Three Little Birdies !

A few posts back I recommended the "Art Journal Freedom" book by Dina Wakley - it's full of good stuff about mixing colours and composition with lots of suggestions for journal page design, challenges and techniques. I was taken especially with one particular technique for an "artsy bird" design, so decided to have a go. This is the result and I tentatively gave it to Lindsay for her birthday last Friday - she seemed to like it a lot and has hung it on her wall anyway, so I guess it's okay - it's so hard to judge your own stuff objectively! - but I did enjoy making it and that's what counts.

I used an 8" x 8" canvas, gessoed and then painted with acrylic paints.  The trio of birds were a copyright-free image from The Graphics Fairy, traced onto the canvas, then outlined again with a Stabilo All black pencil, some of the lines wet-brushed over and painted.  Various stencils added with Dylusions Ink Sprays.  A little quote written onto the bird bodies - "Wherever There are Birds There is Hope" - and embellishments added to the top left-hand corner.

"Life is the Flower for which Love is the Honey"

Feeling ambitious - hmm - I had a go at another smaller 5" x 7" canvas using the same technique.  I'd been really drawn to this vintage bee image, again on The Graphics Fairy website, and knew I wanted to use it.  I used a flower stencil in the background, then rather overdid adding painty details to them, so I'm not very happy with the result.  But I may well  use the bee image again on another canvas.

The Birds have flown .......

..... or at least, they will have tomorrow - the "bird" atcs in my blog swap, that is!  That's what I've been spending part of this Bank Holiday Monday doing, sorting out everyone's cards and packaging them up ready for posting.  It's surprising just how long it takes to do this and the number of times I check to make sure I've not sent anyone their own card back!  There were quite a few taking part in this month's swap, but sorry to say, I didn't get round to photographing them all this time ...... but here are pics of some that I made for this theme.

Tomorrow I'll be posting the theme for June's ATC swap, so check back then if you're interested in joining in. 

New Swap - "A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME"

So here we are again, first of the month, and it's time to post a new ATC swap - sorry it's a bit late in the day, but a friend dropped by this afternoon and this is the first chance I've had to get on the computer.

For this month's swap, I thought I would choose one of my current favourite themes - birds.  As in previous swaps, you will need to make three ATCs and as the title suggests, each card should have an image of a bird (or birds) on it plus an image of a person - you may create your cards in any style, medium or technique of your choosing.  Here is a pic of an ATC I made some while back, which has an image of both a bird and a face on it - but this one has long been swapped out .....

Details about the swap are posted in the sidebar - hope a lot of you are inspired to have a go at this one ..... I welcome swappers both here in the UK and overseas, the more the merrier!

Thank you to those who joined in last month's April Fools swap - I've now swapped the cards out, they're packed up and ready to go, but I'll wait until Tuesday, after the Bank Holiday weekend, to post them out - hope everyone enjoys their returns.

Dream a Little Dream

I had a lovely surprise in the post this morning as I received this beautiful ATC from Sandra Zengler, one of my online friends, which she had created after reading my step-by-step instructions on how I put together my "Fill Your Day with Joy" card.  Sandra's bird stamp was in portrait rather than landscape, so she realigned all the elements and made it her own design - Sandra has used a glitter pen around the card edges rather than a Krylon pen and added the eyelet and fibres to the bottom of the ATC.  And of course, I love the extra "beady" embellishment!  Thank you, Sandra, for a gorgeous card and it 's great to see how my initial idea has been interpreted ......

..... and if anyone else has had a go at making their own version of this card, then I'd love to see how they turned out.

Tomorrow (time allowing) I'll post the promised step-by-step instructions for my "Nature's Beauty" ATC. 

Collaged Birds

I've been finishing off some ATCs for a Collaged Birds swap this week.  We had to create four cards, with collaged backgrounds and featuring a bird on them.  For my cards I used ATC-sized pieces cut from backgrounds I created some while ago, based on the "Inky Layers" technique in Bernie Berlin's book, "Artist Trading Card Workshop".  Basically, this consisted of layering down a mixture of papers, images, etc, some with inked edges, then sponging dye ink randomly over the top.  Over this you apply a layer of coloured glazing medium (I used a gel medium) and then more inks (pigment and irridescent).  It's a case of creating a look that you like and using whatever you have to hand, for example Twinkling H2O's would work as a final layer instead of the liquid inks. 

Over these collage backgrounds, I added the bird imagery, to tie everything together.  For instance, I added the "scrabble" words "Bird Call" to one card, because part of the collaged background included a torn piece from a telephone directory with the telephone numbers displayed.

Birds are one of my enduring favourite themes so I really enjoyed making these cards.

For anyone who's interested, there's still plenty of time to sign up for the Butterflies and Dragonflies swap - you have until 31st March to send your cards to me.