Bookmark

Hi and welcome. Sorry I have been so tardy in visiting your blogs, but I've had the flu and I've strained tendons in my right hand from some over-zealous gardening!...absolute nuisance as it has restricted what I'm able to do. Hopefully it is on the mend.
At http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ this month's challenge was about books. What I had planned for this didn't happen, instead I've decided to go with a bookmark, using vellum, page from an old poetry book, and cardstock.

The vellum design was drawn with a very fine sharpie pen and coloured using Lyra pens. The images were then dry embossed on the reverse side, to give them a raised look. The outline was pierced (just like pin-pricking) and torn to give a lace-look edging. A border was done in a silver permanent liner. An additional butterfly was done in the same manner from vellum, fussy cut and placed over the original one. This top butterfly was given a fairly dry brushing of  3D Stamping Paint to give a slight sheen. The vellum was mounted to the poetry page using brads. This was then roughly torn to the same shape as the vellum layer. Both layers were then placed on cardstock layers. Punched flowers were added around the edge. These were left-over cardstock from Distress Ink experiments. With these in position, the bookmark edge was fussy cut to follow the line of flowers.

Added butterflies were punched from left-over poetry and old manuscript music bits. A beaded edge was added. Because I decided to go with the 3-D look for this bookmark, a length of wide ribbon was added for the marking of the page inside a book, so that the rest of the bookmark resides on the cover.

 

The outer edge of the bookmark was also finished with the 3D stamping paint.
Thank you for looking and for continuing to leave positive comments. These are truly appreciated and I look forward to catching up with everyone as as soon as possible.
Cheers, Di.

FANTASY GARDEN

Hi and welcome on this glorious spring day! Perfect weather for gardening and that's what I'd been doing earlier.
This  month's challenge at:http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ is all about fun and quirky! Well, if my garden plants were anything like the ones on my layout, they would certainly fit this criteria! I certainly had fun, firstly doodling the background, them adding the pops of colour by making flowers.

I've been doodling for years, and certainly used this as an art technique for students in my classes to make art works and book covers, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that this technique is now called zen tangling! I picked up a book ( The Art of Zentangle) last week to see what was different, and discovered the extent to which this form of doodling has taken... very interesting indeed!

The dies used for the flowers were T.H: Tattered Flower Garland, Tattered Florals and Mini Paper Rosettes. The photo is of a protea I used to have in the garden, but unfortunately, no longer.
To complete the layout, I used Lyra aquarelles, to give a random wash around some of the doodles.
Thank you for visiting.
Cheers, Di.

Finally, an art journal!

Hi and welcome. Just a very quick post, sharing the beginnings of an art journal... something I've had on the back burner to do but never seemed to find the time to actually start. Thanks to Julie's mini-challenge this week at http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ I've actually made a start!
It's going to be a working journal of my experiments with paints, inks, sprays and other mediums and how these react on various papers and background surfaces.

Stage 1 of front cover... gesso, Dylusion sprays and stencilling. This ended up as a surprise. After gessoing and spraying over the stencils, I didn't like the result so gessoed over the whole lot. I used a different stencil, sprayed and then spritzed the rest of the area with Dylusions and Perfect Pearls Mist and let it run. As it dried, SURPRISE!! the top layer started sinking and some of the bottom layer started appearing... INTERESTING!!!! LOVE IT!!!!!

The writing isn't perfect, neither are the samples.. it's how they have turned out. What I'm planning to add at some stage, will be samples or photos, of how and were some of these techniques have been used.
Thank you for visiting and for your continued positive comments.
Catch you again soon.
Cheers, Di

Bouquets For A Special Day

Hi and welcome.
This is the inspiration image for this month's challenge, at: http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ so pop on over to see what the rest of the team has done.

 

The layout I did for my DT piece at Pixels and Paper brought back very special memories of a very special day, 40 years ago.... yes, September 1st marked our 40th Wedding Anniversary!

 

The background paper was a beautiful piece which had a gorgeous lace design on it, so it was left as it was. Ovals were cut from different papers. One was a piece I had sprayed flowers on for previous projects, so I'd been left with a lovely stencilled piece.

 

 

 

Before attaching handmade flowers, I cut up a coloured photo of the bouquets and added them in. Flowers were made according to the tutorial by Jennie http://jennie-livethedream.blogspot.com.au/

(Some are supposed to be roses, by not as good as Jennie's... I need a lot more experience to have them looking as gorgeous!!)

 

 

 
The chipboard flourish was heat embossed with Opals embossing powder.
The flowers in our bouquets were made extra special as they featured orchids which  had been grown by my dad.... even more special memories!

The challenge is open to any interpretation. We'd love to see you join in.
Thank you for visiting and for leaving such lovely comments. Welcome also to my new followers.
Cheers, Di