Salaric

I made this card for my friends who had just moved into their shiny new (old) house. I used a sheet of orange card, yellow card, pink card, one maroon and one gold metallic gel pen from a large pen set from WH Smiths, pritt stick and a pair of scissors.

I decided to go for highly stylised houses so cut out three vastly different sized ‘wonky’ rectangles out of the yellow card. I then cut out appropriately-sized triangles for the houses’ roofs out of the pink card.

I then arranged the houses on the orange card, which I had folded in half and then in half again to get a good card size. I actually decided to rotate the rectangles by 90 degrees as I thought it looked better – fortunately all but one roof still looked fine. I then stuck them in place.

I then used the gold metallic gel pen to draw the doors and windows on the three houses – making sure that they were scaled appropriately as I had one tiny house, one medium-sized house and one large house. I found I needed to weigh the corner of the card down whilst I did the drawing and postioning of houses on the card – the scissors worked nicely for this.

Using the maroon metallic gel pen I then added the words “NEW HOME” at two different angles above the houses to sort of represent the slope on house roofs.

In the same pen I then added “WELCOME” underneath the houses. Of course the pens produced too thin a line for what I wanted to do, so I had to carefully trace round each letter several times to get the thickness required. The colour and effect of the pens has not come out well in the photos unfortunately 🙁 .

This week I went to the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Clarence Street, Cheltenham. In gallery 13 they always have special exhibits which at the moment is the Alphabet of Trees.

This was quite an interesting exhibition with what I thought of as quite dark monochrome pictures with suggestive shapes lurking within them. Each print corresponds to a short poem, each of which represents a word to do with plants and trees starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The poems, to my mind, were also dark.

The poems belong to Philip Sharpe and the pictures were a visualisation of these, created by Andrew Judd. I think it was thought-provoking in itself but I also liked the explanation of how the pictures were created.

From the information available about the prints at the museum they were created by relief printing using two blocks – a main or key block, which I assume provided the main body of each picture, and a second tonal block. The main block was cut into lino (linoleum) whilst the secondary blocks used a variety of media such as:

• Wood cuts

• An etching technique involving marking the surface of a lino block with caustic soda – at the museum it said the surface was ‘bitten’ with the soda

• Sand or salt stuck to a block which creates a texture when used with some sort of acrylics

The prints were based on charcoal landscapes that were turned into mono-images from which the printing blocks were cut.

If you happen to be around Cheltenham then it’s worth a look – the museum’s free. Unfortunately this display finishes on the 8th of March. There is apparently a book for sale containing the pictures so once I have sorted out my Amazon account I will add it to this post! Along with more info on printing.

This was my first card I made for my husband (then boyfriend) for our first Valentine’s as I had no money for a card but had a lot of card about for making posters. I was surprised to find he still had it as it has been through two house moves and a flood!

I used one sheet of black card, pale lavender card and shocking pink card; I also used pritt stick and a pair of scissors.

I folded the black card in four and then decided I was going to use the resulting blank card in ‘portrait’ orientation rather than ‘landscape’. I then cut the heart out of the lavender card. I did, however, draw it out first before doing this, hence this heart is a bit more symmetrical than a lot of my hearts! I then decided that it would look far too girly to put the heart straight onto the card (I was worried about how I could make the card a Valentine’s card without it being very frilly and feminine). I then glued the heart on the shocking pink card and freehand cut out an explosive abstract border made up of irregular zigzags.

I then stuck this onto the black card and was very happy with the effect.

I made this card for my friend’s birthday as his birthday, like mine, falls in the winter months, I wanted to show that the winter landscape can be just as beautiful and majestic as those of summer.

I used a sheet of craft card that was slightly bigger than A4 as it is meant more for mounting work on. It was pale blue with a pink blotchy texture that I felt was representative of the winter sky. I also used some pale blue card, magenta purple card, pink card, pritt stick glue, winter trees (which I had punched out of wrapping paper from my birthday the year before which had pale pinks, purples, blues, whites and silver on them) and a pair of scissors.

I then folded the blue and pink paper first in half longways and then in half again to get an appropriate card size.

I then cut out the swooping hills from the magenta card, measuring it against the bottom of the card. I stuck this one with the pritt stick and then did the same for the pale pink hill which I had swooping in from the other side.

I then cut out a large circle from the pale blue card – about 5cm in diameter – which I stuck on the card as a large cold winter sun.

