Under the Sacred Tree

The sacred tree is so magical that I decided to create a scene using it to develop a tutorial. I love Oona the faerie and Pipin the tiny hare so I thought I would add them into the scene as well. I love Lavinia's fairy bridge it was a must to fit in the scene too.

Under the Sacred Tree

To begin with I used 300 gsm watercolour paper for I was going to use watercolour paints for the background, cut to size 5 x 6 inch.  I decided to stamp the bridge tree and path using versafine clair acorn for the tree, morning mist for the bridge and path. 

As you can see from the above photo I have added some tree branches also used versafine acorn ink to stamp. Using ultramarine for the sky I added a wash using my wash brush over the inked images. Using cad yellow for the meadow areas. Mixing cad yellow to ultramarine gave me a very misty blue green for the background to resemble distance trees or bushes. 

Building up colour for the meadow and grass areas mixing blues and yellows to get the lush green colour. I added some leaves to the trees using 2 shades of clair inks to create distance . I added a darker layer for the distance of trees just a shade darker.

The above photo you can see the darker shades of the meadow before I added the leaves to the trees. I have also added ultramarine to the water in the stream. This I will darken as the scene builds up.

As you can see the green to the back is lighter and the green to the front is darker adding depth. The water in the stream i have darkened down and created some shadows where the tiny rocks are. I have added more detail to the tress and leaves using dotted stamp in various colours.

In the next photo I have darkened the grass areas, added more details such as tiny flowers in the grass using acrylic pens, the tree is darker now. I added some floral and Oona faerie stamp she is stamped in versafine clair shady lane colour. Adding some hanging ivy in the corner, to try and push the depth more.

I have now added more flowers to the grass areas and around the tree, also adding some effects to it using acrylic paint pens. Adding shade to Oona too.

Finally adding Pipin such a really tiny hare stamped in clair ink acorn colour. adding shadows where needed. I used white pen to highlight some areas such as the stones around the path and characters. To complete I added tiny fairy hives to the tree. To complete I used a light covering around the top distress ink faded jeans and to the bottom peeled paint. 

Hope you can try out this tutorial when you can. I find the clair inks are great for using with watercolour paints when dry you can paint over them lightly and no smudges.

Happy crafting 

Holly

All stamps are available at https://laviniastamps.com/  

Journal with Dies and Watercolours

I have been working on my journal for sometime now, creating various scenes, using my paints and inks to get some good backgrounds. My journal is an old book, I might have mentioned it before, a really good hard back book with many pages. I decided to remove some and then glue 3 pages together for a stronger base.
My first scene I wanted you use a combination of mediums so it was sort of mix media in design. I had been given a set of Tim Holtz dolls of which I love and at present time rather addicted to them all. As you can see by the image below.

To start with I wanted a background with texture so I added some mod paste through stencils. Leaving this to dry for some hours, coming back the next day to add colour.

I used watercolour based inks for the background, I used Dylusions ink spray fresh lime, lemon zest and Tim Holtz mermaid lagoon distress spray, adding lots of water misting to get a nice blended effect. Once dry I stamped scripts in acorn colour versafine Clair ink. 

I picked out 3 suitable girl dolls 2 sitting to add to the tree branches and 1 standing in the flower beds. The wings I cut from one of Tim's background papers, the larger wings are from Tim's tissue paper, adding some colour using my paints. The larger flowers are hessian these were already cut and in the basics range, I used the white so I could ink them. All other flowers and branches etc are from a set of flower funky dies made by Sizzix, I will add links below to these. Finally to fill in the gaps I added some stamped hanging ivy to complete as well as adding some dots and blades of grass using posca pens. I hope you like. This scene is to represent my crafting friends Vicky and Jo and myself all a bit lost for 2 of us are isolated due to health issues. 

What ever you are doing keep safe and stay well.

