Jigsaw Piece for Cindy

Cindy's theme was 'Things With Wings' and she gave a wide range of colours - green, turquoise, blue, lilac, purple and gold.

I coloured the background using some acrylic paint and tried to make a batik effect with gesso and some swirly stamps. That didn't quite work out, but nevertheless gave a bit of texture to the background. 'Things with Wings' hmmm, well, I decided on a fairy girl which I sketched onto canvas, painted, cut out and stuck onto the piece. Her dress was a large paper flower and her wings rubber stamped and embossed onto handmade paper. There is another paper flower, some more gold embossing and a few acrylic butterflies (coloured with mica powders) fluttering around. She could have looked a bit happier though!

More Christmas Baubles

Here's some more - I think they're out of my system now - lol! (still need to complete them though by adding the hangers which I forgot to do before photographing them)

What a load of ..... Christmas Baubles!

Christmas is coming, the turkey's getting fat, please put a penny in the old man's hat! Not long now, I've started buying some presents but haven't even thought about making any cards yet! I have been doing other things Christmassy though - like a six way jigsaw jam (and another six way jigsaw jam too) I've been putting all the photos in my Flickr photostream (link is below to the left)but I will post a picture of the complete jigsaw puzzles once they're finished.

The other thing I've been doing is making some Christmas baubles. This is all Margaret's fault as she has started a group called 'Christmas Bauble Decoration Swap' on Flickr whereby you make a bauble (based on the template she has posted) and she will randomly select someone for you to swap with at the end of the month.

The two I've made for that swap (one gold and one red) are both cut from acetate and decorated with gallery glass paint plus a whole lot of glitter and other sparkly stuff.

While I was making them I decided to make a couple to enter in this month's UK Art Raffle . This month's theme is 'Circles' so I made one bauble (based on Margaret's template, only a bit larger) with lots of circles within it, and another smaller bauble roughly in the shape of a circle with more cirles inside it. Again, these were both cut from acetate and decorated with gallery glass and more glitter and sparkle.

Last month's UK Art Raffle was won by my dear cyber friend Trudy who doesn't have a blog, but you can find her on Flickr or see some of her wonderful creations in her Photobucket. I was so pleased that Trudy won as she is a really lovely person and I couldn't think of a nicer person to win ..... well, apart from me of course - lol!!

African Themed ATC

This week's theme on Maggie's Mondays Musings(MAMMA) is 'Africa' and here is my offering - 'Afify The African'.
The base of the ATC is very thin balsa wood which I stained with some walnut ink. Afify's head is a wooden button which I bought from 'Button-It' at this year's Ally Pally show. The buttons are designed to be coloured with inks, paints or whatever, but I decided to leave this one as it was to fit in with the natural theme. Afify is wearing a hessian robe and some beads in his hair. The beads are from a rather large necklace I bought some time ago in a charity shop. There is another button also as I thought the colours on it were a good match.

There are some gorgeous entries in this week's challenge - I wonder whose I'll get back?

'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!