Leafygal

Scrummy Squares

Boy have I been arty lately!

Here is the next installment of the Mixed Mania book study.

This time they are 1.5inch squares - actually a few of mine are 4cm squares. They are bigger than inchies and smaller than twinchies.

I seem to have to be very neat with mine.  The goat ones are done on a background of my own painting but the 2 others are ready made papers.

Very simple if you want to try it - I do strips of the basic paper and then cut out the squares. Decorate the edges, find pictures that say something to you and go searching for appropriate words in glossy magazines.

I've tried to keep the words in sets as well, although not always possible.

The cocktails, the shoes and the goats are cut from wrapping paper. Saving paper has its rewards at last.

Wacky Wild Women

Here's the wacky woman I made in the workshop that I ran for the Creative Fibres group.

We are each taking it in turns to do a workshop and they have been fun so far. Each one is so different.

My wacky woman has some hand felting onto black felt, then the Artgirlz charms, face hands and legs, were sewn on. I embroidered some french knots and lazy daisy parts onto her dress and added a strip of foil from the neck of a champagne bottle that I had tried machine sewing across. (waste not want not I always say!!)

No one is complete without a bit of bling so I gave her a beaded necklace.

Her hair got a bit out of hand - using one of my favourite yarns and then some bugle and seed beads.

When we all wore our brooches to the Emb Guild meeting on the Monday after the workshop there was so much interest that I've been asked to run a workshop for the whole group!

Crazy papers

Killed 2 birds with one stone here. In our mixed media group we are doing a book study and we got to the Crazy papers chapter. Basically very simple with watercolour or acrylic paint wash and then some simple shapes added to become background papers.

I had signed on to do a paper swap with another group so ......

The theme for the swap was spring ( I know it's Autumn here but you have to roll with the group if it's in the USA) I used blue and green colours - not a big departure for me and added some decoration down the sides as these pages are destined to become journal pages for writing or further decorating.

Green leaf like design is from an Indian wood block I bought recently, as is the pinky bird.

Eggy shapes and lilacky flowers are just paint and watercolour pastels with a touch of pen work to finish.

After I took this scan I added some spritzes of coppery mist to add a bit more dimension to the main part of the pages.

Pending

Here are the gorgeous pendants I received in the swap. One is a coffee stained Mahjong tile. Another is paper cutouts and the next one is possibly embossed leather. The small red one is Fimo with embedded beads and the last is a heart made of beads (the bottom one is actually a blue see through stone but looks open here)

Aren't they lovely?

Paper gals

Here's another mmartfriends activity. We are working our way through another book. This time Mixed Mania

I don't remember playing with paper dolls as a child and I think I know why.

I didn't get all excited by this task and just completed one outfit for each doll? I'm not cut out to be a dressmaker - Project Runway will just have to manage without me!  PS..... and I didn't even have to draw the dolls - they were given in the book. (I did have to colour them in though! - I liked that part!)

Hearts and Flowers

I had fun using up some of my paper fabric to make heart pendants for a swap on Mixed media art friends yahoo group.

Here are the results! Fronts and Backs.

I added some flower stamps and couldn't resist the tiny hearts drawn on with gel pens. Threading the beads was a challenge but by the 3rd or so I had it figured out. I guess that is why we do these things - learning experiences!