It may not look like your average wedding card but this card is for my niece who has just got married to a lovely guy and I know this is more her style. They look more like elves than fairies as they don’t have wings but I would say they are soul mates.
Here are a few of my little Bower birds stuffed with lavender. You can find the tutorial at Attic24 where Lucy also makes the bower for her birds to sit on. A couple of these have flown to new homes already so I might make a few more.
I just love the muted bright colours in this blanket. I can’t tell you how many times I ripped it back when I found I had made mistakes but I finally got there in the end and just before we had that nasty cold weather. Lucy over at Attic24 has a fab tutorial on how to make this lovely blanket with lots of pictures. I think I have now got the crochet bug so I will do small projects often to make sure I don’t forget what I have learned.
My first attempt at a Granny blanket. Many years ago my auntie Lena gave me a small Granny blanket which had become so well used that it was rather tatty and full of hole so I thought at first I could maybe mend it but it a lot of the threads were almost bare so I sought out a pattern that looked fairly easy and gave it a go. I actually started it a few years ago but gave up because crocheting hurt my shoulder and I just couldn’t get to grips with it at all. But I still had all the wool just lying in a bag so I gave it another go and this time I cracked it. I made the squares using the tutorial on lovely Lucy’s blog over at Attic24 then added a wide border. The problem with leaving a project for a couple of years is that when you run out of your favourite shade of wool you find that the makers have either discontinued that colour or you get a different dye lot and the shades don’t quite match-up. I also found that if I kept my right elbow touching the top of my wheelchair tyre then I am less prone to lifting my shoulder up therefore I got less pain. I liked it so much that I went on to make a bigger cosy blanket again using one of Lucy’s tutorials.
I have made a few cards along the same theme. Just by using different colours of Brusho with a matching matt you can achieve very different looks using the same stamp.
I have had this warrior stamp for years now and never quite had any ideas on how to use it until now. I masked it out and then stamped the moon over it and just stamped the tree branches afterwords. With just a little shading to make the moon glow.
I did try to make this zentangle pattern random but it is very difficult not to end up making a pattern, not that it would have mattered in the slightest. I shaded in the wide areas rather than the pointy areas just to get a different look. The photo is taken from above and it looks curved because my card wouldn’t lie flat. Instead of black and white I might do this one again in colour next time.
Another attempt at a mixed media painting Chris Forsey style from his video Pushing The Boundaries of Watercolour. I did try to change it a little from his original by adding a tree stump into the centre of the pond rather than having a large focal tree in the central background but am not that sure that it worked. I used too strong a yellow in the background and the painting in real life looks more like there is a forest fire in the background rather than subtle evening sunlight. I quite like it though and it was fun to paint.
I love watching Chris Forsey paint, in fact I could watch him paint all day, he can take rather ordinary scenes and fill them with vibrancy and life. Over the last couple of months I have tried different painting techniques using a variety of media. Chris Forsey’s video, Pushing The Boundaries Of Watercolour, shows you how he starts with a couple of sketches or photos and takes you through his thinking process and how he achieves his resulting masterpieces. I have tried to follow a couple of his paintings from start to finish while changing them ever so slightly. I do like my results but still see many mistakes. This was painted using oil pastels, watercolour, and acrylic inks on bamboo paper.
Here is my latest attempts at a watercolour painting. I was working through Paul Taggart’s lessons and although I did learn a lot I haven’t really done them justice. I am still a bit heavy handed with the paint and my colour mixing needs more practice. There is so much I don’t like about this painting but in doing it I did learn quite a bit and after all I do need the practice. I used bamboo paper just because it was handy and in a gummed block but next time I do watercolour I will use watercolour paper and maybe even stretch it myself as I haven’t tried that yet. Thanks for the lessons Paul.