Craft barn challenge marriage or age.

Well it has to be The Age of Aquarius.. doesn't it? I decided to do this in water colour. It seems when I paint in water colour it is either bright and in your face or washed out and I haven't enjoyed the experience that much. How do people get the pastel look? However, this called for  'in your face' as only flower power can be. I vaguely remember in the past of someone colouring a page with lots of colour and then drawing on the shapes afterwards..maybe it was an art programme I watched on BBC with the children..who knows.

So out came my barely used paints and painted the bottom half of the page in in reds and pinks plus splashes of green and a touch of blue and the top half in yellows and a splash of pure sunshine dylusions. In the corner I drew all the signs of the zodiac with Aquarius the largest and the words of the chorus flowing from it.  The dots of the eyes are tiny flower drawn with intense pencils. Finally I painted on the flower outline. I have to say I am well pleased and will persevere at water colours.

Craft Barn challenge strong/miss

At first I did not know what to do for this. I looked at lyrics but nothing tickled my fancy and then I came across a quote by Eleanor Roosevelte;

A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

And then I saw the stamp and thought yes this is so me. One drink I can not do without and have never turned down is (no not wine!) is tea. It is excellent for all occasions happy or sad - 'shall I put the kettle on?' is the best question and the answer is always Yes! I also like my tea with a drip of milk and a good suntan so this is the quote for me.

I stuck some tea cup paper on my pad and covered it with a pink silks acrylic glaze. I stencilled bits and bobs with gesso and stamped the ladies eyes. Then some dylusion spray in a nice tea colour and when dry I painted over some parts with orange acrylic glaze. This gave the gesso a tea coloured look. I stamped on the main lady and added bits of glaze where needed. Finally the words and some cut out tea cups. The silks acylic glazes are lovely as they are very translucent and you can build up colour and layer but still see the original background.

Hope you like.

Let's Crochet

This weekend is the first time I have tried crochet since hurting my hand. I have to say it is very stiff today. I forgot virtually everything I learnt and had to go back to the very basics. I can now chain and double crochet. I glad no one saw me as I must be the most cack handed crochet person ever..but I got something made.

One of the first things I put on this blog was a very wobbly phone case. A new bag has been got from Sea Salt and it needed a matching phone case. So after much effort, undoing, swearing and cups of tea there was success - and it is better than my last effort. Now I have to master treble crochet so I can make flowers, lace and hearts.

They go well together and bring a bit of Spring colour even though it is still raining.

Hope you like

Craft Barn challenge silence and/or dazzle

Although I have missed the first one I thought the quotes and lyrics challenge sounded great fun. So, this week is silence and/or dazzle. I went for silence and a quote by the His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

I painted the page - well dragged acrylic paint across it with my co op card, using the colours of the Tibetan prayer flags which are blue, white, red, green and yellow. They are always repeated in this order and represent the elements of sky, cloud, fire, water and earth.

On the left the faces are covered in Buddhist text, then pictures monks and the Dalai Lama, this I painted magenta to represent the robes. On the right the face are covered in writing about war and pictures of armies including the Chinese army marching past the Potala Palace in Tibet, this I painted grey to represent war. This face has words emanating from it.

Next I added paint to other card, added the quote and stuck on. Finally I got my pastels out and added detail. I am really pleased with outcome and who knows maybe sometimes I will remember to be silent and not react.