit.  The brown is a little warmer than it looks, on my screen anyway, and the little butterflies are more visible.

And here are the two together.  The brown on the envelope is the same hue as the base of the card (the lovely colour of dark chocolate).  The two will be winging their way to the bearer of the stamp-platform gift.

The flower and stem stamps are from PaperArtsy -- JOFY Stamp Set 51 (also a birthday gift 😊).