Lolo's page for Caroline

I had so much fun doing this page! I always start out a bit intimidated without a thought it my head, but then as with most art it just evolves.

The first thing I did was draw a raven in pen and ink cross-hatching on this light green tag. I didn't like the way he turned out so I added colored pencil to darken him and acrylic paint for the highlights. I then painted the branch and juicy blackberry with acrylics and added a whimsical vine with a sharpie.

The little bag that holds the treasure was embellished with rubber stamps, Distress-Inks and glitter glue. The card inside the bag was a piece of cardboard that came with something I bought and I kept it because of the wonderful vines and flowers. I thought I'd use it in the future for an atc or something.

I painted only a few leaves and one flower in watercolor. Then I added that wonderful diamond glitter, after all the flower holds magic!

The background is patterned paper which I embellished here and there with colored pencil in aqua and light green to tie it all in. The postage stamp and words are stickers.

There you have it. Raven's search is over. Who knew he'd find the flower in Malaysia?! Now he'll fly to London so Jossie can do her page.

What fun this was!

(The flower card didn't scan well at all. It's really very pretty!)

A page for Lynn by Caroline

'Gather ye rosebuds'

Last week I reported that I had an idea for Lynn's page - hmm, well that didn't quite work out as I expected but nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with this collage resulting from my many experiments! Lynn's book has some lovely textile pages, so it seemed a good idea to keep going. What's that you say? You don't see any fabric? Well, my finished page does have one small piece of fabric in it, honest! Can you tell where?..... It's actually the strip of rose petals! These are petals from roses grown in the Cameron Highlands (a beautiful area in Malaysia where it is wonderfully cool: flowers and vegetables are cultivated alongside tea plantations up in those hills. I will be posting about my recent trip there over at my blog in the next few days, if you're interested!). Anyway, I digress - back to the fabric. I bonded these petals to a small strip of silk fabric and though I intended incorporating it with other textiles, I got side tracked when I found a lovely magazine image of pink roses! I didn't want to stick this directly on the page so used an image transfer method which results in a slightly distressed look. On top I layered pink tissue paper which gave it a nice misty feel. I then took another sheet of watercolour paper and washed on some pretty colours, wet in wet. I chose areas of this to tear up into strips and drew rose outlines with coloured pencils, adding more colour to the large background bloom. A few lines of text were postioned and coloured to blend into their backgrounds. I covered the main rose bloom and leaves with hand made paper, leaving a white edge on the background for emphasis - I love the way the fibers in this paper make the bloom look so realistic ! I also added a little water to the coloured pencil on the stem to give it form.

Hope you will like this Lynn - I so enjoyed the process and learnt a lot along the way!

A page for Suki by Caroline

Click to enlarge

'Ocean Bed'
Acrylics with collage

I've been working on this piece for a few days now - mostly thinking about it!! I finally decided to try to follow the Cape theme of the previous page by Kate and ended up with 'Ocean Bed'. I'm really enjoying trying out different techniques on this project and went all out for a messy time with this one! First I tore a piece of some gorgeous embossed silver and gold wrapping paper and a couple of small pieces from a page of chinese newsprint and pasted them on the page. I then slapped gesso all over, wiping back in places to expose the wrapping paper design and some newsprint. Before it dried I made lots of different marks using anything I could find! Credit cards are great for this and a cake decorating tool I bought ages ago (and never used) works wonders! Next I drew the design in pencil and then used acrylic paint with a roller, brushes, a sponge and my fingers to tone down the bright white and work up the details.

Sending by post tomorrow to Lisa and starting work on Kate's !

Finally something by Caroline!

1st page of my book

Cover image

Well, at last I am able to say that I've made headway with the Artysoulsisters project! So sorry for holding everyone up; I've had visitors for the last two weeks, so no time for art! Anyway, now my book cover and 1st page are ready to be mailed out to Lisa. I have also made a start on Suki's lovely book and will post the page soon, then I have Katie's to work on ...!!!

My book didn't start out with a theme - in fact, I really didn't have a clue what to make, but just went with the flow! I started with the 1st page and the cover followed on from there - as you can see colour and shape seem to dominate! I used several sheets of paper that I had in my store. These had been painted randomly with acrylic inks and some dry gold pigment mixed with gum arabic (which you can see much better if you enlarge the pics), then sprayed with water to encourage dribbles, splashes and puddles. I pressed plastic wrap onto the wet ink, pushing the wrap so that the ink collected in the folds to make interesting patterns and left the paper to dry. I looked for suitable areas to work on and on close inspection found little landscapes, waves, or foliage in some, and birds, fish, flowers and people in others. I cut some of these into small squares and worked into a few with watercolour crayons to enhance my 'discoveries' . Thus 'Purple Haze' was born, closely followed by my bright cover image based on the colour wheel.

My book is loose leaf - the pages are 20 x 15.5 cms, which includes a 3 cm margin on the left side for binding, which I will do when my book returns home.



I've also made this small pocket which I will attach later to the inside of the book. In this is a note to you all and an arty soul sisters tag for you to add your names to, please!

I'm having a lot of fun with this project and look forward to creating with you!!