Front of folder. Has ribbon to hold closed.

This project was made for mountains and rivers group as a teaching project in November 2020.

A Christmas Address book/folder with pocket and refillable address book. 

In side and outside decorated with acrylic painted fernery, embossed pocket and die cut pieces, cut using Cuttlebug.

 

August 2019

In August,  We had a great day painting at Mountains and Rivers, Penrith a few weeks ago, our guest teacher was Roberta Small with an great piece of mixed media. Hydrangea with stencilled leaves, I painted mine on a large craft note book and was very pleased with the results.



In November we are painting with Laraine Palmer a beautiful Christmas piece. Laraine painted an old fashioned Santa on a repurposed kettle. Wow I am off to find an old kettle! this would look lovely sat on the stove decorating the kitchen.

Laraine's lovely old kettle - we paint this in November!

Roberta's mixed media piece painted on canvas.

Note Cards

No excuse!


Having no real excuse why I have not been posting for a while,  I have however been encouraged to keep up my painting projects and using acrylics as I have many colours in my stash.

 Belonging to a group called Mountains and Rivers Painting group at Penrith, I love the workshops they provide for us each meeting, each workshop is only $15 for four hours of painting, the ladies are wonderful and we all support each other in many ways.

Mostly now I paint on 5" x 7" cards. They are easy to prepare, paint and complete. I love the freedom of mixed media and the results that they produce. Using acrylics as a base I then cut to size and decorate each piece individually using whatever is in my stock.

Hand painted cards make awesome gifts for someone, saying thank you, for a kind word or gesture's, birthdays or just for fun.

 I have been making these cards for six years now, I made the one below from a stamp called Queen Bee from Pink Ink, UK. They have Awesome stamps and are quite large main stamp with a few smaller ones and a sentiment stamp all in the same set.
The background is made by using acrylic paint on watercolour paper. Dry well before stamping, the bee is then hand painted using acrylics.

Bee Awesome.

These cards I made for my workshop.

Still painting

Above are 3 Artist trading cards that I just recently painted and sent away to a friend.

I used Matisse paints, because I have many tubes left over from my folk art painting days. Matisse paints are a Australian owned, family owned company. They are lovely products with rich transparent colours but some colours can be expensive, they go a long way and have a long shelf life.

They were painted with Matisse flow on a piece of watercolour paper that was cut to size. As this is flimsy I backed it with some black cardstock using some acid free craft glue.

First is spritzed the paper with water, then using Matisse rose madder and Australian sienna on my pallet I used an angle brush to add the colours, first use the sienna then sparingly with the rose madder. The rose madder is quite a strong colour and mixes beautifully with the sienna giving different shades as it mixes. These are my favourite go to colours.

While this was drying I took a seed stencil and using a baby wipe I removed some of the colour through the stencil, ghosting. Next I used a little Matisse impasto medium placing the same stencil over the ATC's and applied the  impasto medium through the stencil randomly on the card. let this dry naturally otherwise if you try to use a hair dryer or heat gun you will change the impasto medium it will bubble loosing the shape.

When this was all nice and dry I applies some Matisse metallic bronze over the dried impasto medium using my fingers.  I then added a little water to the metallic bronze and splattered this over the cards. dry well.

The circle I used some decorated paper left over from another project and cut out some circles gluing them onto the cards. The stamps are used postage stamps. I then used Raw umber around the edges using an angle brush and my fingers. Then I used a white Signo pen to add a little high lights, you could also use a liner brush with white paint. 

The Photograph below is another project I am working on but using the same paint colours, so you see the colours clearly before I decorated it.

Use what you have, test your colours, play, you may be surprised as to what you find. 

 Have fun!