Dina Wakley Art Journal classes - Boy did I have fun!

I took some Dina Wakley classes a couple of weeks ago at Art From The Heart and boy did I have fun. This was the Art Journal class called "Lots of Layers". It was fast paced and full on, I've never worked so quickly in my journal before. I usually think too much about what to do next, but had no time to do that here, we went with the materials and what you were feeling right then and moved on to another page quickly.
You really feel like you've flexed your arty muscles when you've finished, and it's virtually impossible to get all the paint, gel medium and ink off your hands! But's its well worth it when you look back at what you did.

This blog post is quite photo heavy so grab a cuppa and a biccy and take 5 perhaps. I'll try not to waffle though.

What is close to my heart?
Lots of texture on this one. We covered the page in moulding paste and painted over the top.

We had a sheet of paper that we added lots of Dylusions inks to with stencils, then cut out hearts or any shape.  My family is close to my heart.

River of music

We made a river of torn up music sheets across the page. Love those pink circles.

Music is a huge part of my life, it's just as important as playing with ink and paint.

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed today!

 Playing with paint, moulding paste and oil pastels.

Do I believe in me?
Ephemera everywhere, stuck down with gel medium, texture is my favourite thing in the world. I love having texture in art work, it gives it another dimension that makes you want to reach out and feel it too.

Can I draw faces?
Love the colour on this, blue, teal and purple are my favourite combination. Love that shot of orange too.

Love those stencils, even if they are caked in paint Dina!

Oh Betty!
We used the left over cut out of Betty (the Silhouette) and sprayed ink though a stencil inside her body. I love that shocking shot of pink!

If you could do it all again, would you?
I love this idea of writing on the page, using paint and stencils, and then covering 80% of it with a dark paint and only leaving circles. I like the idea of writing something down, getting it off your chest, then painting over it. Art can be so therapeutic!

Our instructed page.
We were working blind on this one, we were all told to do something, one instruction after the other.We all interpreted the instructions in so many different ways. It was a brilliant exercise.  We all did so many different pages, it was wonderful.

We bound all the pages into a book, I'll cherish it forever, I love it so much.  I had such a great time. I can't wait to put into practice all that I've learned.  Thank you Dina.

Here's a pic of Dina and Ali (Ali will kill me for putting this picture up), but I love it, it sums them both up.

The cheeky twosome!

 Well if you've made it to the bottom of this post congratulations, I bet you've got no more tea left!

You deserve another biscuit for getting this far.

Thank you for popping by.

I'm off to get more paint under my fingernails!

Tara Michelle xx

Fear the Midnight Hour cooked challenge canvas

We've been at it again, challenging each other to make things from the same list of ingredients.

A fab idea we pilfered from the wonderful  Ellen Vargo and Hels Sheridan.

Me & my crafty bud Trace aka inkypinkycraft have been Skyping each other and seeing what we both have in our crafty stash, so we came up with this little list below.  

Here is our list of ingredients

Mini canvas board

Residences Art Parts

Die cuts

Paint

Gesso

Distress Ink

Stamps

Mystery ingredient

Rock Candy

Here is the result of the cooked challenge. A Halloween mini canvas.

The background is mostly a dark blue and when you move it to reflect the light you can see all the interference paint. On these pictures the camera has picked up on all the interference paint, so it looks lighter than it is. I painted Ranger's Rock Candy on the Tree, the pumpkins and the cat!

My cats keep coming in from the garden with those little stickley (seed) balls on them, that I have to pull off every night. Well I used one of those for the door handle! Us crafter's are resourceful if nothing else!

I wonder what delights we come up with next time Trace. 

Can't wait.

Michelle x

Beautiful Reasons to Bee Happy

I've been looking for a reason to get my Inktense blocks out, and this was one beautiful reason. I'm out of my journal again and onto my canvas, Dina Wakely's Out of the Journal is making my craft room very colourful, I love hanging them all around the room.

I started a canvas with masking tape and made a gorgeous teal & phthalo turquoise background. 

I just started to draw flowers with my Inktense blocks and then painted them in with a little water and gesso. The colours were bright, but not bright enough so I went in there with my oil pastels to make the flowers more vivid. I really like the intense colours. I used interference violet Golden Paint on the bee's wings, it looks cool close up. The Bee stamp is from Spring Tinchies which you can get from Its Crafting Time.

Little Felix is still growing bones fast asleep with his paws in the air!

Don't Hide in the Shadows Let your Light Shine

Well it's been a few days since I blogged and that's because I've been babysitting my new kitten, who was called Sylvester, then he was Paco and now he's Felix. He nearly got Mo after Mo Farah but he's way too lazy to be Mo. Felix is the incredible sleeping cat!......growing bones is a tough job ya know!

Anyhooo...on with my journal page which is a bit on the deep and meaningful side. I think this is supposed to be representative of my shy side, if you knew me you would think... Michelle shy...Naaaa.....however I'm not a fan of being the centre of attention and tend to hide a little bit. I'm sure it's just the thought of having to do Power Point presentations, they just scare me to death!.....so I try to avoid doing them.

This page has been made with acrylic paints only and one stamp, the Tim Holtz sun burst stamp. I drew the face with the paints as I was going along.

I've used the Golden liquid acrylic interference blue paints on here too, they don't photograph well but they look amazing with the naked eye.

Righto back to playing with a mouse on the end of a stick!

Bye xxxx