Opus Gluei Challenge #68 You've got to move it move it!

The poobahs over at Opus Gluei have challenged us to make something using old/existing stash stuff.

This is an A4 picture I have just finished and framed for my Mum's 81st Birthday.
It is using some more of the very first pack of designer paper that I bought and I still love it AND I have a big pile of it so I will still be using it when I am 192.  I will shinify my zimmer with it.
DCWV Pocket full of Posies 12" size.
It is inspired by Zetti style but mainly artist Allison Strine's work.

I bought the digital bird images from www.magicpug.com  
They are copies of old paintings of parrots and other exotic birds.
I resized the birds to suit the A4 size and just printed off their heads to use.
There are some great images for sale there.

I now have two ways of altering designer paper to fit a project.

1. Use white gesso to tone it down or scruffyfy it.
The green patterned paper was a bit too bright for the grass so I painted white gesso over it and immediately wiped some of it off again using a baby wipe.

2. Brayer an ink all over it and then spritz some mica powder mixed with water in a Tim Holtz mini mister.
I needed some jazzy shiny brown cardstock for the tree trunks so I transformed a piece of the purple and orange card in the pack. First I brayered over all of it using Adirondack dye ink in currant. Then I mixed up some dark greeny bronze mica powder with water and spritzed it all over. Lovely shiny.

I can't say enough good things about a Speedball brayer used with inks.

Apart from using the brayer to make background ink patterns you can

• Ink up large stamps really evenly if you apply the ink to the stamp using a brayer.

• Ink up stamps with more than one colour of ink. I don't know how many times Craft Stamper instructions have said ink up your stamp with these colours without saying how to do it without contaminating your ink pads with the other colours. So I realised that if you ink one half of your brayer with one colour then turn it round and ink the other half with another colour and leave a little gap in between the colours you don't mix colours on your ink pads. Then use your brayer to ink your stamp in the different colours and any contamination of colours won't matter because it'll be on the brayer and not the ink pads. Sorted at last.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Zetti ATCs Jan 2010, The Artist Trading Club

Chriss at The Artist Trading Club suggested watching Teesha Moore's youtube.com videos to see how Teesha goes about journalling Zetti style.
There are 9 videos.
First one is called Layer 1: Paint.
Then a series of 4 called Journalling Collage
and a final 4 episodes called Journalling Pen Work.

They were fascinating to watch, even if you don't like the style they are worth watching to see another artist at work and the processes she uses.
It's one step further along the nosey road of What's on your Workdesk Wednesday (WOYWW).

Having watched the videos I got organised and followed her instructions to the letter, improvising if I didn't have her craft materials but staying true to the style.

Firstly I painted a background using Reeves soft sheen acrylic.
Teesha recommends soft sheen because pens often bleed and won't flow properly on matt acrylics.

Then using cut up bits of designer paper as I didn't have any magazines I glued on a border with white PVA.
Teesha uses magazine cuttings and copies of previous journalling pages and a tape glue roller.

I took some photos of my progress at each stage.




Then you collage a central image.
After which using PanPastels you add some shading around the border and central images.

They look like that awful 1970's make up to me.
If you're old enough to remember using 1970's make up you'll know what I mean.

Teesha had a PanPastel sponge tipped tool to apply the stuff but I had to improvise as I had neither.
I used Versamagic chalk ink applied with a cosmetic bud then dabbed the cosmetic bud on my tongue so the ink would shade evenly away to nothing.
A little bit of spit did the trick.



For the journalling Teesha recommends Sharpie poster paint pens, in medium nib, fine nib and extra fine nib in white and black. Copic sketch pens. Caran D'ash Crayons.
I have none of those so used a black Staedtler pigment liner 0.1 size and a white Sakura gelly roll med gel pen. These suited the ATC size space.

Teesha explains how to shade your lettering so that it appears that you have a consistent light source.
If the sun is coming in from the top right hand corner then your lettering will have shading on the left side and the bottom. Anything that is facing right is NOT going to have shadow.

The things I found out about my crafting preferences is firstly that I dislike journalling.
I really really do not want to write all over my pictures.
I had to force myself to do it and I only managed to do it on two ATCs before rebellion struck.
I obviously only like my stories on the side or on the back and not all over the front.
I don't mind a quote or title but not writing all over.
I couldn't care less about shading on lettering or lettering styles.
Secondly I don't like doodling at all either.
I have absolutely no desire to create dark or macabre pictures.
Teesha uses absolutely no shiny. None what so ever.
Wot no shiny?
Nope.

The one thing I did like was making up bright, cheerful and funny central characters.

Click on the images to make them bigger if you want.











Despite all this I enjoyed doing the challenge, as I like trying new art styles.
I love the end result and I really didn't want to part with them; but I did, spit and all ;-)
(If you got one and are concerned, they were sent in clear plastic wallets so you don't have to touch them!)

The other thing is I don't really enjoy working this small.
So I don't imagine I will be making that many ATCs in the foreseeable future.
But I retain the right to change my mind, so please don't hold me to it. :-)

Whatever you are up to, happy creating!
Gini
xx

Spanky does Zetti Julia

So Spanky wanted to try her hand at Zetti, and I have to say I like Julia better this way, she's a sparkly shimmery hottie now, even if I do say so myself.

