Altered art ATC's

Right, it has been a busy little weekend...............

I found a packet of old self-adhesive cork anti-slip/surface protector thingies at the weekend, the individual pieces were small, rounded rectangle and circles. I was immediately struck with the idea of makeing myself a background stamp (or three) for my ATC art work. So I found myself an ATC sized backing plate in plastic and placed the cork "tiles" in patterns on the backing plate. The only problem was that after inking and stamping, I found That there was so much ink still in the pores on the cork that I could carry on (and on and on) Luckily I had a number of old watercoloured backgrounds which I had not yet used ( never throw anything away!).

The resulting ATC blanks were immediately put to use and I started to turn out ATC's as if I had a conveyor line in front of me. Here are some of the results:-

A more creative weekend than I have experienced for a long time. I also did another of the Africa series, of which I intend to do several. I enjoy this altered art technique and will be trying to cultivate this more rough and ready effect.

It's back to reality now, Still trying out too many ideas and techniques without honing my skills. I need to take a much more considered attitude to learning the new approach to art. I have virtually given up on real painting which is a shame. Bot hopefully when I have had my fill of these new toys I will return. See you all.

bottled art - works in progress

Howdy, Not really been up to much in the way of art/craft this last few days but I have been thinking about a little series of ATC's based on the inventory of an invented travelling Quack doctor. What emotions would you like to feel today? Buy it in a bottle! Love, joy, beauty, innocense. (mmmm... I do know beauty is not an emotion, but hey, its only art!).

I had these images of antique bottles from a friend and printed them out on acetate. Whilst browsing my stock of images/photos I came across these four which are not my usual style , can't remember why I had them even. BUT there they were and kicked off the idea of the series. Here are the four images with the acetate images placed over them. I am now considering where to go from here. Lots of ideas but still contemplating what the theme should be. I want them all to be different but recognisably the same.

I won't say which is which, why not have a guess and see if your impression agrees with mine, feel free to leave a comment.

Just thought, I promised to say something about zettiology, well here's a little peek at the source:- http://www.teeshamoore.com/publications.htm more soon.

button fairy, african angel AND zettiology

OMG I have done it again. You see I bought this job lot of bits and pieces for embellishing my crfat work pieces and there are a lot of buttons. Now with this button fairy swap, I have a good excuse to use them up. But is this a fairy? I asked wether fairies could be masculine in a previous post. It would be unfair to the gentleman concerned to use that apellation, so I coined the alternative name button angel. He is of african origin simply because in this job lot were some african orientated beads and things, so an African Angel it is:-

These really are easy to make and it is easy to see how the ladies could get carried away with cheruby babies and fairy things. Nice and glittery with lots of bling on the tail. And so quick once you have all the bits to hand.

Now, on a more serious note, ahem. N.I. also have a swap based on the zetti images which I mentioned recently and which I promised to explain ( but in the meantime see lots of examples on flickr or from the originators own web site) and will add a few word of my own on the subject....... soon. here are a couple of playful, post-card sized images

Don't judge these too harshly as I am simply experimenting at the moment. Great fun to do, with no pre-conceptions and everything adds to one's experience.

Can't believe I have made so many posts recently, don't know if I can keep this up. It is likely to be back to one ( or perhaps two) per week again but please visit regularly and even better let me know what you think of this journey.

Bye

New Inspirations altered art video

Just thought I would share this with you, it's a video showcasing some of the varied work from my new art group which meets on the web:



Hope you enjoy it

Altered art ATC, couldn't leave a fairy as my top story

Well I just had to come back and put up another post, I couldn't leave the fairy at the top of my blog for long - know what I mean?

Here is another recent example of the type of work I have been developing with this new group. All the doodling and other techniques is I hope going to culminate in this sort of thing. Which I think is better called an assemblage. I will have to look up the difference between collage and this term on Wiki and answer my own question in my next post. This one is called Africa Series - beads and flower. The reason for this title is that I have aquired some stamps and accents/embellishments along the theme and I am going to use them up come hell or high-water. Here it is , hope you like it.

Just a little background to the methodology, to remind me really of how I made it as I quite like this one:- I layered some crumpled tissue paper to a card and then cut it to the ATC size. The offcuts, I used to build up the left-hand side and topped this with a little heat-embossing. I stamped the mask motif with black ink and used a bunched tissue to stamp coloured ink (2 colours) over the surface. I also stamped the small birds and the circular motifs and coloured these in. The small tile and the yellow rose were embellishments that were handy, and I put a few beads onto a wire which was attached via the eyelet at the top. there was also a little embossing around the main image in a random manner.

