Craft Barn Q & L Challenge - Strong

Ooops - I'm sneaking in a bit late with this one!

Time for another challenge at The Craft Barn and this time I have chosen the word STRONG for my quote book.

I am trying to find quotes which are meaningful to me in some way or another, and this one spoke volumes...

"Even strong women need an arm to lean on now and again" J D Robb

I've gone right out of my comfort zone with this layout. As you probably know, I don't rate myself as any kind of an artist, so to put a face I've drawn on my project is a bit of a biggie for me.  I've been studying YouTube tutorials hard and I was inspired to paint this Whimsy Girl, and she seemed to fit the quote, so here she is...

 
Backgrounds are brought to you by Dylusions ink sprays in Bubblegum Pink, After Midnight and Vibrant Turquoise.

And Whimsy Girl II is brought to you by Caran D'ache Neocolor IIs and a few details added with Midnight Blue Cosmic Shimmer Mist.

I hope you like her.

Sunday Stampers Challenge #260 and exciting news

Good afternoon all!

I hope the weather is as lovely with you as it is here this afternoon.

Two things to talk about today - the first is my entry in to the Sunday Stampers Challenge over on Hels Sheridan's blog (here). It has been weeks since I've managed to squeeze in a Hels challenge so when I saw that this week's challenge theme was the word DREAM I decided to enter my latest journal page. So here it is...

Some detail shots...

 

The background was created using three shades of blue acrylic paint sponged over a white brayered  base coat and then I had fun building up the layers with some splodges of yellow, finger painted on, black ink pressed through a Stewart Gill mask and finally loads of stamping with both Midnight Blue Staz-On and Jet Black Archival.

My Whimsy Girl's face was drawn on sketching paper then coloured with Neocolor IIs and her hair with Promarkers. After cutting her out I adhered her to the page with Matte Medium and thankfully a stiff brayering (over some scrap paper) got rid of most of the wrinkles. (Sketching paper is NOT the right substrate for Neocolors!)

A few extra stamps, white gel pen highlights and "grounding" her on the page with a graphite pencil around her outline and there we have it - my first ever "portrait" and a page I am quietly over the moon with!

My second piece of news is that my little creative space is shortly to appear in Featuring: magazine, a quarterly mixed media and art journaling magazine. Featuring is doing a piece on Julia Dunnit and the phenomenon that is What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday (details here). I was thrilled to be chosen to submit a photo of my craft room for the article. (unfortunately my photo is on the underneath page below)

You can find out more about Featuring: here.

Well that's all from me today, enjoy your evening!

P.S. I've been doing some insomnia blog hopping and I'm also going to creep in under the wire and enter this page over at the Anything But a Card Challenge #20 "Dust off your OLD supplies". I think this qualifies as the paints have been un-opened in my stash forever and the same goes for some of the stamps!

WOYWW #209 (updated with more happy mail)

Hello and welcome!

Firstly I've got to say a very big thank you! to everyone who has swapped WOYWW anniversary ATCs with me - it has been such a pleasure to receive so much happy mail!

Here is a pic of the ones I've had so far and I know there are more to come.

So in order from left to right - Hugs and thanks to... BJ, Cindy, Mo, Buttons, Sandra and Marit - I love them all!

Update - just had a visit from Mr Postie with more happy mail...

So -  from right to left thanks and hugs to Ria (tag and ATC) and those crafty Bears!

Secondly, and the whole reason you're here, is the question "what's on your workdesk?"  The answer I'm afraid is - not a lot. I'm about to start work on my June Tim Tag so I've pulled out some watercolour paper, a tag and some stamps but that's as far as I've got. Any way here's my desk pic...

Top right you can see the art journal page I started in class last night - the background was made using Distress Paints - for me the jury is still out on these - I'm not yet convinced enough to make the investment.

But speaking of art journals, these are the finished versions of the pages I posted a month ago...

The stamped images on the orange pages are the Jofy stamps I won on the Craft Stamper magazine blog hop earlier this year.

And finally, you remember the faces I was drawing last week? Well, here is my finished journal page using one of my Whimsy Girl drawings...

I'll be posting some more pics of this tomorrow as I'm going to enter it in the Sunday Stampers Challenge.

That's all from me for now, enjoy your Wednesday.

Just a quickie - art journal progress...

Evenin' all!

A very quick post as I am on the way out (that sounds a bit drastic!) but I wanted to share the progress on the faces I was working on in my last WOYWW post (here).

It has been a bit of a steep learning curve... the most important thing I've learned is don't use Neocolor IIs on sketching paper - it can't cope with the water and goes wrinkly. That said, here is the first of my Whimsy Girls...

The face is coloured using Neocolor IIs in Salmon, Salmon Pink, Pink and Light Ochre (I quite like her with white hair - I may have to do a white haired lady in the future).

Having learned from my mistakes I've coloured the hair with Promarkers, believe it or not I have used Sandstone, Caramel, Cocoa and Shale to get the multi tones (apologies for slightly dodgy lighting)

All cut out and ready to go...

A sneak peek of the background..

That's all folks.