Mail art workshop with the Calligraphy Society.

Last month I attended a one day workshop with my paperlovin' friend Val.  We had done workshops with this particular tutor before, and she (Marg) is a lot of fun to work with.  She has a large studio in her back yard with every imaginable pen, paper, and ink that you could think of, and she is very generous in sharing it with her pupils.

She started out showing us how to make our own envelopes, origami style.

Then we went on to decorate them, using various mediums and styles of lettering.

The above photo shows bits of sponge that we cut into shapes like hearts, starts, fish, etc. then dipped into inks and used to decorate envelopes.  Who would have thought?!

Crafts with used stamps.

I used to collect stamps.  From when I was about 10 years old, up until a few years ago, but by then I had long lost interest in saving, soaking, peeling, and putting them in albums.  So I sold most of the albums to a stamp dealer, and hung on to the few albums that I wished to keep.  Old habits die hard, and I still tear stamps off envelopes and toss them into a tin for some future purpose.

I have seen this technique before, but I saw it again on Pinterest recently, and decided to play :-)
The idea is that you glue stamps close together on a sheet of paper, then cut out a shape.
So I glued stamps on to paper last night, giving them time to dry.

I don't know what other people do, but I figured the best way to get a good shape is to draw an outline on the reverse side of the paper, and cut it out from there.  I chose to draw a rooster.

I will do this again, but first I'll look for a different glue, as I only had Modge Podge, Napkin Glue, Glue sticks and white craft glue.  I tried all of them, but none were really suitable, and the best of the lot was Modge Podge.

Felt figures and mini clothes pegs.

The first time I saw one of these mini clothes pegs was at an office where they were being used in the same way as glider clips, to hold papers together.  I was entranced by these tiny pegs!  Years later, I discovered them again, being used in various craft projects.  So when I saw a picture on Pinterest of a mini clothes line complete with pegs, I decided to have a go.
There were no instructions, so I drew the clothes on to freezer paper, pressed them on to iron-on interfacing and cut each piece out.  Then I fused that to coloured felt pieces, machined around the edges, and cut them out.  I wrote the LAUNDRY letters on to the felt in permanent marker, but I'm planning to embroider over that later.

Various paper crafts in progress.

I am taking a short break from patchwork and stitching, to play with some more paper crafts.  The first item is a simple mail art envelope to a friend with whom I swap cards and envelopes from time to time.

This is one of "Val's boxes"  I used a paint sample card to make this.

   More paint sample card art.  You can do millions of things with those sample cards!  I used a craft punch to cut out the hearts from one side of the sample card, then glued them back on the other half of the card.

This didn't turn out as nicely as the one I saw on Pinterest.  I cut the fish and seaweed out from the paint sample cards, and glued them on to a sheet of pre painted paper I did last year, using watercolour and salt to give the mottled effect.  There is silver foil on the right side, part of an experiment, so it doesn't really give the effect of the sea!

These two were fun.  I downloaded a bunch of stencils on to my hard drive, and printed them out on old sheet music that I found at the opshop.  Saw this idea on Pinterest - where else!

Little boxes

My friend Val has been making cute boxes out of greeting cards, and invited me and another friend to her place last week to show us how to make them.  We had such a fun afternoon!  I can see myself making little boxes in spare moments over the rest of this year, and giving all my friends one next Christmas, complete with a chocolate or two inside!

I made these two at Val's place - two different styles.  The next day at home I made two more of the box style, while I still had the technique in my mind, as I can forget things very quickly if I only do it once!  I haven't done the triangular box again yet, but I do still remember how to do it, so I'm not too worried.

Felt Seahorse

Sorry this is sideways.  I have a new computer with Windows 10 OS and haven't yet figured out how to correct photos!  Anyway, I saw felt seahorses on Pinterest, and as I have a friend who loves seahorses, I decided to make one for her for Christmas.

Xmas mail art envelopes

I have been admiring all the mail art on Pinterest and it motivate me to decorate the envelopes that I sent my Xmas cards in.  I bought the Xmas stamps first, and tried to match my decorating to the stamps.  Moderately successful...

This was one of two cards I made using scraps of patchwork fabric.  Effective but simple!

Licorice Allsorts.

I saw these on Pinterest, and managed to track down the blog where they originated.  It was all in Dutch (I think) so I couldn't understand the words, although the translater thingy helped!  The photos were self explanatory, so it didn't take much to figure out how to make these cute licorice allsorts.   I love making things from felt, and have another few items on the go, so will post them here when they are done.  I've been doing mostly patchwork and stitching in recent months, as I had let that go when I was doing the Life Drawing classes.
Cut strips of felt, then cross cut the strips into squares.