Et Voila, I hope the culmination of my experiments with collage, doodling, zentangles and zetti, not to mention art dolls will be altered art works.

BTW, have I not entioned zettiology before? Oh boy - you are in for a surprise! But it will have to wait for next time.

art dolls and button fairies, what's next?

Help, I think I am being hi-jacked. The yahoo group which I have joined called New Inspirations is pulling me in all sorts of ways and I am definitely being led astray. You may remember the art doll I posted a photograph of recently, well they are now doing a monthly swap with of different types of art doll. The latest is (would you believe) button fairies. I ask you, a serious artist doing button fairies :-). But what can I do they are capable (oh yes) of producing such fantastic ATC's and altered art objects that I have decided to sacrifice my principals and join in. Here is my first attempt. Not quite finished, I haven't added the sparkly bits and bobs as I wasn't quite satisfied with it - but I will learn.

Still it's all good practice (for something), and grist to the mill of altered art. I had to refuse the first art doll swap as I didn't want to admit that I couldn't sew, but I did produce the fella referred to above.

Question: Can fairies be of the male denomination?

ATC's on Flickr

I have just started loading the archive of my ATC 's on to FLICKR , and one of the widgets is the so-called Flickr-badge. I have put this at the top of the page on the RHS of the screen. What fun! I am not quite sure how it selects the photos ( well I have selected certain tags ) or how often it will change so I will keep an eye on it. One of my problems at the moment is that I am diluting my on-line effort on several web-sites. This is step one of trying to get some order into my web life.

ATC art doodles- again

Trying to refrain from posting any more zentangle doodles - great relaxation but unsure of their place in my ouevre (I think I've spelt that right... my artistic body of work for those who need a hint). But I am still trying to complete a pair of ATC's which I can submit to my web-groups doodle swap. Here are a couple of new contenders:-

a little "iffy" about this one, trying to use a rubber stamp to liven it up


slightly better, I think. But......??



Now here's one which I like, a little effete but who cares!

In fact I have selected this last and "Rose amongst the thorns" (colour version) as shown in an earlier posting, Doodling ATC's.

Now these are mailed to the swap host I may be able to carry on with the rest of my life. It is a great group (sorry it is private) but the members are so busy coming up with new "crafty" projects that painting is still eluding me. I must put some time aside for sketching and painting or I am going to get stale. If not already!

Still nil desperandum, eh!! more posts soon.

BTW, Major problems with my wife's mother (96 years old) are easing..... and I may have more time to devote to my art work and even consider opening up an Ebay shop again. Shock horror. I will researching other alternative avenues over the next few days and weeks whilst building up a stock of work. Any suggestions/comments gratefully accepted.

Cheers

more doodled zentangles

I hope this is the right term; doodle, zentangle, zendoodle simply don't know the difference yet!

I don't usually make two posts this close together but I was "granny" sitting my mother in law today and found myself with a typist pad and a leaky biro. Balancing the pad on my knee, whilst sitting infront of a sweltering hot fire I managed to deaf out the comments and draw these. I was actually quite pleased with them under the circumstances, so I thought they deserved a showing.

titled cheeky monkey



and wheels within wheels

Doodling ATC's

Hi all,

here we are again at the start of another year (well still early). I am involved in an ATC swap with the subject of doodling and have been practicing this art form over the past few days. It is so easy to do yet not so easy to make it look like a well thought out piece of art work.

And then there are the off-shoots like Zentangles - have you ever come across these. If you are an artist you may well have been doing them without realising - whilst on the phone, working out an idea or other half-automatic activity.

Here is the first, in two versions:- B&W and with added colour.

I call this/these "A Rose amongst the thorns"

The next section is for the so-called zentangles, I tend to do these and then when I am almost completed, I see a subject which the last few lines/shading may pick out. Many of these are left as abstract forms but I like to make them into something concrete.

Great fun to do, and so relaxing

Another entertaining form I have been trying is Marbling paper, we all did it as kids, didn't we? And now I am hoping to use it for providing some fun backings for doodling ATC's. Here is an early example from a not too successful first trial.

Well there you go. That's enough from me for another few days, be back soon with more adventures in art and craft.