Painting with Bubbles and Salt Backgrounds

Mandi showed us how to create the above. Masking fluid was drawn/painted on to the paper. Washes of acrylic paint (it might have been water colour) were laid down, the stripes were blended to reduce the harsh lines. We then dabbed very diluted blobs of paint onto the picture and blew the blobs through a straw. Different blowing techniques move the paint in different ways. The next steps were to remove the masking fluid and add and blow more blobs, this time with ink.

I find I am mean with paint, so rather than throw it away, we put washes of it onto paper and added what was supposed to be fine sea salt. It was rather coarse (I think it had got damp in the cupboard). I will use them as backgrounds. This is my effort.

We all decided that we are lucky to be living in this time (and I suppose in our culture). Our forbears had to spend so much effort in staying alive that they didn't have the opportunity to have the fun that we can have. I can't imagine what the future will be like though, things have changed so much in my lifetime; I was born in 1958 and have just seen a face-book post from a colleague of mine who is the same age:

"If you were raised on mince and spuds, played in the dirt, got slapped when you misbehaved, had 3 TV channels & no remote, school started with the Our Father, shops were closed on Sunday, watched TV without thinking it was real, recorded the top 40 from the radio by blocking the holes on cassette tapes, drank water from a hose, didn't know what a Happy Meal was, and still turned out OK, re-post this!"

and boy does it ring true!

Fun Foam printing with my friends

My ex-colleague Mandi who lives in Spain has spent the week crafting with me. Our friend Ann came along as well for crafting on Tuesday and a visit to a health spa on Wednesday.

I was given an excellent book on printing for Christmas: "Print and Stamp 52 ideas for handmade, upcycled print tools" by Traci Bunkers. We spent Tuesday morning creating stamping tools from Fun Foam. Ann made a complicated roller stamp, inspired by one of those in book. Mandi then took Ann's off cuts, amended them a bit, and made her own stamp. Clicking on the images will show you a larger image and you will be able to see the detail of the roller.

Ann was inspired yet again and made the stamp below.

We thought about using them on T-shirts or a bag, but didn't have time.

Tammy's Digital Dreams Workshop - Week 5

I was very pleased with the final piece and I will be creating more. If you are interested in taking this workshop, Tammy will have it available on DVD at the end of August. Visit http://www.willowing.ning.com for details. I recommend it.

Tammy's Digital Dreams Workshop - Week 4

This is work in progress. I do like dodging and burning in Photo-shop. You will see that she is standing at a strange angle! I have fixed this by the time I got to the final piece.

Tammy's Digital Dreams Workshop - Week 3

Stripes, Text and drawing a simple "creature".

Tammy's Digital Dreams Workshop - Week 2

In January this year, we had a "works" outing to visit ex-colleagues in L'Escala, Spain. We spend a day in Girona. Mandy and I travelled from Bristol, Kelly and Marcun travelled from Belfast, and Mandi is incumbent in L'Escala. We had a great weekend. The second week of the Digital Dreams course was about creating collages and pdf documents. I also created my own photo-shop brushes for the background.

Dave took the photo (thanks Dave). I tried to squeeze him into the collage but nothing worked. We should have accosted a stranger and asked them to take a photo of us all.

Tammy's Digital Dreams Workshop - Week 1

The Digital Dreams Workshop has now finished. During week 1 we learned how to use brushes to make a background, along with text and using the dodge and burn tools to turn a flat circle into a sphere. This is certainly easier than using "real" paint! The course is based on Photo-shop CS but I did it successfully with Photo-shop Elements 9.