'Happy Ever After' Canvas

This is a 8"x10" canvas that I started a couple of months ago - well, I had gessoed it and stuck some pages of text onto it, then I didn't know what to do with it so it has been waiting on the side of my desk ever since!

Inspired by some of the lovely paper dolls I've seen around on Flickr and the like, I decided to have a go at one myself. I drew the face onto some canvas and coloured it with some soft pastels. I was pleased with how it turned out but think I made a mistake by outlining the eyes and lips with a black marker - still it's ok. The clothes are scraps of handmade paper and the arms and legs again are coloured with some pastels. The wings are rubber stamping onto some more handmade paper. The doll was then stuck onto the main canvas.

The background is a mixture of soft pastels, acrylic paint,a little bit of alcohol ink and some distress ink. The bottom is a paper lace doily coloured with distress inks. The 'tree' is moulded from some Golden Extra Heavy Gel, painted with acrylic (which isn't as gaudy a blue as it looks in the picture) and sprinkled with some glitter. There are some tiny pink heart shaped gems on the branches of the tree. I printed out 'Happy Ever After' and coloured with acrylic paint and distress ink. A few flower gems and butterflies dotted around completed it.

The doll looks a little bit distorted and uncomfortable in her stance not to mention out of proportion (much like how I feel most of the time - lol), Still, she is my creation and I like her so I'm going to keep this one myself - just need to decide now where to hang it!

Thank you Margaret!

Margaret has given me an award! 'Blogging Friends Forever' She is a lovely lady who over on her MAMMA Flickr site gives us loads of laughs - as well as an ATC challenge every Monday! I feel very honoured and lucky to know her.

The rules attached to the award are:
1. 5 people are allowed to receive this award.
2. four dedicated followers of your blog.
3. one is to be new to your blog and live in another part of the world.
4. please link back to the person who gave you this award.

As I don't think I can comply with all of these rules I'd just like to give it to all the wonderful, talented and friendly people who look in on my blog. Hope this is ok and I'll probably have the award relinquished now! LOL

UK Art Raffle - 'Dark'

This is my entry for the above raffle. This month's theme is 'Dark'.

It is a canvas 5"x7" which I've called 'Adore'. This is the first completed canvas I've done and it was a bit scary at first, but once I started it was fine! It's another beeswax collage which I started by scribbling some oil pastels in black and blue over the canvas then melted some beeswax over the top and blended it altogether.
I then put a bingo card on with more beeswax and blended that into the background. I then overlaid some white tissue to soften the overall effect. A piece of wide dark blue ribbon was then laid on and some more fibre at the bottom. The image was next - again adhered with more beeswax. Finally a ticket saying 'adore' was distressed and put at the bottom right hand corner and a flower at the top. This was quite a messy job and I ended up with pastels everywhere - so I sealed the whole thing with some porcelain gloss spray. It didn't take completely but it adds to the whole distress finish (yeah, right!!)

I am pleased with how this has turned out and it's given me the confidence to try to some more.

I hope whoever 'wins' it in the raffle likes it - if not, they could always send it back to me as I'm sure I'll find somewhere to hang it!

Caricature Fun!

This is an ATC I did for a lottery I'm in for a Yahoo group. I was lucky enough to win the previous lottery and will be sent all the ATCs entered, the theme was 'Yellow'. As the winner, I then had to set the next theme and thought 'Caricatures' would be a bit different. This is what I came up with - the amazingly talented Miss Amy Winehouse. (I cheated a bit but sssshhh don't tell anyone!)

Another ATC Swap with a difference!

Sian is hosting a couple of unusual swaps at the moment which I couldn't resist having a play with.

This one is a 'See-Through' swap. The only rule being that at least one part of the ATC must either be transparent or translucent. Well, this is all new to me - never done anything like that before! So, I kept it fairly straight-forward and for each one used 2 pieces of card with a piece of acetate sandwiched between them.

For the first one I die cut out a little man in the card and put some old text in the middle. I also stamped a crown on some text and stuck that on his head. Lastly, I rubber stamped a face on the acetate (oh, and drew in his lttle gold tie).

The middle one I cut out a jigsaw shape (bit wonky as I did it free hand!) and alcohol inked the acetate. The background is coloured with some distress inks, and finally a real jigsaw piece was stuck over the top.

The last one I punched some squares out of the card and coloured with distress inks. The top piece of card I rubber stamped some swirls on using Versamark ink and then brushed some Cosmic Shimmer powder over the top. This gives a lovely effect. I alcohol inked the acetate again, and rubber stamped a face onto it.

I also did another two but haven't included them here. I'm looking forward to receiving some swaps back to see what other people have done.