Thank God it's friday - Wonderful Trees

Here's my piece 'Enchanted Forest', and if you want to know how I did it just keep reading :)

I started making a version for the trashcan :) unintentionally, but those things happen sometimes :) You see, the textured background was easy, that's just pulling a babywipe until you can see through it, gluing it down on thick watercolour paper and letting it dry. Don't colour it yet if you're going to use the transfer method below. I did, and that ruined my first piece :)

Then to what made several paperjams in my printer, but resulted in the look of the piece. I remembered reading somewhere that if you printed your image onto papertowel you got a transfer that was almost invisible. I decided to give it a shot and started out with a kleenex papertowel, some good results but the layers are so thin it often tore in the printing process, If you chose those papertowels, chose a sturdy background paper to hold the towel and the most important thing no matter what kind of papertowel you choose; TAPE ALL THE EDGES down to the backing paper!!! If you do this properly, make sure the tape is outside your printers printing area, so you don't print on the tape and loose part of your image. If you tape your papertowel properly, you'll avoid more than half the tearing I experienced, and using a sturdy background paper you should avoid the rest of my paperjam experiences :)

I ended up going to the kitchen looking for some sturdier papertowels and those superabsorbant thin layered ones worked for me :) So I finally got my transfer of the lady and the enchanted tree. I positioned it and glued it down. These transfers are seethrough transfers and that's why if you paint/colour your background beforhand you might want to paint a white area where your image is going, gesso works fine. Otherwise if the background is very dark your image will be difficult to see properly. (this is were I went wrong the firs time)

Glue it down and smooth it out gently, you don't want to tear it and have to do the printing all over again :)

I love the seethrough quality of these transfers, gives brilliant effects if you layer them too!! The papertowel is so thin that until I know of a better way to glue down images to textured backgrounds, this is it!! When you've placed all the images, it's time to bring out the colours!!

I also love stamping on papertowels and gluing them to my backgrounds, again, much easier to get a good result with your stamped image if your background is textured!!

I colourd with distress inks and used a gold and black dabber for the edges. For more examples of pieces using this technique, or this mixed with ordinary printed images, have a look at my entries to this weeks challenges at, Saturdays Workout, Saturday Surprise, Sunday postcard art (this time on a "flat" background, gesso under the gypsy image), Artcreations friday and more :)

Hope this was helpful, if you have further questions don't hesitate to ask. Thanks for looking and Happy Creating!!

Linda

Art Pieces - Autumn

Here's my entry, Thanks for looking!!

If you wonder how I made this, just continue your reading:) The lovely background technique foundHere Is definately worth trying. It's in french but she's filming everything she does and it's also a tutorial on making a chunky atc. For texture I used papiermache paste from Kreaktiv Then I used dabbers for the gold and the edges. The leafs are stamped, cut and glued and the woman is printed, cut and glued. Hope this made sense!!

Linda

Linda

Theme thursday - Quotes/Sayings

Here's my atc with a quote :)

The background was made colouring a baby wipe blue with acrylic paint and then streching it in all directions till you can see through it. I like to pull it so that it tears in some places. Then while it's still wet you glue it down on paper painted a darker blue.

I stamped the circles in dark blue paint and stamped golden stars to finish it. When you stretch the baby wipes they become a bit like a spiderweb and if you chose to paint it before you glue it down it's best to glue it while it's still wet, to avoid it getting stiff when it's all dry, cause that makes it harder to glue down. If you chose ink to colour it you rule out the stiffness problem :)

If you change background colour to a lighter shade, another colour or leave it white you'll get some other really cool effects!!
Have fun and I hope my "tutorial" made sense :)

Thanks for looking!!

Linda

Art Cards - Stripes

Here is the atc I made for this challenge :)

I don't know why but themes with stripes scare me a bit :) So I decided to take on the challenge and make a card. The background is coloured with distress inks and the stripes on my card is cut from a patterned paper. The swirl was stamped in distress ink and since I'm lost without bling or some kind of shine, I embellished the swirls with greengold pebeo touch glitter. The dragonfly was stamped on the same patterened paper as the stripes and then coloured with pen and distress ink. I made two dragonflies used the wings from one and glued the body on top of the wings for texture. I then added som greengold to the body and glossy accents to the wings.

And even though I still find stripes a bit scary, I'm quite happy with the result on this card and had fun making it :) Thanks for looking!!

Linda