Abyssimo Style Abstract

Modelling paste anchored down with cotton scrim.

Once dry, edges cut off and tidied up.

Colour pallet chosen.

Paint applied. 

I wanted mine to be bright, bold and vivid.

There is a FREE tutorial by Abyssimo here which I followed to create the above.

Seth Workshops - Day One

I've just spent a lovely couple of days somewhere down Essex way in a fabulous village hall in a  place called Coggeshall organised by the ladies at Birds in the Barn.

We were all given a 9" x 12" watercolour book as the workshop was about using different paint techniques including monoprinting.  These are the two lovely ladies who I sat opposite.

Seth doing a demo, so we all crowded round his table.

This was page two.

Seth giving this lady a catch up as unfortunately she was a little late getting there.

You can't really see this page very well as for some reason my camera doesn't like purples or blues. But this was the best page as we had to go round to other people and press the pages together to see what transferred and obviously the longer it went on, the drier the paint got and the less transferred. My last transfer was a black transfer with Seth! 

And again sorry about the photo but it's mainly blue, but has lots of layers on.

Now the lady on the next table to us in the red top, I actually know through blogging. But I didn't know that until she introduced herself to me.

This was Bev, the lady I was sat next to. All the ladies on my table were only doing the one class.

There was also a pop up shop, but I didn't buy anything as it just had the staple goodies. I think it was probably in case anyone had forgotten anything or wanted to like buy PaperArtsy paints, as they are what we used in the workshop. Had there have been any stencils I may have had a purchase, but Mark forgot to bring them!!!

A Play Day Away

So yesterday I did a just over 300 miles round trip to go and have a play day with Chris.....

And Linda.

Once we'd had a coffee and a chat, we set to creating something. I decided to start a Teesha Moore style journal. As you can see, I opted for bright pages.

I can't believe that I actually didn't take one photo all day, so all these are pinched from Chris which is why there are so many of me and none of her!

We ended up making quite a mess!!

Lin was adding to the junk journal book that I had made for her, which you can see here.

And eventually the sun came out, oh and we got even more messier!!!

So here are some of the colours I used to paint the pages. Lovely and bright.

And the other sides. The green is actually neon and is lovely.

And this is the third set of pages which are the ones I was working on at Chris's.

And these are the other sides. You'd not believe how many images and magazines for cutting up she has! 

I think this page is finished. However, I do need to go in and do some doodling, but I think it's finished image wise.

And I think this page is finished too, again apart from some doodles.

Thank you both for a lovely chilled and relaxed, yet productive day. Thank you for keeping me supplied with coffee, taking me out to tea and getting me back to the A50!!

I'll be back again when I've worked on the rest of the book.

Oxides and Cling Film

Just a quickie, I used cling film on this one, quite like how it turned out. I used vintage photo, orange and purple on water colour card.

Oxides and Perfect Pearls

Had another quick oxides play today but this time instead of spritzing with water, I spritzed with mint perfect pearls. I'm hoping you can see the glimmer in the photo. I used peeled paint, faded jeans and broken china oxides on water colour paper.

And I did the same for this one using the pink, red and orange oxides, but this time I used the bisque perfect pearls which is like a gold.

Oxides and Stencils

So today I found myself having a quick play with the oxides and stencils. I was curious to see what would happen on black card. And, it works perfectly, however it does change the properties of the inks. This is actually peeled paint and vintage photo!!!

As there was lots of ink on the stencil, I spritzed in and then stamped it onto another piece of black card. You can just about make an image out, but it's a bit wishy washy.

This is the stencil I used and the end products.

Next I stencilled a face onto kraft card, again I used vintage photo, worn lipstick bottom left and broken china and fired brick top right.

I lightly spritzed the images with water and then used a heat tool to dry. This technique really brings out the colours, it sort of sits on top of the card as opposed to sitting in it if that makes sense.

Again I spritzed the back of the stencil, but this time I took the piece of card to the stencil to get an impression, blotted it off straight away, and this is what I ended up with, not bad I thought!

This is the stencil I used by Andy Skinner and the two pieces I created from it.

And for this last one I used water colour paper and used lots of different colours, blending them as I went along.

Again, spritzed the stencil and took the piece of card to it. Now this was an unfortunate choice of stencil as the words have ended up backwards but the technique was good!

Again the stencil I used, a Seth one by Stencil Girl, the orginal and the ghost from the spritzed stencil.

Another Oxides Play

So this morning saw me have another play with the oxides to see what else I could do with them. I created stripes using a paintbrush here. On the left is white cardstock and on the right is kraft cardstock.

I used them on glossy card too, it really sucked the colours out!

And yesterday my friend Helen told me that she'd been at a make and take and they'd stamped with water and got a good impression. She told me to really wet the stamp, hold it in place for a while and then blot it, which I did above, but again for me, it didn't work. However, it may be the type of card I used, so I won't give up yet!

For this one I used the blending tool and went direct from ink pad to card, spritzed the card and dried and as I was wafting the heat gun I kept adding more sprays of water. I went back in and added some broken china to the faded jeans, peeled paint and iced spruce.

I used a paintbrush to place the colours on this piece of card, it's much more controlable especially if you need to have certain colours in certain places. I dried before adding the next colour.

I wanted to see how they stamped with a detailed stamp and how they also stamped on kraft card. I used the red oxide and stamped onto watercolour card and then twice onto the kraft card. 

I spritzed the right image very lightly with water from quite a distance and then dried it. It's sort of given it an embossed look. Not sure if you can see the difference between them in this photo.

I used the ink blending tool for this background, I gave it a spritz and love how it came out, this is onto watercolour card. As I liked it so much I didn't add any further layers. I tried spritzing the stamp heavily with water again to remove the ink and although it worked quite well, you couldn't make out the image as I'm guessing it was too detailed. I just ended up with the outside edges, so I decided to over stamp it with the faded jeans and again not sure if you can see or not, but it looks like it's got a shadow around it. 

This is the stamp I used and once I'd stamped it above, I spritzed it and got three impressions.

I took the inkpads directly to the card for this one and didn't do anything else to it. I also left it to dry naturally. 

I again tried to do the stamping with the water spritzed stamp to remove the colour. You can sort of see here at the bottom that you can see the outside image but it's very faint. It just looks like a watermark.

And I don't even know if you will see this one, but I stamped the word unexplained right at the very top, again, it's very ghostly.

Still more play time needed!!!