new collages from a hopeless romantic (?)

I have been fairly quiet on the art front this week, On Tuesday, my art group night I led a critique evening. This is something that all the group seems to enjoy and we do it at least once a year. Of course most of the work has been seen at various stages of completion but seeing the artworks in their frames and properly mounted ( where required) makes it look so much more..... respectable and like a "proper" piece of art. I usually take the group thru the rudiments of art criticism and then ( because it is so much more relevant) thru the elements and principles of composition. This generally takes about 30 mins and then we all act like experts and start to critique the work presented before us one by one. I am thinking of putting the workshop notes on a tutorial, but have not yet decided where that will be posted, so watch this space if you think a primer in composition may be up your street.

On Thursday the family went along to a new folk club, which has started in a pub nearby (in Shirley at the Red Lion). This has inspired me t get out my guitar and to start re-learning some of the folk sogs that I have forgotten over the past 50 years or so. I may well be performing on a regular basis in the future if all goes well. Of course I shouldn't have to say that they allow anybody who can string two chords together to get up on stage and do a couple of numbers.

Anyway.... collage. Over the weekend I have completed a few pieces using some collage sheets that I have found on the Flickr collage group pool. A wonderful resource for anybody into collage.
here are four photos. the first two are postcard sized, with lacy bits increasing the footprint of the pieces.

I call this one "Bow to the Lady", you can see what I mean by increasing the footprint. Lots of ribbony things bought from theCounty Book shop - very cheap. The image of the grand lady is from Stampington and Co, sign up for their free newsletter and get free images regularly. The background is from Stars*Go*Blue and the bow was off one of my wife's christmas presents. The wrappings are fair game, as far as I am concerned!

If you can't guess this one was called, " The Wearing of the Green". This one and in fact the first were both snapped up for trades very, very quickly. The background was from AlphabetSoupStudios and the main image from Kellykautz. The metal filagree charm was from a set of card embellishments. I have been called a hopeless romantic because of the atc's/art that I have been creating recently, I just find I am attracted to nice images.

The last two for now are atc format:

I called this "scaredy-cat" , with an alternative and longer title that goes something like.... " I told you that you wouldn't want to know what was in my food". Background again from Stars*Go*Blue and the images from Paper Scraps; the text pieces are from crowabout challenge sheets. This and the next piece are sealed with an acrylic glaze, something I have not done before. It does give a finsh to the piece that I like and shall probably be using this all the time in future.

My title, " Wishing on a Star" ( even if it is a flower). One of my own pre-made backgrounds and another image from PaperScraps; again the text piece is from a crowabout collage sheet.

Well off to learn a few folk songs now. Think of me as I try to recover hard pads of skin on my left hand fingertips. It can be murder playing a guitar if you do not do it regularly.