Summer Theme

I'm doing a swap at the moment (June 2006) with the Art-By-You yahoo group The theme is summer and the images need to be 4 by 4. I'm not the world's best painter by any means, but I am improving and these are my offerings.

This is based on a picture by Mary Cassatt.




These are lobster pots based on a photo I took in Aberdovey, Wales, UK in the summer of 2001.













I took this photo on the same trip to Aberdovey.













All these pictures are drawn with watercolour pencils and then painted over with a brush that has a water container. I'm finding it quite a nice way to mix different colours in the same part of the picture. Another advantage of using the water brush means that I don't dip it in my tea by mistake.

Below is a photo of the backs of the cards, again with watercolour pencils and the water brush. I have to thank Andrea at ABY for the inspiration here. She has sent me some fabulous water colour postcards which gave me the idea for my backgrounds. Thanks Andrea.

Imagepac Daylight Stamp Creating Machine

A few weeks ago I treated myself to an imagepac daylight stamp creating machine. What a wonderful piece of kit! It lets you create your own rubber stamps without carving.

You can find them at http://www.imagepacdaylight.co.uk.

The first few tries were not successful, but essentially my fault for not following the instructions correctly. I now have it cracked.

I'm participating in an ATC swap at the Art-By-You yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Art-By-You. The theme is Asian stamps. I didn't have any asian stamps I wanted to use so I made a couple with the stamp creator. This is the result.

The tiger is the stamp, printed on yellow paper and embossed with blue embossing powder.

The stamp is of the full image shown here.

This is the other card in the series (I didn't use the stamp maker for this one). My mum gave me a hand made birthday card recently using this stamp and gave me permission to take it apart! The white paper is some silk paper I made at a course recently. That was great fun and of course suitable for an Asian theme.