Water Colour Sketches, Collages & machine Embroidery Updates on Etsy.

Woken up to a very foggy day, so Molly and I are waiting for it to clear a bit before walking out. We are turning into fair weather walkers in our later years!

My Etsy shop looks nice and bright and full of exciting art creations. These are the latest additions.

Machine embroidered, layered and collaged - Aunt Phyllis 1937 

1930's Water colour & pen sketches.

Collages with many layers of glaze & paint too. 

I sold several of these at the Pop-Up Shop.

Stitched Collage in paper.

2012 was a very productive year for me. Another lot to list today, looking at the weather I think that will be my main task.

Update on the Retro Divas - I am working on a pattern, instructions and kit to launch for these. All the fabrics in the kit will come from vintage and reclaimed sources. So no two dolls will be the same.

The girls are very excited!!!

Screen Sirens Collage & Paint

Collage seems to be one of my favourite mediums. These are the ingredients I used pictured below

1    The base is cheap watercolour paper. Which you wet and lay on torn pieces of the tissue paper. You can wet another piece of the water colour paper and lay this on top. Press them together to transfer the colour from the tissue paper. Be sure to buy tissue paper that bleeds and is not COLOUR FAST. Put aside to dry - remember to remove the coloured tissue paper. Set this aside for use again. 

2   Tear up the tissue paper from the pattern and scrunch it up so it has lots of creases in it. Use the Gloss Medium to stick this over the dried watercolour paper. Make sure you get lots of lines, arrows and words in the main part of your design. You can also use the instruction pages as well, some graph or squared paper also goes well. You can do several layers to build up texture. Set aside to dry.

3   Now onto glazing the paper with the paint. Squeeze out a blob of red and pour a generous amount of Glazing Medium onto the blob of paint. Do Not Mix - just dab you brush into the paint picking up some medium as well. The idea is to get thick & thin areas of colour, with stripes and blobs of paint. Set aside to dry and repeat with the blue. Slap it on and have fun with this bit - no fussing allowed. Set aside to dry again.

4  The pictures of the Screen Sirens are from an old  -1940's movie picture book. I have used the originals on these, but scanned the images to use again. Cut out the picture you want to use. Again use the Gloss Medium, paint the medium over the picture and on the place on the paper where you want it to go. Lay the picture wet side down and smooth over it to get it to lay flat. You can use a brayer, soft one or I use a baby wipe as you can mop up the excess medium that squidges out the sides. Rub over the picture until you are sure its all stuck. Again put aside to dry. 

5  You need to leave 24 hours to let the medium dry properly.

6 And now the messy bit. Dampen the back of the picture and rub, with fingers, abrasive washing sponge or baby wipe. Keep dampening the paper until all the backing paper has gone and you are left with the original image. I find that I start with the abrasive sponge to get the worst off and then go onto fingers and finally the baby wipe. The baby wipe gets every bit of paper off for me. I buy the better quality baby wipes that are made of thicker fabric (UK Brand Tesco's own)

7  When dry I varnish with Matt Varnish as this just knocks the gloss back to a better level.

Bright as a Button

My Guardian Angel

Head Over Heels in Love

Me and my Shadow

No Man is an Island

Puppet on a String

All 8x10 and mounted to fit 12x10 frames.

This is the tissue paper that was used. It has been stuck onto some of the pattern tissue and can then be used in another project. I did make ten samples two failed at the image transfer stage. There's a lot of drying time on this project, so do what I do and have several projects on the go at once - or you could do some housework :-D

The little music folk were part of a display to celebrate the Olympics. They will probably creep into some more of my art.

Have fun.