Christmas Burlap Panels & Sleigh

I made these Christmas burlap panels and sleigh for a class I taught at Art from the Heart in November this year.

They are looking very festive on my wall at home.

I really love putting up Christmas decorations I've made, it makes them that little bit more special.

I've used the Tim Holtz burlap panels which are great because they have a hard panel behind the canvas so you can stick and stamp anything on the front of them.

I've used the gorgeous Graphic 45 12 days of Christmas papers for the panels and on the sleigh.

The sleigh has lots of Tim Holtz festive die cuts on it.

I really enjoyed teaching the class we had Christmas music, crackers and chocolates too :)

I'll be back tomorrow with another blog post, bring it on!

I have a lot of time to make up for.

Michelle x

Mixed Media canvas for Sarah

Hello you may remember me for such things as mixed-media canvases, altered art and the occasional arty tag! :)   Or you may not its been that long since I blogged last, but I'd like to try and blog something everyday while I'm off over the Christmas holidays.

I've got tons of crafty projects I've done over the past few months, mainly for classes, but I'd love to share them with you and to keep a record of what I've done too.

I'm really pleased to be able to put up this mixed-media canvas I've made for my friend Sarah. 

She's a beauty therapist and has magic hands when it comes to massage!

She has a fab new beauty salon and she asked me to make her a painting to go on her bare wall.

Her business name is Sulis Beauty Salon, Sulis is the Roman goddess of thermal springs, hence the healing waters of Sulis.

I've used lots of random things for the background and for the texture on the canvas.

Here's what I started with.

Some old map paper, lace, mulberry paper, ribbons, sheet music, hessian, book pages and Sarah's treatment leaflet.

I gessoed over the top of the bits of paper and ribbon, and used teal, blue and cream acrylic paint to blend in the background.  I painted through lots of different stencils to add interest and stencilled some grunge paste for texture. Then rubbed treasure gold over the top to make it shine.

I started to draw and paint the goddess Sulis, made up from my imagination, but loosely based on how Sarah looks. I used Golden interference blue paint on the hair and on the water so it looks like shimmering water too. You can just see the effect here on the hair.

I've used a mixture of shells and beads to represent the crashing water at her feet, with gesso over the top and blue treasure gold rubbed over the top.

No painting is complete without some drippage and there is lots on this painting. 

I'm pleased to report after handing this over to Sarah today, that she loves it. 

I'm always unsure if other people would love it as much as I do, so very pleased that she likes it.

I hope you do too x

See you tomorrow

Michelle xx

Normal service will resume shortly :) x

Normal service will resume very shortly.

In fact very soon....maybe this evening!

Michelle :)

I'm back!

I know I've been a very bad blogger :(
I'm very sorry about that.
I've just been under the proverbial crafty thumb over the last 4 weeks.

But I'M BACK

I have a backlog of projects to share with you and I can't wait to get them on the blog.

First up is a tag we made at my taster session at Art from the Heart on Saturday.
It was a full class, of lovely people, (the naughty end was very funny :) even Steven from Paris was over and he popped down too.

I've used Dylusions ink After Midnight, Crushed Grape, Squeezed Orange, Lemon Zest and Post Box Red for the background.

The owl stamp is Stampotique and I've used a glaze pen to make the black branches and owls standout.
I've used a blue Signo pen to highlight the branches and a yellow Posca pen to highlight the owl's eyes.

I've also used the yellow Posca pen on the skeleton too.

I used Tim Holtz's graveyard die on the bottom and coloured them with water pens filled with the same Dylusion ink colours I've used on the tag.

Skeletons in the closet?

I've used my huge leather journal for this page. 

I've used Dylusions inks and the new Dylusions stamps 'Pin up Queen', 'Boney Maloney', 'Day of the Heads' and 'This old House'.

I wanted her to look like a carnival girl so I gave her a bit of bling with stickles.

I had to get my thinking cap on and draw the wardrobe and the effect on the stockings is from using Distress Ink through some lace.

I love the way Dyan's perfect skeleton's hand curls around the door.

I've been trying to plough through my huge glut of courgettes from the garden.

I've been making flans, bakes, cakes you name it. I think I'm going to look like one soon!

Any ideas are very welcome. :)

Hope you have a fabulous week?

Michelle xxx

Accordion card and Derwent XL blocks

I've been playing with a new product the Derwent XL Graphite and Charcoal blocks. 

The Graphite and charcoal is water soluble so with a waterbrush you can get really great watercolour effects.
They will last forever too, the blocks are really thick and easy to handle.

Below I've used the blocks on this Accordion card (die by Sizzix).
I've used Dylusions stamps for the vines, flowers and birds, and used 2 of Tim's mini blue print stamps.
Everything has been coloured using the graphite and charcoal blocks.

Another great thing about these blocks is that there are 6 in each box, you might think this is not a lot but it gives you the most perfect limited palette of colours which look great together. I like that. Sometimes I umm and aa over what colours to chose, this way I can pick any colour and the will go together.

I'm teaching a class using these blocks on the 24th of September at Art from the Heart. 

There are places left if you'd like to book HERE

Here are some close up shots of the panels on the card.