Do you think Spanky is the only stylist to use splendid gold rollers when setting hair?
I would image Posh Spice will require them when she reaches a certain age but right now, Julia is one spoilt unique lady.
Most of the time I wouldn't have the brass nerve to go out in public in rollers, but when the wind is in my fur, well anything is possible. :-)

Click on Julia to make her bigger. I don't think I would use this phrase if Julia was Julian.




How Spanky made her

Once again out came some DCWV Pocket full of Posies card for the background and all the extra bits. I cut out some patterned blue circles from another sheet of the same pack of card. I used Sakura stardust clear pen to add lots of sparkle to things. I also used a mini butterfly punch to punch out the mauve butterflies of yet another sheet.
I edged as much as I could with a white gelly pen to tie everything in together. I used DecoArt Rich Expresso metallic acrylic to paint her hair and then painted Splendid Gold (what a brilliant name) curls.
Her crown is a green size Woodware punch and edged in white gelly pen.
I drew her dress on watercolour card. Cut it out. Painted it acrylic Viridian Hue (which is a lovely mid green blue colour.)
Painted Ice Blue Glitz-it glitter glue over the top. For large areas I prefer using the big bottles of Glitz-it glue either by squeezing it out thick straight from the bottle (watercolour card is firm enough to cope with this) or by spreading it around with an old nylon bristle brush that I wash out straight away afterwards with washing up liquid. For little glitter details, blobs and thin lines you can't beat Ranger Stickles.
If you spread the glitter glue with a paint brush you don't get such a dense amount of glitter and you can therefore change the shade of the glitter glue by painting the background in different acrylic colours. (Watercolours won't work because the glue contains water that will reactivated the paint and smear it about unevenly, unless that is the effect you want.) You can achieve endless combinations of glitter colours this way with the same bottle of glitter glue.
I used a heart punch to decorate her dress, again white edging around each heart. Do the edging before you stick them on the picture. I used various round "jewels" stuck on with white PVA.
The black and white border is a black fine point Sharpie and white acrylic paint applied with a straight edge shader no. 3 paint brush. A straight edge shader brush gives you a straight line without even trying. A no. 4 works as well.
Julia's legs and arms are bugle beads. Thread them on some sewing cotton, lay a thin line of Anita's 3D Clear Gloss down and then lay the line of bugle beads on the top. Straighten the line up with two cocktails sticks one on either side of the line then remove the sticks. After a minute or two carefully pull the sewing thread out of the bugle beads and voila, sparkly limbs!
I ummed and ahhed whether or not to colour her face with make up, and chickened out in the end with the fear of spoiling the picture. I think I quite like the contrast.

I still find the massive head a bit creepy, but the shiny certainly lessens the squick factor a bit for me.

Happy Crafting everyone!

Gini

Opus Gluei Challenge #27 Copy Cat

Well I've chosen Zetti style for my Copy Cat for the Opus Gluei challenge this week.

I've been too scared to try Zetti before, mainly because I get so upset when I mess up on a project. You don't get to sketch with pencil 'til you get it right; you just pick up a pen and go for it. {{{shudder}}}
You know when you "add" a bit extra or try something a bit different and then you want to cry 'cos you just ruined it!!!
And you have to go to bed to recover even if it's 10 in the morning and chocolate won't make it better. (Maybe some Nice n Spicy Nik Nak's when you get up though...)

But do you know what? I don't think you can mess up with this style, as it seems anything goes, and if in doubt, you just add some more to it, how excellent is that!

My internet connection was down when I was working on this so I wasn't able to research it and had to rely on my memory (Never a good idea).

What I could remember was lots of stripes particularly black and white, in borders and arms and legs, lots of doodling, people completely out of proportion in their bodies, lots of strange parts added to their bodies. I couldn't remember seeing any shiny, but overlooked that fact because Shiny Zetti works much better for me! Now that I've googled "Zettiology", I'm glad I didn't have the internet doing this, as I'd have been overwhelmed and probably stalled again.

Click on the image to make it bigger.



How I made her

She's a A6 card (roughly 6x4")

Background paper DCWV Pocket full of Posies 12" card stuck onto card with double sided tape.

The black marker is a fine tip Sharpie, which has me very impressed with it.
The white is white acrylic paint and also White Gelly Roll pen by Sakura or SourKraut if you can't remember but still need to have a stab at the name regardless :-)
The rest is Sakura Stardust pens which are great but the ink comes out quite fast so you can't hesitate or muck about dithering.
The finer flow Asda gelpens allow you to dither as much as you like. 25 for £2. I think you could buy three quarters of a Sakura pen for that money but I like having both :-)
I'm pretty sure I bought my posh work shoes in the sales and topped up on Sakura pens with the money saved. Maybe a similar justification will ease your conscience too?

The lovely lady is Julia, a Cherry Pie Stamp from the Julia Plate.
In this picture she is looking more like Nora Batty but Nora wore American Tan wrinkled round the ankles tights and my Julia is posh with her trendy stripy stockings.

Although I do think patterned tights looked horrible in the '80s and they look horrible in the 00's as well!
I'm too tall for tights, unless I fancy wearing the crotch around my knees, so in the '80s I wore stockings, but not being a morning person I would often go to work in mis matching stockings, and it wasn't just that the patterns were different, sometimes the colours were as well. Too much information? Probably.
Sheesh why can't fashion be flattering to a person?
Have they learned nothing from Spanky ;-)

Happy Crafting Everyone!
Gini
xx

P.S. I no longer do Fashion, I now do Comfy - but don't tell Spanky.