Watercolour

Hi and welcome.
Watercolour has been the inspiration for this month's challenge at ARTastic:
http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/    This has been an interesting idea to play with. I have dabbled with watercolour paintings over the past years (self-taught) and decided to use one of my earlier attempts as part of my layout.
The background was an embossed cardstock, washed with a very wet wash of blues, reds and yellow watercolour paints. The watercolour painting looked too harsh against the background, so I tore the edges to soften the appearance.

 Aquarells were added to the background to extend both the  painting and the photograph, so that it melded together more. Some stamping ( Darkroom Door 'Foliage') completed the layout.

 

The photo is part of the beautiful Japanese Garden at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden in Hobart. This is a beautiful garden, a place of tranquil beauty. The ducks were cut from another photo taken in the  grounds of a motel on the Derwent River at Rosetta, near Hobart.  The white duck is a resident but is often joined by other ducks and seagulls. It was a very inquisitive duck and wandered around the property, popping its head through open doorways as if to say 'Hello. What are you up to?'  It gave us quite a laugh when we were photographing it, as it had the most pronounced waddle we'd ever seen. We are keen to go back to Tassie to  explore more.

Thank you for visiting and for leaving your comments. I look forward to reading them.

Cheers, Di

 



Faery Fantasy

Hi and welcome. I normally do layouts for the ARTastic challenge, but this time I decided to do a reverse canvas, so I could add more depth in layers. I've also gone for a fantasy theme, with 'wings' as the main feature. Pop over to have a look at the site to see what the fabulous design team has been up to. http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au
Gesso was applied to the background of the canvas and the frame around it. Once dry, the whole piece was stippled with acrylic paint to which I applied a retarder to help colours blend and to slow down the drying time. The whole piece was then sprinkled with salt to lift off some colour and leave an interesting finish. I didn't paint a recognisable landscape, just let the paint do the work. Using the paint retarder and salt held things up for a while... took a lot longer to dry than anticipated (even with quick bursts from the heat gun).

Canvas stipples with acrylic paint

To fit with the impression of foliage I stamped on flowers and leaves, fairies and butterflies.



Stamping done with Distress and Archival Inks. Wool lines are criss-crossing the canvas.

Below, a close-up shot showing stamps



 

For the wings, I used a heavy watercolour paper and watercolour paints using various techniques: wet-in-wet, dropping in colour, variegated wash, stippling and salt spatter. These colours were painted on as solid blocks, dried, cut around and folded in half with the reverse side showing

Wings in various shapes and styles were drawn. When cut out, additional features and shading was added using Lyra aquarelles, Lumieres, Acrylic Glitter Glaze and bling. One set of wings was formed from a bought chipboard flourish, coated with Opals enamelling powder (Currawong) and finished with crystals.

Now I would like to welcome you to Shaylee's Fashionable Faery Wings Shop. This exclusive little shop caters for very discerning fairies who want a unique, hand-crafted set of wings for a special occasion or outfit.

Shaylee, when I met her, was very friendly and very keen to show me her designer wings. She had these displayed on fine spider web filaments, held in place by some cooperative butterflies. (A couple must have flown off when I arrived).
If you find one of the elusive fairy glades, be sure to make yourself known and ask about Shaylee's shop. You may be lucky to find her, because she wanders from place to place, loving to travel and meeting other fairy folk and finding new ideas.
The sign on Shaylee's shop is written in Gaelic, which I hear, is a language familiar to all fairy folk. (I'm hoping that I have translated this correctly and I apologise to any Gaelic-speaking readers, if this is incorrect in any way... information came from various sites on the net)

A fibrous wool, material leaves and flowers and a velvet butterfly completed the piece.

Thank you for visiting.I love reading your comments and words of encouragement. Cheers, Di