Gothic Arches – Text

The brilliant mixed-media Gothic Arches challenge site is presenting TEXT as our challenge this week. As seen in my last two posts, creating text collages as backgrounds is my favourite technique at the moment, so  I had to jump into this challenge.

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And here is how I made it:

1. Cut arch shape from cereal box cardboard and stick on various text pages.

2. Paint with gesso and paint scrape pink, brown and gold paint

3. Add dictionary page, ephemera and embellishments.

 

Happy creating,

Michelle

 

GPP Crusade No. 44 – In a Scrape

In a Scrape is the challenge over at Michelle Ward‘s Street Team Crusade this month. And I faced this challenge with excitement – I’ve done something a bit like this before, so it isn’t as scary as some of Michelle’s past challenges (see Strip Ease and Pulling Prints, not to mention the ones I didn’t complete).

I started by tearing various text pages into squares (using a ruler) and sticking them onto an art journal spread using a glue stick.

Then I started the paint scraping. I had an idea in my mind so I began with light blue and put the paint directly onto the credit card. I started at the top fo the page, then lifted the card when I was half way down the page. I was going for a fading effect.

Then I added brown across the bottom.

I continues with a few layers of light blue and then a few of straight white, starting from the brown section up to try and enhance the fading. The white also took away some of the darkness in the brown.

I wasn’t happy with the blue contrasting, so I added two darker shades of blue across the top. I was very careful to make sure I only added a little at a time.

To blend these in, I added more light blue and white.

And I was finally happy with the overall results. I love this method as the print dries really quickly (even in the cold weather) so it is easy to add lots of layers in a short amount of time.

To finish off the piece, I created a stencil from a photo I had taken and printed on plain paper. After mixing up some grey paint, I sponged on the trees (no paint brush here!)

To create the layers and depth of the trees, I added more black paint into the grey, adding more trees until I was out of room. I also used the negative stencil but didn’t like that effect as much as the positive stencil trees.

Here is more of the detail. You can still see the underlying text paper and the darker blue.

This is the photo I had in my mind while creating this layout.

This was taken at Lake Mulwala, New South Wales, where the Murry River has been dammed and is full of dead trees. It makes such an eerie sight, early in the morning, but the expanse of blue sky and the reflection was breathtaking. (Taken June 2010)

So that’s it for another month ~ thanks for getting to the end of the post. I would love for you to leave a comment, fellow Crusaders and general blog wanders alike.

Happy Creating,
Michelle