Blue Glass

Happy Saturday everyone!  Over at PaperArtsy the current challenge theme is 'Bottles'. I was inspired by Leandras video which included how to paint inside bottles and Emma Godfrey used this method in her post here. This set me thinking and having rummaged around, found one I liked the shape of and decided to experiment. This is the result.

I think the 'glass blue' paint name reminded me of some Swedish blue glass pieces that my mum has. I remember them vividly from childhood, the gorgeous blue and the rough patterned but geometric decoration. I found out they are Ruda glass by Göte Augustsson, and here's an example.

Inspiration is just a starting point, for the inside I used glass blue and blueberry fresco and then for some reason decided I wanted some shimmer so I added some mica powder.....looks lovely but the paint took even longer to dry. 

I decided to mask off squares and rectangles and use glass bead gel. 

This usually dries much clearer but the layer was quite thick and I'd also added some interference blue silk glaze ( like you do) which may have affected it. Liked the result but how to make it blue?

Treasure gold in Sapphire and Indigo with some Mica powder dusted for luck. Still not as dark as I'd first thought but I'm happy with how it turned out. Hopefully when it's fully dry inside it might hold a single flower.  It's different anyway!

Thanks as always for stopping by, have a lovely rest of the weekend.

'Small is beautiful'

Hi, it's time for our June challenge over at Stamps and Stencils and the very talented Julia has chosen the theme this time. Here's what she has to say about it. For this challenge you are asked to make or alter something small. This could be a tiny book or journal, an ATC or ATB, a small canvas or box/tin of similar size - anything as long as it is small.You must use at least one stampand one stencil on your project.

Well I quite like making small things so I had lots of ideas but eventually settled on altering a small ATB (3.8cm). It's very quirky for me, so I'm hoping at least one visitor I know may like it.. DG?

A few years ago I never really 'got' art dolls, things have changed and I've now become quite smitten, especially by the very talented Trish Latimer's art doll creations. I was influenced by her work in creating mine...though you might not think so :-)

I used copper wire for wings and the colour scheme just grew from there. The photo above is on canvas but I swapped it at a later stage for a larger photo as the canvas didn't look right. I used greyboard squares for the panels.

We have to use at least one stamp and one stencil this month..well I used 2 stencils with art basics graphite texture paste and 3 stamps with the triple embossing technique (see Yvonne's fab tutorial here) 

Copper treasure gold..in abundance!

Cotton reel painted in black gesso and some text stamping with copper embossing (of course) and I used some texture paste on the base panel.

Still not sure if the photo is too large but I wanted to use the image of my mother when she was about 10. Paper flowers transformed the same way and some beads in gel with mica powder.

It was so difficult to choose which panel should be on the front, as I liked them all.

The graphite paste has a sparkle which catches the light as well as the sheen from the copper.

Please hop across here for all the details and visit the rest of the very talented DT creations, hope you'll be inspired to join in, we can't wait to see what you come up with!

Finnabair workshop

Just a quick post from the weekend as promised, to show my finished 'ARTifact'. Of course it was a fabulous workshop, I was in great company and in seventh heaven learning from Finn...again! No info re any products used or how to, can only urge you to attend if you ever get the chance. Thanks for stopping by.