Eynsham Hall with Linda Knight

Last weekend I was in glorious Oxfordshire, getting messy with Linda from Just Scrapbooking.  Another fantastic weekend of tips and techniques and new tools.  Now, when's the next one...?!

Don't think I could possibly go through all the different things we did, so I am only (hah! ONLY!) posting the photos of end results.  As any regular reader of this blog will know, my family is not a great photographing family, old ones are few and far between, so I tend to use either Clark Gable or some random copyright free photos.    












Paris: Watercolour paper (lovely and heavy) with watercolour pigments, then 'scraped through' with a credit card (or similar!).  The Montage chip had the watercolour pigments dabbed on.  All sprayed with cosmic shimmers for bling.












Talk Talk - Using a face mask (!) I cut loads of faces out in positive, and used one of the negatives.  I LOVE the song Talk Talk, so I wrote the words out for a few lines on ripped book pages.  The black stuff on the frame is called 'webbing' and it's magical!!

Having started on a song theme, I went for Wuthering Heights for this romantic copyright free photo.  The background is a feather stamp with acrylic wax.  When completely dry, swooshed over with acrylic paint.  I was just about to go for tea, when I found the magpie feather outside, and it just had to be added. 

When I was little (I was once), I lived in Newcastle.  I still think of it as home, and the song 'The Fog on The Tyne' brings all sorts of memories for me.  Thanks to whoever posted the photo, as I found it online, and it is perfect!  I also used the record label to partially frame it.  The key thing here is tho, the pink and grey background.  It's on something called YUPO paper, which is really plastic-y.  It works really well with watercolour pigments. 

 

 
 

Limelight: Clark (my hero) shows what happens when you use watercolours over photos - and book pages.  Linda also made us rip our photos - that's quite liberating too!  More use of the credit card to apply the grid lines in gesso.

Me and Mum - This one is INCREDIBLY heavy.  Acrylic paint mixed with heavy gel.  I wanted to pull the colours from the curtains in the photo out, hence the orange and blue.  I flicked (a la Pollock) some cream over the top, using an old toothbrush.  Then added a frame in the orange for the colour photo.  I fussy cut a black and white version of the same photo.  With hindsight, it needed more highlight to make it pop, but as I keep saying, it's all about the technique...

Last but not least, finally, I did some beeswax stuff - might even start to use my own... Background is Gelli plate printed, using some of my fave Prussian Blue with some Stewart Gill Alchemy (metallic shimmer) as well, on a pale grey card.  I rolled up the torn book pages, and dipped them in beeswax.  The butterflies were stamped on book pages, coloured with Inktense, and dipped.  The flowers are plain white Prima flowers, absolutely soaked with water, with a tiny touch of watercolour pigment touched to the edges.  Remember doing chromatograms in general science with Miss Floyd?  Mmmm smarties...same effect!!

 

Hope you like!