I then arranged the trees in a way I thought looked aesthetically pleasing and stuck them all on, one at a time. With a shape like these trees there are lots of thin fragile pieces of paper which will pull off or crumple up if you are too rough with the glue. What I did was to carefully lay the shape completely on the end of the pritt stick and then slowly slide it gently over the surface of the glue. I then peeled it off using the thickest part of the shape.

One of my friends has a birthday that happens to fall exactly on Halloween the 31st of October. We could not make it to his birthday party so I made him this card instead.

I used one card blank and enverlope from The Works in Cheltenham and a set of coloured fine liners from WH Smiths.

I then drew on the card, first off the spooky writing – the HAPPY in red as it was supposed to be dripping blood and the BIRTHDAY in gloopy green writing. As you can see from the photos I did this all free hand and as a result had to break up the word birthday over two lines – I would advise that you measure out where you are going to put the letters before hand.

I then drew things in around the writing that I thought suitably halloween scary like the huanted castle upon a rocky jagged hill, the moon peaking out of the clouds and the silohett of the witch on her broom stick! Along the bottom of the card I drew a cualdren with fumes drifting up to form a skeleton – I wasn’t very happy with the skeleton and if I was to redo the card I would dig out the book Greys Anatomy so that I could copy the skeleton rather than trying to work it out as I drew it. There is also an eyeball complete with optive nerve trailing behind it. I also added a ghost in amoungst the writting and a amphora of poison. Anywhere else on the card that I thought needed something I added little flying bats!

I then coloured it all in – like the posion and the castle but I left the writing uncoloured as i felt it would look better.

I found a big pack of 3D paint pens in Costco for about £7 so I have been having a lot of fun with them, seeing what effects you can get and exactly how they dry. In the pack there are 40-plus different pens, ranging from three types of glitter, metallic to neon! They are also washable so useful for children’s art projects.

The paint dries raised, hence them being called 3D paints.

I made this fireworks card as an early experiment.

First of all I got a piece of black card with little bits of silver glinting off it – again this was a Costco purchase and was an extra in a card activity pack I bought there. It is actually meant to be mounting card and so is therefore slightly larger than A4. To start with, I folded it in half along the long side of the sheet to make a nice ‘card’ shape.

I then picked a nice pastel brown colour for the wood at the base of the bonfire. You have to unscrew the nozzle of these pens and remove a little blue plastic plug; you then replace the nozzle. To draw with them you squeeze the tube and the paint comes out like runny icing. I drew the shapes of the logs – when I initially drew them they were a lot more defined – but the paint flowed together again, giving everything a slightly more chunky and organic look.

I waited for the brown to dry a bit before selecting a pastel orange for the flames of the bonfire; the brown had dried a lot darker than I had expected from the initial colour of the pen, but I thought it still looked ok.

I drew the shape of the fire with a few little offshoots and then began to fill the outline in – I only needed to draw a series of lines in the fire shape, getting smaller as the paint flowed and merged together to give a uniform appearance.

I then left it to dry.

To my horror I realised that the brown hadn’t dried a lot darker but that the paint was drying transparently and the paper, of course, was black. The same was happening to the orange, with the result that instead of a nice vibrant fire I had a big shiny patch that looked black!

However, I decided to continue as I reasoned that it was salvageable. I decided to add fireworks in the sky using the glitter pens, whilst I waited for the fire to completely dry.

I left the glitter to dry and discovered that it doesn’t dry raised, unfortunately. But I then used red, orange and yellow glitter for the fire utilising the already-transparent paint as a guide! This worked really well.

I would, however, say that the paint takes far too long to dry, rendering the pens useless for groups like Guides and Scouts, but probably fine for places where you can leave the projects to dry overnight etc…

For all of those who know me and would shoot me if this wasn’t on here!

I make little contemporary figurines called Wiggly Pets; they have their own website but it needs a bit of work on it. I will be posting the link as soon as it is ready. They will also shortly be appearing in their own comic strip on an e-zine but more on that later (ie when I know all the fine details). I have sold a few of these little creatures and they are present now in over six countries!

They are made of polymer clay – mainly FIMO soft, which comes in many colours and textures. Next time I nurse the wiggly woos (baby wiggly pets) to maturity I will take photos of them hatching and the different developmental stages.

But until such times are upon us I feel that the wiggly pets would like you all to know about their new community blog which can be found at http://www.wigglypets.co.uk/. They have lots of adventures and wanted to share them with everybody, I’ve taken most of the photos too, which hopefully will soon be available as postcards for people to purchase.

