birds and mosaics, mixed media adventures

Well my blog has been a little neglected for the past few months, so thought about time I shared a little of what I've been up to.

During the Summer Skyeworks Gallery had a charity exhibition and this was one of my pieces, made from collage, paint and paperclay. My little blackbird was voted one of the exhibition favourites and is now available as a card. a proportion of the card sales are to go to Scottish Autism.

Time and tide cards

My little blackbird was the first time I had mixed paperclay with collage, but I had made several other bird paperclay mosaics over the Summer.

And new for the festive season, little Robin Mosaics,

Christmas, glue and sparkle

Hello!
 December is as ever a busy month!
I finally managed to find a little time to make my christmas cards. This year a bit of a cheat. I planned to carve a snowflake linoprint, however found this snowflake decoration made of wood and foam type material. It was the right size to print using white printing ink. Then added some ribbon, buttons and  liquid pearl accents, super quick and easy. I know many of you out there take months making beautiful cards, I would love to have had more time, but I am quite pleased with my improvised cards.

 Earlier in the month I hosted Drift gallery's Christmas party night.

lots of glue, paper and Christmas sparkle mixed with some tasty festive food. An opportunity to make wooden or slate gift-tags or tree decorations, and perhaps use some new materials. The object of the night was very much, forget 'less is more'.. just go for more!

I have also been working on several new pieces. Here is a sneak WIP peek.

At last Christmas tree is finally up....

So I'll take this opportunity, to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas.

The Merry-go-round

The Merry-go-round

I visited York just before Christmas. York is a fabulous place at most times of year, although with just a few days to go before Christmas the streets were packed. In amongst the hustle and bustle of Christmas shoppers I stopped to watch a beautiful Victorian Merry-go-round. I watched as it whirled round, a bright sunburst of colours on a dull, dark, December day, thinking then how much I would enjoy making a Merry-go-round collage.

Once Home I came upon another merry-go-round on a cold Christmas eve trip to the pantomime. This one was not as beautiful as the one in York but it did have an eerie quality. Although still lit, children had gone home to bed, the music had stopped , all was silent  and still.

       I did a couple of sketches before beginning my new collage on Boxing Day

Christmas seems to produce lots and lots of waste and I thought it would be a good idea to use a bit of up-cycling in my collage, I collected together a pile of used Christmas wrapping paper, golds, silvers, whatever shimmery foils I could find and set to work........

I sketched out the initial design onto a large canvas, then using artists quality PVA began to stick fragments of paper.

         The bottom two photographs show the finished Merry-go round .

The foils are very reflective and shimmer in the light......Just need a Wurlitzer and it would be complete!


Wishing all my blog visitors a very happy new year.

Winter Wonderland

Winter wonderland
I made this collage last Christmas. Its combines acrylic, collage, gesso, texture bead gel and fabric and is on board rather than canvas.

 I covered the sky in Daler Rowney Interference colour, I love the way it shimmers when applied to a dark surface .                             


                                                    
                      

    

The close up shows the use of  Galeria glass texture bead gel. Its an intresting medium that contains tiny beads that can be moulded and swirled into ridges..very snow like. It reminds me of the rough snow effect on top of a christmas cake...  :)

                                                          

 

                                                      

                  

 

 

Interference shimmer