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WELCOME to my little arty world! Trying to make art is a huge part of my life ... love nothing more than messing around with inks and sprays and generally making a mess!

Monday 20 February 2017

Speed Dial

"Are these any use to you, Auntie?"  
Was asked that question and handed a couple of gears and chain from my nephew's friend's motorbike that he had stripped down.
Needless to say my answer was an absolute 
YES PLEASE!!!!

Can barely lift the largest of the gears but where there is a will etc.,
And as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted it to be a clock

Put off doing it for ages and ages for fear of "ruining" the parts
But then decided that had they not given them to me then they would have languished away in the corner of nephew's garage and be lost ... 

So, yesterday was The Day and I so enjoyed doing it

Called it Speed Dial
Speed - motorbike
Dial - clock

Clever, huh!?!?!?!?!

I KNOW it is not hanging centrally!!!!
I did not want it to
VERY much ... "left a bit ... bit more ... bit more" adjustment went on
So, off-set it is!



It is all very much more 3D than shows in the photographs
I am hopeless at photographs



Had to work hard on  NOT using my safe, preferred colours and actually had out the browns, teals, greens &  blues and the little pots of rust paste and think I would actually like it more had I stuck to those colours but decided to really push myself and use colours I rarely, if ever, use



Needed help with this from hubby as it is so heavy!
Got him to wire the chain to the largest gear
Raided my box of broken watch parts - the sort of box you keep to rummage through but never use
Parts that are beautiful just the way they are
VERY hard to add them - but needs must!


Ingredients :
Wonderful nephews & their mates whom give you fabulous parts to play with

Prima Marketing (Finnabair) 
Art Basics :
Heavy Black Gesso
3D Matte Gel : Heavy Body Gel : Soft Gloss Gel
Art Extravagance :
Graphite Texture Paste
Art Alchemy Acrylic Paint :
Metallique Black Velvet : Opal Magic Violet Green
Art Ingredients :
Glass Glitter - Pitch Black
Micro Beads - Berry

Sweet Poppy Shimmering Silver Acrylic Mist

*** EDITED 28 June ***

Was never happy with the colours of this
Had it on the wall for 4 months now but could put up with it no longer
What on earth was I thinking using purple & silver?!?!?!

Went against ALL the advice to leave well alone
and tweaked it 
Wanted it to look like it was still oily - as if from the garage floor (which it was, of course)
Much happier now!








Colours added over the dreadful purple & silver were:
Art Alchemy Acrylic Paints : 
Metallique Black Berry : Metallique Steampunk Copper
Metallique Midnight Sky : Metallique Dark Velvet
Metallique Emerald Green

Oh, I don't mean the purple & silver were dreadful colours - just my choice of them for this project !!!!!






Thursday 2 February 2017

Denim dreams

Ok, it was supposed to be a dream
but turned into a nightmare
well, kinda
in the grand scheme of things it is just a canvas 
and a bit of time spent messing around 
so a disappointment rather than a nightmare perhaps

I was totally inspired by Finnabair's denim journal and knew I wanted to stick a piece of denim to a canvas
that was the easy bit & as far as I got
worked on it for two days then lost my way with it last night
hated it
knew what I wanted to do but no idea how to achieve it
just "doing it" wasn't helping
sat staring at it for a long, long time
sat staring at all the pots of gel and paste
inks and paints

not a clue!
but really should have by now
so had a mini-meltdown on FB
and encouraged by wonderful friends approached it afresh this morning

taken all day to tweak it
paint it out
tweak some more

but finally figured enough was enough and can do no more
can see so, so many errors in it
but ... sit down for this folks ...
don't hate it anymore!

The denim is actually dark blue but shows almost black here
If it photographs any better tomorrow in the daylight then I will pop back and edit this post

note: have popped back and edited
replaced original large photo' to show better colours
but have left the close-up shots 











INGREDIENTS:
Stretched canvas : Piece of denim
Black Archival Inkpad
Tim Holtz Flourish Stencil
Stamp from Finnabair - no idea what it is called
Art Basics (Finnabair / Prima Marketing) 
White Gesso : Soft Gloss Gel: Heavy Body Gel : 3D Gloss Gel
Art Ingredients (Finnabair / Prima Marketing)
Mica powders : Bottle Green, Green Opal Magic, Lilac Opal Magic, Deep Water, Purple, Frozen Lake, Teal
Glass Glitter : Midnight Blue
Micro Beads : Berry
Melange Art Pebbles
Art Alchemy (Finnabair / Prima Marketing)
Metallique Acrylic Paint : Deep Water, Vintage Rose, Pink Blue, 
Silver Spoon, Violet Green
Ranger Distress Spray Stain
Broken China, Stormy Sky, Evergreen Bough, Dusty Concord
Wilted Violet, Faded Jeans,  Bundled Sage
Perfect Pearls Mists
Blue Raspberry, Grape Fizz, Mint
Miscellaneous
Prozac, Jack Daniels

Wednesday 1 February 2017

WOYWW 400

What a milestone!!!!!
Well done Julia - our Head Desker and esteemed (and much loved) leader over at The Stamping Ground who came up with the idea of all us crafty bloggers sharing our workdesks each Wednesday

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - get it now?

So, what is on my workdesk this Wednesday?

Chaos
that's what

A departure from my normal way of working as this particular project needed a different approach 

Needless to say I will avoid such a different approach in future and go right back to how I prefer to work
(ie: gesso'ing everything once stuck in place and none of this faffing around painting it first!)


You can just see daddy's hand as he looks at a magazine whilst having his coffee and two Malted Milk biscuits on his daily visit

The telephone was rescued yesterday from Great-Nephew Henry (two in March) who helped himself to it from the stand thing and proceeded to wander around with it to his ear chatting away in his own, oh so cute, developing little language
Eventually I realised I could see the display illuminated and could hear odd beeps - he had obviously managed to press a button or several
Just hope now he was not connected to someone in China
or, love this thought - trying to sell a boiler upgrade to someone

Would love to blog more on each of our special WOYWW days but only do so when I know I have the time to return any visits to my humble little site
But could not miss this most wonderful milestone

THANK YOU dearest Julia
for all the friendships forged here, support and sharing of not only crafting and art but the roller-coaster that is life

Happy 400th WOYWW fellow bloggers!!!

xXx