I painted this picture on black paper/card, A2 size. I painted it during my GCSE’s at age 14; basically I was given a white block of paint, water soluble, and a round paint brush, and I just started painting straight onto the paper. Apologies for the bad photograph.

I started with the pattern on the sleeve of the jumper and progressed from there. I painted over mistakes with black paint, which, if you look carefully at the picture, may become apparent, as the black paint had a slightly more matt texture than the paper and therefore looks like a more solid black.

I was going to give this to my granddad but he unfortunatly died before it was released from the school so I have donated it to the village cricket club as that seemed like the ideal home for it. The photograph is of it hanging in the club in its nice new frame.

At our Scouts Centenary Camp I found myself in the craft tent were they had a fantastic badge maker!

It arrived with lots of shiny metal badges and clear discs to be pressed onto the top. It came with the press and a circle cutter so I was impressed (ie instead of having to try and cut printed circles out with saftey scissors you just put this short sort of cylinder down on the paper and whizz the handle around which I presume moves a blade along the inside, creating a perfect circle).

You give the circles of paper to the kids who decorate it, I used colouring pens and pencils. The design then gets sandwiched between the badge back and the clear plastic disc and then put in the machine. The guy then pushed the handle down and one nice shiny badge came out 🙂

Equipment:

*White ceramic tiles

*Candle and matches

*Toothpicks

*Sealant/hairspray

*Masking tape

As it is the Scouting Centenary this year there have been lots of commemorative events, one of which was the Centenary Camp at our District’s camp. I found myself in the craft tent there and I was to do tile engraving, though it was stretching the term engraving slightly I felt!

I had never done this before and had a bag full of equipment and some vague instructions so I arrived two hours before the kids were due, in order to have a go and work out the best way of doing it!

My first issue was that I had tea lights and normal tall candles without any candlesticks, so I ended up using the tea lights as candlesticks for the larger candles after a brief aborted attempt at smoking the tiles on tea lights!

The idea of this craft activity was that you black out the tile over the candle and then use a toothpick to draw a picture or pattern, then you spray it with a sealant – in this case hair lacquer.

I was obviously a little concerned about burnt fingers, which was my main reason for experimenting, but other pitfalls soon became apparent.

You have to get the tile touching the flame so that soot actually gets deposited onto the tile, making it black, but if you go too close, wax is precipitated onto the tile, making drawing hard and giving affected areas a shiny, almost brown, look. I used a cloth to wipe affected areas and put them back over the candle.

I found holding the tile at a 40 degree angle over the candle flame was effective in getting a lot of soot deposited onto the tiles. Also angling the thing towards you so that you can see how things are going helped a lot, but it did mean lowering your line of sight slightly for most people.

My first attempt was very blotchy with lots of wax on it and smeary fingerprints all round the edge but I drew on it anyway to see how well that worked and whether the hairspray would actually seal the picture.

The main issue the children and I had with this was trying not to rest your hand on the tile whilst drawing on it – we all had to re-smoke the resulting white patch were we had wiped the soot off!

Also I found that you had to be ‘light’ handed with the toothpick otherwise it would jump and skid on the tile, ruining the picture or writing you were attempting!

I was only allowed to do this craft with the older children, ie Scouts and Explorer Scouts. Even so, I was concerned about the burnt fingers and after trying to black out a second tile found that though I was no longer making it blotchy or getting wax on it, I just could not make the edges neat, as you have to hold the tile!

I then hit upon the idea of making a border of some sort and because I have been painting lots recently I wondered on the idea of using masking tape around the edge of the tile – this would hopefully create a nice neat border and prevent the children from burning their fingers.

I stole some masking tape from the Junk Art stall and proceed to experiment – my main concern had been that the tape would catch fire or it just wouldn’t work as a neat border. However it worked better than I had expected, though obviously I then had to stress that you needed to move the tile about, otherwise the masking tape would catch fire, which did happen a couple of times resulting in a brown sticky patch on the tile – this took some wiping off!

Blacking out the tile over the candle.

Smoked out tile ready to engrave!

One of the Explorer’s tiles – he decided to have a go without a border.

Masking tape as a border.

Here are some of the kids’ finished tiles!

My first attempt Second attempt

The only thing I found abit iffy about this project is that you had to spray the tiles several times with the hairspray and still it is only just touch safe. Anything touching it will scrape the picture off it! I’m wondering if better quality spray would be a better idea or perhaps actually using proper sealant.