I’ve managed to completely discombobulate myself with all my new found arty-farty techniques, new equipment and re-found mediums – shall I use the water paints or the fluid acrylics or the water soluble pastels or the water soluble crayons?   Perhaps I should just use the inks and sprays I am used to – but then why are all these pretty colours sitting on my desk smiling at me hopefully?

Shall I doodle, draw freehand or use stencils?  Shall I layer or not layer?  How will I ever become an artiste if I can’t decide which medium to use?  Is it kosher to use ’em all at once?

To add to my confusion I took a short on-line class with the remarkably talented Valerie Sjodin.  Her work is stunning and she works with accuracy and attention to detail.  Doesn’t really sound like me does it?

One aspect which was really new for me was doing the lettering first – usually I do any writing towards the end of my process and, with a blank sheet of white paper looking back at me,  I found it impossible to picture how it would look at the end – which is pretty obvious when you see the end!    It is so interesting learning different ways of working and so challenging too!

I learnt a lot but didn’t have a hope of coming anywhere near the beauty of Valerie’s work.  Standing back to assess my effort, I told Orlando despondently it wasn’t working out for me because I didn’t have the right paint colours and he just stretched up and asked for a dance.

We had a wee dance around the studio – well, to be accurate, I do the dancing – swaying really – and he sits up in my arms, head back, eyes closed and purrs and harrumps and warbles with bliss…..

But I digress!  Here is my first effort:

All the wording comes from Valerie – I loved it so much I just went with it.  You may notice the curvy edged paper – I have made a small 8 page journal with shaped edges and a wrap around cover – also courtesy Valerie.  When the whole thing is finished I’ll put it up for your admiration and delight 🙂

But this first effort is pretty dismal!  Usually when I make a muck up I can retrieve, cover, change, somehow redeem something – but there is nothing on this page I like.  The background is flat and uninspiring and I over-doodled on the right hand edge.  The splodges of gold are an aborted attempt to stencil some leaves with gold perfect pearls – which is a brilliant thing to do provided you don’t blast them over enthusiastically with the very large water spritzer bottle picked up mistakenly because you weren’t really concentrating at that particular moment, and thusly cause them to just go glump!  

Let’s see, what else ….. I don’t like the colours I’ve put on the egg shaped words.  There should have been a gap between that egg of words and the doodled edge – and the rest of the wording is – well, just rubbish really!

But was I deterred?  Was I heck!!  Hope is my friend, so I flipped the page and had another go:

I lay down tiny bits of torn book pages and painted the background with Hansa Yellow fluid acrylics.  Those white circles are made with a bit of bubble wrap dipped into gesso and pressed onto the page.  Then I did the words   [Little rebel contented crafter 🙂 ]

I doodled the flowers and edges and felt much happier.

Here are a couple of close-ups:

All in all, much happier with version two – do you agree?

Thank you for coming by today, love that you did!