Caroline's page for Laurel's book

At last I've completed the page for your book Laurel! Boy, has this book been taking its time to travel around the world - it must be something to do with your 'journey' theme! I know how much you're into trees Laurel (and now me too, by the way) so I decided to take the lovely poem 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost, with its path in a yellow wood, as my starting point. I've used my favourite technique again - watercolours on gessoed mountboard. I'm quite obsessed by this method at the moment!! Hope you like it Laurel. It will be on its way to Lisa tomorrow.

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 Katie Jane by Caroline

Blackbird Feeding on Berries - Watercolour

click to enlarge

Phew - at last I've done it! It took me ages to decide what to do and I spent yesterday painting a picutre that I was already to post, then changed my mind! We Librans are experts at indecision! So, anyway, here it is!! This is a watercolour painting on gessoed mount (mat) board. Another new technique for me - it's amazing what the watercolour does when you apply it to the gesso surface. All sorts of interesting textures appear like magic - the paint seems to bubble and skim over or settle in brushmarks. You'll see what I mean if you enlarge the pic. However, it's not ideal if you have a fixed idea of what you want or where you want the paint, as the paint can have a mind of its own, but it's great fun to play with. Also the paint lifts off like a dream if you make a mistake! My only regret is that I didn't make the bird a little smaller - she's tending to head off the page here and I think composition wise it would have been better to have positioned her a little further to the right - or, probably better I should have painted the whole in landscape rather than portrait format - ah well, we live and learn! I hope you will like the painting Katie! Now it's on with Lynn's book - I do at least have an idea for hers (which, by the way, is so lovely - everyone seems to being using fabric...!! Hopefully it won't be long before I post again!

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!!