Holly

Items you might be interested in

Tim Holtz paper dolls   
https://www.thatscrafty.co.uk/tim-holtz-paper-dolls-die-cuts-vintage.html

Dylusions ink sprays     
https://www.afth.co.uk/dylusions---ink-sprays-476-c.asp

Thinlets Dies funky floral
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sizzix-Thinlits-15PK-Funky-Floral-Multicolour/dp/B078H7WQY8

Words various                           
https://www.thatscrafty.co.uk/tim-holtz-idea-ology-spiral-bound-sticker-book-small-talk.html

The Faerie Pool

Thought I would share the best I could of how I created this scene. I originally followed a tutorial for another scene that I will add next. So I sprayed some inks onto some card I used 300 gsm card for the scenes, spritz with some water or mist and place another piece of card on top and press together. Then pull apart to see what card has come out the best. I thought I would keep the other card and cut it up to make more scenes.

The above photo is that other bit of card cut up to the bits I thought I could use. To set the sun or you might want it to be a moon, I used just a brush and water to remove the ink leave for a few seconds then gently place paper towel over, you can do this as many times as you wish or until you are happy with it.

This is the piece of card I wanted to use. I wanted to do a waterfall in the scene so using the same technique I used a wet brush to shape and remove ink. If you do it wrong or brush in the wrong area just go over again with that colour ink. Sometimes it leaves a sort of stain but you can always cover that as the scene progresses. You are actually removing and replacing your inks to begin with. Once happy with a vision of how or where my waterfall will be placed I continue to build the scene.

Sorry about the quality of the above photo I used my webcam to take a quick snap of it for reference. As you can see I am starting to build my waterfall and added some rocks in the water, I added some ivy hanging down from the ravine as well. This would be slightly changed in the finished scene.
I used watercolour paints to fill in the rocks using grey and black as well as olive green.

I continued to build and build using layers of paints to create the foliage falling over the ravine and waterfall. Using ultramarine in the water then watering it down to get the misty look. Using my white pen drawing lines to give the effect of it falling, just to say before that paint pen dries I wipe my finger over it to blend it in. For the rocks in the water I used dark grey light grey and olive green, to highlight I used my white paint pen and blended. The hardest part was getting the faerie to show, she was quite dark as I stamped her in a deep purple colour, so I used white gel pen to highlight her. Using the pen in the water too and added shade to the rocks in the water. The tree and leaves represent over grown foliage. Using different colours of inks to stamp will give depth. To finish I love to add some colour so using acrylic paint pens I dotted around the waterfall and in the foliage. I really loved her wings but they just did not show so I have to colour them in sad to say as I love this Faerie called Oona. I have given details below of where you can purchase these beautiful stamps.

Happy Crafting

Holly

Various stamps are available from Lavinia Stamps https://laviniastamps.com/
Including Versafine inks for stamping and various water based inks.

Visual Storytelling

Today I am going to try and explain how I created the following scene. First of all I found my Shanty stamp and path stamp you can find the links and where to purchase from at the end of this post.

Social Distancing

To begin with I created this totally a different way round. Rather than creating a background then adding effects and images I stamped the Shanty and path straight onto the watercolour paper. 

I began to colour in the shanty house with hints of brown watercolour paint to give it a wooded effect the path too. Then I added some water to the top of the paper and added some ultramarine paint and let it flow to the side then removing some with tissue paper so the effect of clouds appeared.

Using some very pale ultramarine and light green I created the effect of distant trees and shrubs once dry I built up these to create more depth.

Same technique with the grass area starting with yellow then building with ultramarine to get a darker shade of the yellow. Continuing to build the colours so the grass had an olive green colour as shadows. I then stamped the little mice and created shadows using the olive green and a hint of brown. 

Stamping now, I have been using Versa-fine Clair inks for all my stamping, this ink is waterproof so I can go over anything that I feel needed to be highlighted or darkened with my paints.

Using my favourite twig branch I stamped at the top of the page to push the shanty house further back by creating light and dark shaded leaves on the twigs. Same with the foreground stamping and double stamping to give the effect of distance. 

The final part was to add some speckles of white pink green blue etc for the effect of flowers on the ground and hanging down from the shanty house, the roof of the house I painted with a mix of ultramarine and yellow to get a nice vibrant green that sort of resembles moss.

Thanks for reading and I will post more images as soon as I can.

