'Art Retreat' stuff

The Singer dummy was the best company you could have whilst away. She wasn't in the least bit demanding, never wanted to know what was for dinner, didn't want endless cups of coffee or where were her new jeans.....have I washed them yet. Didn't gloat about her hour glass figure or frown at me when I ate 2 icecreams and she watched over me every night like a guardian angel and didn't even snore. (Apparently I did....very loudly....scared the cat)

Well I don't seem to have much to show for a whole week of doing nothing but art. Here are some twinchies (2" x 2") I did. Top left looks awful but it was a technique I was trying out to get the look of encaustic without the wax. It looks better in real life. Bottom left is an exercise I tried after reading it on some ones blog. Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 56, find the fifth sentence on that page and either use it as a prompt or a quote. I used it as a quote A lot of stuff I did will never see the light of day. Some went in the bin, a lot will be cut up as backgrounds for inchies, twinchies, ATC's and skinnies and quite a bit will be painted over. But I had fun!

Heart Art

Here's a journal page I did yesterday. The journal itself is an address book that I picked up at the op shop awhile ago. It's a fairly modern book but with an oldy worldy look about it with quite nice script in it. I'm not usually a 'heart' person, but listening to the radio the other day I heard a line from a poem that struck a cord. It was written by a guy named Barry Dickens after suffering with terrible depression. He'd had such positive feedback from many listeners that he wrote a poem expressing his gratitude. I don't normally drive around in my car listening to poetry either, but I just happened to catch this particular programme and thankfully I've never suffered with depression. The quote is "the oddness of an extra heart".

I used a couple of different shades of acrylic green, smooshed and blobbed on, then blobbed and smooshed and wiped off yellow for the backbground. Some heart stamps around the edge and cut two hearts from different papers. The heart with the words has drizzles of glue with gold Fab Foil over the top. Edged the hearts with watercolour crayons.

"She Journal"

Over that last two months I've been doing an art journal class with the very talented and sweet Audrey. The journal was based on sayings from one of the Compendium books which is titled She......lots of quotes in it. Last night was my last class (some of the others are doing an additional 2 lessons). Audrey forgot to bring her camera so I said I would take some photos and put them on my blog for her. This is the front cover, transparencies, chipboard shapes, and some small charms tied to the binding. We made those last night. That Audrey.......she comes up with the most amazing ideas.

This one I call "Penis Head" for obvious reasons. We had a good laugh about it last night and I promise she will eventually have a lovely flower or butterfly applied over the offending appendage. After I had done the page, I sat back and looked and couldn't quite pinpoint what was wrong with it, until I looked closer and realised that what was in fact part of her head band, looked liked a penis. Yikes!!!!!!!

This page is not quite finished but I wanted to include some of the pages we did in class with Audrey. This consisted of heat embossing, glued down gauze and down one side of the silver heart will eventually be another quote from the book.

This is a photo of some graffiti on a building at the old Ramida recycling centre. The whole place is overed in it with thousands of discarded spray cans strewn all over the ground. Such mindless vandalism!

Another of the pages we did in class, although I had a bit of an accident with this page on the way home so I had to alter a couple of things on it.

I just like this page!

One of the quotes we tore from the book and smudged with gesso.

Photo copies of photos. Parts of them put through the cuttlebug embossing folders and then sanded back and smudged with stuff.
Thanks Audrey for sharing your creative ideas with us all .

Some of the charms we made and a beauftiful beaded charm that Audrey made for us all, these were attached to the binding with jump rings.