NATURAL BRIDGE

Over at ARTastic this month, we have a fabulous inspirational artwork to use... a piece called Frozen Music,  full of colour ad suggested movement  by Roy de Maistre .

I have taken advantage of our added requirement of swirls to complete a double-page layout, with doodled flourishes and swirls using a silver Sharpie. This has been done as a vertical piece in keeping with the photos.

The photos are of the Natural Bridge at Numinbah,on the rim of the Mt Warning crater, about 30 minutes from the small township of Murwillumbah on the far North Coast of NSW. My layout is reflecting the photos showing a flow of water from a creek and its progression, tumbling down a steep rocky outcrop into a cavern where it cascades into a pool before once again splashing out into a small creek. As a child I enjoyed visiting this area and wandering along the track to the cavern beneath. We always called the site the Natural Arch but somewhere over the course of time this was changed to Natural Bridge. It's a great place to visit, especially after a period of good rainfall, when the cascade is even more spectacular. At the right time in the evening the cavern is filled with little bursts of light from the glow worms.

Close up of page 1

Close up of page 2

The background is on a pearlised cardstock and water drops have been cut from glitter cardstock. I've added strands of glitter yarn, fabric and paper orchids in the colours taken from our inspirational painting, acetate butterflies and dragonflies and painted chipboard mushrooms. The edges have a drawn border of water droplets, again using a silver Sharpie.

We'd love to see what you could do with our inspirational artwork and of course the added criteria of swirls. These can be in the form of doodling, swirls on your background paper, or added embellishments. Pop on over to: artastic and check out what the rest of the team has done using our artwork for this month.

Catch you again soon.
Cheers, Di

1974 PLUS OODLES OF DOODLES

 

Hi and welcome.

This month at ARTastic, we are using doodles to create added interest to our artwork. I've probably gone overboard with my doodling for this layout, but I find it quite therapeutic! This originally started out just in black and white, but I decided to add some colour, using Pan Pastels in some of the segments.

 

 

Doodles done with an ultra-fine sharpie.

The photo I've used is one of self, taken in 1974. I was dining out at the Italo-Australian Club in Lismore with my husband. This was one of our favourite places to have an enjoyable meal, authentic Italian,  followed by dancing in the auditorium.


The inspiration picture of these quirky hens have lots of loops and dots doodled around them. I chose these elements when designing some of the sections. I also used music notes... the chooks must have music to dance to, mustn't they?

Picture by Antje Collis... "Tra-La-La"

Also, I was given the opportunity, at ARTastic to present the Tips, Tricks and Techniques segment  for the month and continued with the doodling theme, producing some card fronts using the same techniques. This time, instead of using a photo as a focal pint I used stamps. I took some of the stamp features to turn into design elements.

Black and white... again ultra-fine black sharpie

Laser paper smooshed with distress inks before doodling

Colour added with ultra- fine sharpies.

 There's till time to show us your doodling. We'd love to see what you come up with. Pop on over to:
artastic to see what the rest of our team has been up to.
Happy doodling.
Cheers, Di

PATTERNING

Hi and welcome. Thanks for stopping by. For Anything But A Card, this month, we've had the theme and challenge of patterns. To go with a previous canvas, I've done another, again in black and white, using a mandala idea, combined with different patterns. I like the look of these and  am tempted to do a series of them for a wall.... quite dramatic! The canvas size is a 45cm square.

 The design was drawn onto white cardstock, cut out and adhered to the canvas with Collage Pauge.

I started the design using a compass and drew  concentric circles and  a flower design.... always knew I liked geometry for a reason!

Further layers were added to make the design more elaborate

 

With the basic design drawn in patterns were gradually added

For the patterns I used an ultra -fine Sharpie pen. I like these because they give such a fine line and are permanent. Larger sections of the design were blocked in with a slightly thicker Sharpie.


   

 

 

 

Close-ups of the patterns used.

To finish off, I used some stick-on gem stones (black and clear). This added an extra dimension as well as helping to hide some wobbly cutting!
All I have to do now is to do another one or two....?!!!
There's still time to join in the challenge. Why not pop over to have a look at what the rest of the design team as done at: http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/

Again, thanks for stopping by and having a look. I really appreciate your comments.
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.

My Little Book of Doodles

Hi! Today's post is all about my entry for Anything But a Card Challenge, using black. I don't usually have a problem with this, but wanted to try something other than a layout. I've been working on some special Christmas projects with a special "Girls Rock" group at the school where I had taught for 34 years, before retiring, using Petaloo Magnetic tags. These are brilliant as they can be used to create many projects, including mini-booklets for a special memory folder, which the girls did for Christmas. While these were being designed I started thinking about the challenge and came up with the idea of making a doodle booklet. Again, this Incorporated art techniques I had done with my classes over the years, where the students had to "Take a line for a walk" and then fill in the shapes made with interesting designs.This not only taught them about patterns, but also about the concepts of space, balance and contrast. Their artworks also became functional, in that they were often used as centrepieces for book covers.



Front cover

The front cover was decorated with grey and black patterned Washi Tape, patterned vellum, which I hand embossed, embossed acetate from my stash and chipboard flourishes heat embossed with Opals Embossing Enamels in Currawong (black) and Zeehan (silver). I also added a doodle drawn with Ranger Embossing pen and dusted with Perfect Pearls and finished with strips of bling and metallic braid.


Inside pages showing inchie sized doodles

My little booklet can be added to as I find or develop interesting patterns. Some have already been used as a background for a layout I'm working on.
I have used the idea of 'inchies' in which to draw the patterns; a small surface area, and a way to have heaps of different designs. As I don't have an inchies frame stamp, the squares were hand drawn (after searching for a ruler in inches, not as easy as you think, because of our metric system). This framework has been scanned to the computer for future designs. All patterns were drawn with a superfine Sharpie.

The inside front cover feature 2 ATC's using doodling done in white gel pen and finished with Washi tape.

The inside back cover has a doodle centred around a stamped image (inspired by craft Stamper magazine, Nov. 2012 issue. Thank you, Lisa). A swirl of bling, black beading and Washi tape completed this.
The insides are held in place by zig-zag binding, allowing for additional pages to be easily slipped in.
This was fun to do and I now have something that I will use. As my folder is already fatter inside then intended, I've added a binder ring and some pretty metallic fibre wools to help hold it together, and also gives me a way to hang it.
Thank you for visiting. Cheers, Di