Billie’s Craft Room – FREE online workshops

My friend Billie is hosting a series of online workshops, completely free of charge this summer, called Adventures in Acrylics! Be there or be square!

Billie has been making video tutorials for Youtube for a long time now and she’s cool, calm and collected! She delivers her tutorials in a no-nonsense, fun way and has lots of practical advice to share. So, if you’re having a “staycation” this year and want to have some fun with your acrylics, which will only cost you time and materials… here’s where it’s at:

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Grungey portraiture…

I love grunge! I love texture. I am so loving the exploration of digital enhancing – both in respect to my own artwork (on which I am writing an article to be published next Spring…), and on my photos. I can’t imagine a “flat” photo anymore!

I took part in Nancy Donaldson’s last texture challenge, having been led along this path by my equally obsessed cyber-pal, Johanna!! Here are my 3 portraits of my DD, Amber, who’s about to turn 17!  How did that happen?!

Method: Copied twice – 1x soft light 100%; 1 x screen 100%.  Then 1 x white encaustic texture (soft light @100%); I used the black masks/textures 3 times, erasing the texture from her face, using screen, colour dodge and overlay blend modes. Lastly, I used the white crackled effect with colour burn mode @100%.

In this one, I used the same texture layers, I just added “hard mix” to the blending! I like exclusion too, but this is quite dramatic, isn’t it?!

This one was finished with hard mix blend mode… It’s all about changing up the layers and trying different blend modes until you get a look you like, according to Nancy. And that’s what makes a simple portrait like this so much fun!

I used the barcode font in pink or grey to add a fun signature to it. 😉

Dipping my toes…

“Oh to dip my toes

In such an inviting stream

would feel like heaven…

… descends an angel

surrounded by rays of light

bathing me in peace.”

This is for Haiku my heArt Friday, hosted by the amazing Rebecca at Recuerda mi corazon. See more haikus and photos over there

Image and fabulous tutorial courtesy of Photoshop star… which I followed as best I could to create the mystical scene in the second image. I am hugely enjoying the learning process in Photoshop, indeed “dipping my toes” figuratively into the infinite possibilities offered by the world of digital art. It’s just amazing… and there are so many talented and generous artists who share of their knowledge and expertise freely.

Textures from Shadowhouse Creations and Kim Klassen – thank you. 🙂

Circles and squares…

For the Three Muses “Circles and squares” this week, I had some fun creating a cat and a house. I managed to write out the formula for it too!!!

Of course, it could be house cat, but I thought Cathouse was more fun! It’s amazing where these prompts take us, isn’t it? To see all the creations for this week’s theme, just go HERE.

Background & texture – Shadowhouse Creations on Flickr

Take a Word #51 – Childhood

I developed my love of books and losing myself in other worlds when I was a child. I was one of those kids who’d be sleepy in the morning on the way to school because I’d been reading under the bedclothes by the light of a torch! So when I saw this quote by Marcel Proust, I created the artwork around it!

Thanks to Tangie Baxter for the cat. The vintage image is from my own collection of photos.

For Take a Word this week.  🙂

 

Be it ever so humble…

For The Three Muses, Home Sweet Home this week…

It took me the best part of today (Tuesday) to create this winter wonderland from scratch! I had to create a new girl, then a penguin, an igloo and a Christmas tree and carefully weave them all together. However, I wanted to start playing with Christmas scenes so I’ll have cards ready this year and it’s great practice!

Thanks to Shadow House Creations & Kim Klassen for some of the textures; the remainder are from my scrapbook papers collection.

See all the other participants here. ♥

Halloween Heidi from Zazzle.com

Halloween Heidi from Zazzle.com. A new Blackberry Bold case…

Isn’t she cute??? Ready for Trick or Treating, Heidi and her pals wish you a Happy Halloween!! 🙂

Celebrate Green interviews me!

Hey!! Just a quick, LOUD, shout out about a recent interview I did for Lynn and Corey over at Celebrate Green and Green Halloween. It went LIVE today and if you click HERE, you can read my answers to those 3 questions!!!

CELEBRATE GREEN.NET         

 GREEN HALLOWEEN.ORG                                                                                                                                              

Thanks so much Lynn & Corey for inviting me to be your guest! =)    

Learning opportunity!

Kim Klassen‘s doing it again… She’s teaching this:

Skinny-Mini Photoshop eCourse

Starts tomorrow – Monday 26th September over at “The Photoshop Test Kitchen”

Those who love to learn more Photoshop skills will find it brilliant, I’m sure. Kim’s a great teacher, with a really soothing voice in her video tutorials and an ‘easy to follow’ approach.

See you there?! ♥

PS, I am still working through Shwe Khit’s wonderful E-Class and creating pretty things. One more week and 4 more videos to go! I am so happy with the results so far!

Must fly…………………. 😉

Petr and his dreams…

Do you think polar bears dream? What do they dream about, I wonder… Could it be big, juicy salmon or the thrill of a chase? Or maybe they dream of finding a mate? Dreams are doorways into our subconscious, are they not?

The image is a transfer from a National Geographic magazine, into the dreaded Khadi-paper journal! I used 2 shades of Inktense pencils to colour the background, scrubbed with water and brush (or blended, if you prefer, though it was a lot quicker and less technical than that!!); I had to dry the page with my heat gun as I intended to write on it…

However, having taken a liking to hybrid art and being very protective of my transfers and backgrounds, I decided to scan it into Photoshop and play with Kim Klassen’s textures and layers, which I have just learnt to do!

I used Ugg love – changed the colour to blue to suit my palette – and the painted music texture from the Textures in Ten Class. Thank you so much Kim – you have opened my eyes and taught me to play again! ♥

For The Three Muses – Doorways – this week. And for Petr, and all the other polar bears out there, looking for love…