Doodling at PaperArtsy

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven! This evening I'm lucky enough to be over at PaperArtsy where the theme is 'Doodling'! I don't often make greetings cards these days, but for tonight's post I created three.

My starting point was a sketch, which I had scanned and then printed out, featuring Florence, who longs for Peace in this troubled world of ours.

I added some touches with Inktense water-colour pencil so that she stood out a little more from her Craft Card background, stuck her to the card with some Matte Medium and stamped with some text and circles from Sara Nauman's PaperArtsy stamp ESN10.

Florence appears to be glancing up at the circles, so I doodled freely inside them, creating little characters suggested to me by the shapes. Where one circle intersected another at the top of the card, I was reminded of the droopy moustaches sported by the trendiest young men in the early 'seventies!

White dots applied by cocktail sticks dipped into Snowflake Fresco provided highlights and I stamped part of the sentiment from ESN10 onto master-boards to reassure Florence that we should never give up hoping for the best, however bad things may seem!

For a more colourful variation, I used masking tape to ensure a straight edge...

and then brayered and spattered with Snowflake, Smurf and Inky Pool.

I used this technique on a card for a crafting friend, featuring another little painting based on a pre-school photo of my daughter.

Back with Florence, I enjoyed experimenting with gold embossed circles...

and the white embossed circles created a fairy tale, wintry impression, I felt.

Doodling is such a great way to unwind. I hope you'll pop over to PaperArtsy's blog and take a look at what the other contributors have been creating on this theme too - there have been some really original projects! Then, why not play along yourself and link up your take on doodling - you could win some PaperArtsy goodies! Have a lovely, creative week!

Show Your Face on Friday - Head Positions and Earrings!

Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. This week has been busy, but I was determined to link up with Kim Dellow's 'Show Your Face on Friday' blogspot here, where the theme for May, chosen by June Walker is 'Head Positions'. I love June's work, always so vibrant and imaginative and I think this is a great idea for a theme. Kim has done some great head studies, which are really impressive. I would like to try some different sketched heads myself soon, but I've been busy making earrings featuring faces and it has been fun deciding on positions for the collaged heads!

 As my followers and friends probably know, my first jewellery project was to create little house-shaped brooches, inspired by a workshop I took with Mary Jane Chadbourne last summer.

The earrings have been a challenge, but after working out how to make them hang successfully, I've really enjoyed creating them.

Here are some of the designs at various stages: most of them need drilling at this point.

Positioning the lute-playing tigers' heads just right was important, as I wanted them to appear to be playing the music with feeling and to be engaging with the onlooker.

 I always like my pieces to tell a story. These twin Queens of Hearts are almost, but not quite, identical. I wonder what their story might be and what lies behind the little blue doors they point towards?

These two have had a busy day practising circus skills and they can't wait to head back to their caravan for a quiet cuppa!

Another circus themed pair invite us to view the show...

and these two sisters have travelled the world. It was fun trying out the earrings to see how they would look as wearable art.

Thank You so much for stopping by my blog today. I really appreciate your visits and I'm sorry that I don't blog as much as I used to. I hope you have a wonderful and creative weekend and that you have some time to create some kind of face art and maybe even link up to Kim's blog. Meanwhile if you want to view my work on Etsy, there is a link at the top of the blog on the right hand side.

Show Your Face on Friday - #30Faces30Days

Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. It's a little while since I blogged - I don't know where the time goes. I've missed linking up with Kim Dellow's Show Your Face on Friday blog here so I'm back again, sharing a collection of faces I created for a really challenging but incredibly enjoyable discovery I made during April - Annie Hamman and Galia Elena's #30Faces30Days Challenge. I had been watching in awe as the really talented artists involved in this challenge posted on Facebook then Annie very kindly said that I could join in and pick up where everyone had got to. I hope that Kim Dellow and all my fellow face artists at Show Your Face on Friday won't mind me sharing some of the faces I created in response to the prompts. I only started on #18 - Performer, so I haven't been able to respond to all 30 prompts!

 I still feel that meeting the challenge of creating a face a day has been an enriching experience, leading my imagination along paths it might never have followed otherwise! How - for example - does one meet the challenge of creating a portrait with the prompt 'Faceless'? Nameless, with her face partially covered by a papier-mache mask, this mysterious lady makes her way over the bridges of Venice.

What would  a 'Surreal' face look like? I created a bird lady in a land of floating trees.

For 'Floral' I created Ophelia, dreaming in her vintage flowery dress and reciting Shakespeare!

For 'The Blues' I discovered Ophelia's younger sibling, Arabella...

These portraits gave me the idea for a possible story or series of stories involving three sisters: Arabella; Ophelia and the youngest member of the family, Angelina who takes her ginger kitten everywhere with her.

I made the acquaintance of an Earth Goddess...

a goddess of reflections 

and a living tree...

Tribal was not the easiest prompt for me to work with, until my muse led me to Florence whose style is distinctly 'Retro' and who longs for us to 'Give Peace a Chance'. 

I was able to include some of my little face houses too! This one was for the prompt Door...

And this one for Collage...

The final prompt was Bird and I took a few process pictures for this one. I began by collaging tissue and napkins onto a canvas panel with Matt Medium. Beforehand I roughed out in water-colour pencil a sketch of where I would be placing my face.

I then worked by adding layers of PaperArtsy Frescos, made more translucent with Satin Acrylic Glazing Liquid.

Finally a slightly older version of Angelina appeared. She is doing baby-sitting duties for this little bird, guarding her eggs in their cosy nest. She has to walk very carefully and hold her head straight for this task: she has found it's done wonders for her deportment!

Thank you so much for stopping by today and looking at these faces I created for Annie and Galia's #30Faces30Days. I'm so grateful to them for giving me this opportunity to grow and also to Kim Dellow whose Show Your Face blog continues to be an inspiration!