Misty Mawn Style Canvas

Sweetpea is running a Misty Mawn Style swap in CCSwaps. The instructions were:

"These works of art should be created on either canvas board or the stretched canvas. Size - no smaller than 4" x 6" - no larger than 8" x 10". The backgrounds should be hand painted . . . the images may be cut from magazines, paperback books, etc. Please adhere with a good strong bond! Gel medium works VERY well. Please use some stamping on this project . . . background stamps, flourishes, writing, etc."

As usual, I jumped in with both feet and signed up for this swap as I love a challenge!

So anyway, here is what I did to make the swap piece:

1. I had some canvas boards and decided to use one of the 5" X 7" ones. I coloured it with acrylics and stamped a large hero art background tree with gray Versafine ink. I then stamped some flourishes with gesso and fluid chalk inks. Also added some "writing' with a stamp and fluid chalk ink.



2. I used magazine pieces and some left over printables for the image of the woman.



3. Now I can't draw if my life depended on it, but I was determined to try something on this canvas, so I drew the tree, the bird, the sun and the woman's legs using white paint as the base, filled them in with acrylic paints, then outlined them with black acrylic paint.



4. I went over the body of the woman with a bit of gesso and some of the acrylic paint (watered down) then dabbed it off a bit. I did this, as it seemed to make the image blend into the background a bit more.

This is my first attempt:




I felt it still was not quite right so I added more stamping, this time in black and some more colour around the edges and in a few other places. I think I am happy with it now.


I had absolutely no clue as to how to do this type of swap, so I did the best I could with it and had a lot of fun. Now whether it is acceptable or not ... who knows? Any comments or critique would be appreciated.

Rusted background

I ran across a new background technique on Judy Scott's blog while surfing the web for something else. I have visited her blog several times and love her work in textiles and was not aware that she did other art work.

You can see the instuctions at :http://judy-scott.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-rust-technique.html

Anyway, since this looked very interesting I decided to give it a try. I used acrylic paints and the colours I chose are darker than the ones in the pictures of the technique shown Judy's blog and maybe I got too heavy handed with the paint. However I enjoyed doing this and will be experimenting more with lighter and more vibrant colours or watercolours.

Here are the ones that I worked on today.

Next Generation Art Lottery

I think I mentioned in a previous post that there is a Art Lottery in NGS. I was the lucky winner last month, so fairies have been landing in my mail box off and on!!

As the winner, I got to choose the theme for August and I chose women. I have created a piece for the lottery and will be sending it out when the next winner is chosen.

I started off by painting a piece of 130LB cardstock using the technique I learned in the Altered Diva workshop. I stamped some word in Ancient Page black. I edged the piece with Mica Magic purple using a Colorbox stylus and black tip.

I went through my stash of paper and found some black embossed cardstock. I rubbed some Colorbox Mica Yellow Gold ink over it, then added Purple Mica ink. I attached this using 3M 465 double-sided tape.

I then added the puzzle piece that I had made long ago, and finished the piece off by adding some photo corners.

Fabric paper Project completed

I sat down tonight and worked on the piece for the fabric paper swap.

Unfortunately, my sewing machine is out of commission at the moment so I had to resort to using fabric glue to attach the fabric paper pieces to the felt backing.

I had initially started out using a fabric paper piece as the centre image, but was not pleased with it, so I used fabric flowers instead and attached a leaf punch-out from the fabric paper as the centre.


The piece also needed something at the bottom to finish it off. The only thing I felt was suitable was a piece of black fringe thingy. I decided black was too harsh, so I sprayed it with 24K Gold paint.


All in all, I am pleased with the final version and hope my partner will like it.

Fabric Paper

One of the latest swaps on CC Swaps run by Adrienne, is to make Fabric Paper and then create something for our partner from it. You can see examples of this technique on Adrienne's blog.


I decided to give it a try using Adriennes instructions as listed below:


Fabric/tyvek paper instructions:


You need:some fine cotton lawn type fabric, or open weave muslin, or tyvek, some printed tissue papers, gift wrap, or even waterproof stamped images on thin papers, cut into pieces, some PVA glue - (the cheaper the better) some plain white tissue paper, acrylic paints, dyes or other colourings mediums.


1. Paint the fabric with cheap PVA glue - diluted to single/pouring cream consistency, lay the tissue papers/giftwrap/images on top with spaces in between.

2. Apply another coat of diluted PVA glue over the top. Lay the plain tissue paper on top, press down all over to ensure good adhesion.


3. Carefully paint a thin layer of PVA over the top, and while this is still wet, use 2 or 3 colours of diluted acrylic paints, dyes or other things to colour the surface. Allow to dry - this can take an afternoon on the lawn, or overnight, or you can use a hairdryer at a push (don't bother trying with a heat gun, not much good for this).



These are the three fabric papers that I made. The red one is done with cheesecloth and the other two with Tyvek.

Africa Tip-in

The latest theme for the Tip-in pages is Africa. I had made a page with the Cuttlebug pasted technique earlier and gave it to a friend. I decided to do the same image for the Africa page as it is one of my favourite stamps. This page has more orange tones compared to the first one I made, and I have added some other pieces to it. The back page was done using a technique I learned at Western Educational Activities taught by Cathie Allan called Stamp Smooshie-Smooshie.