Stay safe keep well

Holly

Stamps are available from Lavinia Stamps  https://laviniastamps.com/shop

https://laviniastamps.com/product/shanty                 Shanty house

https://laviniastamps.com/product/three-field-mice  Little mice

https://laviniastamps.com/product/large-path            Large path 

https://laviniastamps.com/product/foxglove              Foxgloves

https://laviniastamps.com/product/falling-ivy           Falling Ivy (used upside down)

https://laviniastamps.com/product/dandelions           Dandelions (used just one)

All versa fine inks are available on the website too.

The odd stamps are from the pound range that is sold on their website easy to use and very good customer service

After the Rain

After the recent nice weather I had been able to go in my garden and get some fresh air in between being isolated and social distancing it was great to sit in the sun and enjoy the garden what was now turning from winter to spring. The blue bells have sprung and the lily of the valley it was so pretty.
Then rain came I understand we need the rain but it meant being locked inside again. Grey skies made the lockdown feel even more unbearable. But there was hope for the next day the Sun came up and the sky was so blue it had a magical feel to it. So I got to creating something in the memory.

After the Rain

Maybe brighter days were going to appear, alas a few hours later the rain returned but I had captured the happy moment and I felt better for it. We all have good and bad days but everytime I look at this picture I get the happy feeling again.

Stay Safe Keep Well

Holly Molly

Altered Book Journal

Being more creative

I have discovered journaling during the past few months, I was never really interested when my crafting friends were full of glee over buying all size of journals and creating pages for them. I did enjoy making one using a sizzix die designed by the lovely Eileen Hull, who actually I met last Summer. Eileen completed a around the UK paper trail. It was a great day lots of creativity making a fabric journal cover and fabric pages. This lead me to creating another style of journal in the form of an altered book. The book was called There and back again, so it seemed ideal to journal in it.

Hoping for some fun

I wanted the pages to still show the story or should I say biography of Sean Astin who played one of the hobbits in Lord of the rings. Using pastel watercolour shades as a background allows the test to still be seen in places. I used Tim Holtz paper dolls coloured with alcohol markers, added some flower stamps and coloured in with paints, using decorative stamps for borders and I have a cheerful journal page.

Merman in Time

I could not resist my next page the beautiful merman stamp by Pink Ink. Using watercolour paints for the background very faintly then using the paint to colour him in. I finished up with creating certain effects using acrylic paint pens and posca pens. My book was beginning to look nice and I have loads of pages to complete. What ever you are making or creating have fun relax and enjoy.

Stay Safe Keep Well

Holly Molly

Dedication reach out with Lavinia

Dedicated Scenes and Cards

(Reach out with Lavinia)

Anyone who knows me well will tell you I am hooked on creating art scenes using the wonderful Lavinia stamps. Beautiful Faeries, Mystical beings as well as stunning floral, nature and sweet creatures. During these uncertain times, the Lavinia team set up a group to create scenes and to dedicate them to all those working within the NHS as Key workers, Carers & all of the workforce's keeping the country going. I was up for it, sort of got me into a better frame of mind to be honest. My first scene I wanted to dedicate to those totally on the frontline, those caring and putting their own lives at risk to help someone in their hour of need.

Dedicated to all Nurses & Doctors 

I have always thought this faerie reminded me of a lady with the lamp and of course Florence Nightingale came to mind. I needed to keep the colour to blues and white, the Hares resemble those infected and coping with the disese. Our faerie is doing her magic to help them to recover. The moon represents working day and night.

I hope to get this framed when the lockdown is lifted so I can get out and buy some frames. It has not been easy being locked in when we have been so free to come and go as we please. Now it is a risk to leave the house to get medical requests and food. But I try to keep positive rather than negative all I can say is thank the lord I have my crafting.



My next scene was dedicated to my work colleagues working in the community caring for the elderly and those most vulnerable. Due to my health I have had to take strict social distancing. I miss my work friends we are or were a great team, at times dealing with the most vulnerable people I have ever worked with. I miss them all at the moment, I think we are all looking forward to the day we can return to some normality.

Dedicated to all Community Care Workers
(May your Path be a safe one)

I feel this scene speaks for itself and is visually descriptive. I look forward to the day we can all be working laughing and joking together.

Stay Safe Keep Well

Holly Molly