 Here is a pic of the blocks below

 

 Have a great creative week 

Michelle xxx

Great discoveries can happen for PaperArtsy

Over at PaperArtsy they're celebrating their 10 years Anniversary since they started the company.

There are lots of things happening over there at Creasey Farm.

Every Monday in August is Monster Monday where you can grab massive bargains. There are new stamps released every week in the shop and projects made from them will be on the blog the same night.

PaperArtsy has a huge presence on Twitter, where many a new idea is hatched. Leandra is getting her Twitter followers (PATWITs) in on the act too, by sending them surprise stash and asking them to make something for the blog. There is a definite buzz in the air around 7pm on Twitter when the blog posts are about to go live too, so if you want to be a fly on the wall and watch what we're all chatting about then come and see what we're up to, and you might even get in on some more PATWIT events in the future.

I was delighted to be asked to come back to make something for their 10 year celebrations.

I've made this hanging canvas board with the fab Jo Firth-Young stamps. 

I love these stamps sooo much.

To see how I made this pop over to the PaperArtsy blog.

Have a great week, and hope you can join in on the fun on Twitter.

Michelle xx

New Dylusions Goodies

This morning I could have shouted at someone. For the second time this month my Internet has gone off and had been off since yesterday morning, I had no means of nosing at the outside world.  I'm also trying to shake off a cold and I've got a mozzie bite that's ballooned on my ankle! It was safe to say I was in a very grumpy mood.....but..

Then there was a knock at the door and it was a parcel for me...but I wasn't expecting anything...it was from Art from the Heart.....what could it be?

IT WAS THIS!

One happy Shelley coming right up!

I had a big smile on my face and this lovely parcel instantly lifted my spirits and I was no longer in a cloud of doom. 

Shortly after this the Internet miraculously came back on! Happy days!

So I got to work on inking up my Spray Ink Pad.

These are my most favourite colours, London Blue, Vibrant Turquoise, and Crushed Grape.

As you can see on the pad I have already used the Dylusions Flower stamp to make some fab flowers on a journal page. It's like making your own Big n Juicy pad. I love it!

So I set to work making a journal page using the NEW!  Small Dylusions Journal, This Old House, Day of the Heads and Boney Maloney stamp sets.

I did the background by lying my journal page on the ink pad. Then drying it, then doing it again and drying it. Then I stamped the skulls using the ink pad. You can see the skulls in the background below. I really LOVE this stamp pad!

I cut out the glass of the windows and put one of the skulls behind the window so you could just see his eyes.

I coloured in the grass using Prisma Colour pencils and I coloured the house, hat and eyes with Promarkers.

The pages in the new smaller Dylusions Journal are great. Nice sturdy pages all the same this time and they hold the colour beautifully. Well worth getting the lot really!

Thank you Art from the Heart (Ben, Dyan & Ali xx)

You made my day!

Have a great week.

Michelle xxx

Hels comes up north weekend!

What a terrific weekend we've just had with Hels Sheridan. We made two outstanding projects, I love them both. There was 17 of us and we all did our own individual take on Hels instructions. The results were amazing, so many wonderful FINISHED projects. Yes we all finished our projects, which is very satisfying when you arrive home with something finished to look at. 

We really were very productive considering all the belly laughs and the off-crafty-topic conversations we had! A huge thank you to Sue Tucker who organised the whole thing like clockwork. :)

Here we're all are engrossed in painting our canvases.

Here's Gemma, Tracy (me), and Helen.

There's Lou in the middle, probably looking for the Bora Bora PaperArtsy Fresco Paint! We kept stealing it sharing it with each other all day.

 Naughty Sam holding up her probably someone elses canvas background! You gotta keep your eye on this one or she'll be licking, sniffing and stroking your make if she likes it better than hers!  

Tracy working on her gorgeous canvas.

Helen rubbing treasure gold on the edges of her lovely bright canvas.

From front to back: Sue, Jane and Joan all with goldfinger's!

From front to back: Debbie, Jane, Gemma, Helen and Lou (still on the cadge!).

From front to back: Donna, Susie, Janet, Sam, Joan and Jane. They were a noisy lot on that side, sheesh!

Can't take em anywhere! Joanne was on the end, but she's not in the shot. 

Sue Tucker got all adventurous with my camera and did lots of tilted pics. This is one of them, but I straightened it in Photoshop. Love the way some people are leaning over to the right, as if that would make a difference! I just love everyone's expression on this pic, it summed the weekend up really.

Full of fun.

Hels looks ashamed though :), we were all like naughty kids!

Hels made each of us a little bag with a name badge in and some die cuts. It was such a nice touch, I loved it.

I'll use the name badge forever now, Thank you x

Here are the two projects I made :)

I've used PaperArtsy Grunge Paste, paints and JOFY stamps. 

The edge got in on the action too!

This project uses TH burlap panels. Love these panels.

It's very Tim tastic with lots of die cut elements, Distress paints and Idea-ology.

Well if you've got this far then you deserve a well earned cup of tea and a biscuit to keep your sugar levels up! Thank you for popping along and reading my blog post.We had such a great time on the workshop, and I think we're all pushing for a repeat performance very soon.

Poor Hels!

Have fun in your crafty space, Michelle  xxx