Surprises...

don't you love them?

I got a fabulous and totally unexpected Christmas gift in the mail this week from an on-line friend over at Creating and Sharing Mixed Media Art on Google+.  It included these vintage lace and rick-rack pieces,

three wonderful bright red lace paper doilies (you know they'll get incorporated into Valentine cards or tags),

and a lovely little note.

Huge thanks, Jackie - you rock!

Some surprises come more under the heading of bloopers, and if you want to see a good one, you can check out this recent video I did when I was testing some new high flow acrylics (thanks Meg!).  I can tell you that fluorescent pink has incredible POW! factor when, in a Video Demo Brain Freeze, you take the top off the bottle by accident, and pour!

A more reasonable surprise this week was finishing another wine bottle and glass.  You can find out how I started with this obsession here.  These ones are in peacock colours, just for you Alice, although they're still not safe for dining room table use.

'My Fine Feathered Friend' mixed media goblet © Win Dinn

'My Fine Feathered Friend' reverse

'My Fine Feathered Friend' base

'Peacock Flash' mixed media bottle © Win Dinn

'Peacock Flash' reverse

'Peacock Flash' closeup

The other surprise in these is that each of the flowers are hand-crafted from bottle caps, wine bottle metal caps, paper, and buttons.  I love taking something mundane and upcycling it, don't you?

Just a reminder - I'm teaching next weekend in Kimberley - if you'd like to join us for a playful Gelli mono-print weekend, please contact Christine at Centre 64 to register.  Registrations close TODAY!

Not just for drinking...

...alcohol is a fabulous resist.

You can find a written tutorial on it here, and if you prefer a video demo, there's a new one on my YouTube channel:

I love the way that the dropped alcohol (use a mask please!) looks over the spray-misted alcohol.

These backgrounds lend themselves easily to journal pages or paintings, as you can see in this progress photo.

It's a fun technique and I encourage you to give it a go!  Just remember to use full-strength (non-drinkable) alcohol, and keep it away from your mouth!

You already know...

...that I'm a paper addict.  Sometimes I'm so addicted to making paper (it's all that glorious colour!) that I completely forget my other projects as they sit in stacks on my work table, chairs and sill.  But in my defense, paper making is so much fun and you know I'm all about the play.  Whether gesso paper, painted papers or crystalline,

it's incredibly hard to stop.

In an on-going attempt to bring my tutorial page  up to date with videos, I've been paper-making like crazy.  This week it was a tutorial on crystalline paper, one of my favourites:

I love this paper so much because it is transparent or translucent (depending on how much paint one uses), so it varies according to what is underneath.  The same paper can result in different looks entirely.

Green tone crystalline paper over white bond

Green crystalline paper over pastel green bond

Burnt scarlet paper over bright yellow bond

Burnt scarlet paper over white bond

Blue/green paper over white bond

Blue/green paper over yellow bond

I've made cards, boxes,

That's actually a pretty bilious green, isn't it?

bags, flowers,

 and incorporated it into collages and paintings.  It looks happy everywhere.

And again, this technique is thanks to Nita Leland and Virginia Lee Williams from their book 'Creative Collage Techniques'.

If you've enjoyed the video, I'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe to my You Tube channel...it encourages me to make more of them, which gives me fodder for creating, which leads to more blog posts, which . . . well, you get the picture.  Thanks for your comments and support - you're the ones who help feed the flames.

Settle down?

Not likely.  Every day I move from project to project, like a crazed hummingbird in a field of exotic flowers.

Recently I tracked my progress through the day with my camera, moving from a collection of tags in progress

to a stack of  papers and antique cards recently acquired as a gift (thank you Bill), 

 to Christmas cards-in-the-making

and then to finish burning a new watery stencil.

I watched myself in amusement as I ran off a couple of Gelli prints with it

and then moved to play with some Derwent Inktense pencils loaned by a friend (thanks Linda)

before finishing a video shoot of a technique

and photographing the results.

 Finally, I 'painted' some white-on-white wallpaper with alcohol inks,

barely noticing a recent addition to the studio.

John, after many years away from artwork as he immersed himself in creating tomatoes, has set himself up again.  Perfect, no?  Yes!

Burning, burning, burning...

...but only because you asked for it.

I've had so many queries about the process of burning a house wrap stencil that I've created a video for you here:

The process first involves securing a piece of house wrap (it's that stuff that's used in construction, the most common being Tyvek).  I stole a roll end from my friend Louise Olinger, renovator extraordinaire, while doing some staging for her....ssssshhhhh, don't tell.

I cut the wrap, in this case Typar, into a size about an inch all around larger than the size I wanted the stencil to finish, and marked the outside lines to encourage myself to stay inside the box.  (That's a good thing in this case.)

Although in the video I've burned a free-form design, you can also draw your design on the wrap and burn on from there.

Your stencil burner needs to be heated, and the wrap placed on a 1/4" tempered glass at least an inch or so larger than the house wrap.  You'll find it easier to burn if you tape your piece to the glass with masking tape.

These stencils work beautifully on the Gelli plate, whether first print,

or ghost print.

You can see other house wrap stencils here, here and here, and you can check some out, with resultant prints on my Pinterest page here, 

And of course, you're limited only by your own imagination, and we all know there's no limits there!

Easy, peasey?

Some days, yes.  Some days, no.  Some brains, yes....you get the picture.

I've been trying to teach myself how to make a video - rather like trying to teach someone with no sense of rhythm how to dance the macarena.  Given I'm technologically challenged, spatially declined and incapable of stringing any two supposedly logical computer actions together, learning a new program is a real test of patience (my previous post indicates how much of that I have too).

I can show you the final result in photos...these two Gelli plate prints were a lot of fun to do, with five layers of Golden open acrylic paints - hansa yellow, quinacridone gold, quinacridone burnt orange, pyrrol red and alizaron crimson hue.

First print created from each layer

Ghost print created from each layer

If you've the patience to sit through about eight minutes of video, you'll find the step by step action here:

If you've got the courage, you could also subscribe to the channel, although there's no guarantee the uploads will be fast and furious!

If you'd rather see it in person, I recommend you sign up for the 'Gelli it Up!' course, coming to this Summer Arts Series at the College of the Rockies in June - it's much easier to do it than (for me anyway) to grasp in a video.  There are no prerequisites or experience required - just a willingness to play with paint and other stuff for a full weekend.  Oh, you have to know how to laugh, too.  Best of all, you`ll take your Gelli plate home with you so you can continue with your new addiction.