HANG IT ! All for a mini-challenge

Hi everyone!  I'm pleased to be hosting the mini-challenge at Anything but A card this week and am so looking forward to seeing what the end results will be. To enter this challenge, pop on over to:
http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/

I chose the theme "Hang It", firstly so that crafters / artists with many varied interests could perhaps be tempted to join in. I'm visualising anything that can be hung; including from people (jewellery, scarves, hair adornments, ...), walls, ceilings, windows, posts, mailboxes, trees, gates...  (the list could go on and on and on......)  and out of any medium.
As a retired teacher, space was often an issue in the classroom, especially when wanting to display work. One of the easiest and in the end, artistic, ways was to hang it, either on wires stretching across the room or as mobiles.
For the inspiration piece I have made a sun catcher/mobile. This is going to be photo heavy, so please bear with me, but it was the best way to show you what various elements looked like.

Photo taken when hung on the verandah

close-ups  of  sections of sun catcher taken indoors

The materials used were: a piece of stainless steel wire, wrapped around a bottle to create a spiral and acetate from packaging. This was treated using two different methods. Flowers were diecut and coloured with alcohol inks. This was applied directly to the acetate and then daubed.  Some were edged with glass effects gel medium. The remainder of the designs on the sun catcher were stamped on the acetate with Stazon black ink. The reverse was coloured using Tria pens and Peel-off pens. Both of these have a permanent ink base and a lovely brush tip.

die cut flowers photographed on white card

Chocolate Baroque Mackintosh Windows and Macintosh Beauty Sets. Black thread was replaced with fine wire.




To add some more sparkle to catch the sun I threaded lengths of crystal beads onto jewellery wire and added them, together with some 'jewelled' braid. The other item used came from my son's fishing supplies... swivels used for his lines. These allow the various bits and pieces on the sun catcher to move as they catch any breezes. On a sunny day, the glints of light bouncing around the room are really beautiful!
I do hope you feel tempted to join in the challenge so I can visit your blogs and leave a comment.
I know I truly appreciate comments left on my posts.
Catch up with you again soon.
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