 Glue the squares together like the real allsorts.  The rolled ones are two strips of felt rolled up with glue to keep them from unravelling.

They look very realistic in a jar - these are for one of my crafty friends, can't wait to give them to her!

Colouring in.

I have started colouring in some of the books I have recently acquired.  It is good to rediscover the boxes of pencils and other media that I'd forgotten I had!  For the above I used el cheapo pencils for the first two, and Derwents for the third one. 

Week morning in Melbourne CBD July 2015

I want to take more opportunities to sketch whenever I have some time, and last week I had an hour to kill while waiting for the husband to have his hair cut at his favorite barber in town.  Being a nice day, I had a coffee in Hardware Street and sketched this in pencil, using some pastel pencils for colour.
Not really thrilled with it, but it's a start!

Life Drawing Class, third week.

This week's model was an older woman, and she gave us some very challenging poses to work with.  I was fairly satisfied with my progress.  The first few sketches are the two minute poses and done in graphite.  Then I switched to red pastel on cream pastel paper.  The last two are the 20 minute poses, and done in charcoal.

Life Drawing class, second week.

We had another young woman for our model at this week's class, and she presented us with quite a challenge in a variety of poses.  She told us she is also a life drawing teacher, as well as modelling, so she knows what we need to make us work harder on drawing figures.  I thoroughly enjoyed this session, and feel like I'm getting to know the other students as we discuss each other's sketching.  I haven't got around to photographing my sketches yet, but hope to get it done and posted here over the weekend.

 Edited 31.7.15 to add sketches for second week.  I haven't included all the sketches I did last week, as I wasn't happy with some of them.  Even these aren't great, but they are the best of an average lot!  The brown pastel sketch is very disappointing; the model had her hair pinned up and despite my attempts to fix this picture, the figure still looks like a boy apart from the breasts.  The version in pencil wasn't quite so bad for some reason.  I was happier when she let her hair down for the long pose, which I did in blue pastel.

Colouring in books for adults.

The term 'adult colouring books' always makes me smile, as people who don't know about them sometimes raise their eyebrows, thinking this could be some kind of pornographic material!  But of course it is not, I have been buying colouring books for a few years now, but it is only very recently that the idea of adults "colouring in" like we all did as kids, has taken off in a big way.  It's mostly to do with relaxation and stress relief therapy, although I don't look at it that way.  Being a bit on the artistic side, I just love painting and colouring in for its own sake!
I bought these today at the Craft & Quilt Fair, and will post photos of the other ones in my collection later.

Life Drawing Co-op 16.7.2015

Today was the first day of my 10 week Life Drawing class at the Eltham Living & Learning Centre.  We have a live model but no regular tutors.  A co-ordinator explains the timing for the model and we use whichever medium we like to draw or paint the model.  I chose graphite and charcoal today, and briefly played with watercolour.  Over the coming weeks I will experiment with pastel, watercolour, acrylic and colour pencil.
As you will see I have a long way to go in improving my perspective and anatomy of the human figure, but at the end of 10 weeks (with some practice inbetween time) I hope to be a lot better!
The first 9 sketches were warm up sketches, where the model changed her pose every two minutes. I did mine on an A5 sketch pad.

The last two were the final drawings where the model held her pose for about half an hour each time.
 These were done on an A3 sketch pad.

15 Day Drawing Challenge, Days 3 and 4.

You can see why I continue to take classes in drawing, especially life drawing! I did this sketch using a wooden manniken, sold at art stores to assist artists get the proportions of the body correct. It didn't help me much!

I copied this from a Whiskas Cat food advertisement. It reminds me of our cat Tiger who looked just like this picture when he was a kitten. So cute :-)

DTE Forum Drawing Challenge

Cheryl over at Down To Earth Simple Living Forum, started a new thread just for fun and a bit of a challenge to any members who fancy themselves as artists, or just like to doodle!  I have a foot in both camps, as my less artistic friends tell me I'm an artist, but for me it is just a fancy form of doodling :-)
For 15 Days we are to draw something every day.  Here are my first two days' drawings:
Ken snoozing.  Sketched in graphite pencil.

  Fineline pen and watercolour wash.

I will be back in a day or two with my next few doodles!