WINTRY MIX

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas or if you don't celebrate, enjoy this lovely tree scene and festive winter snowman down below.

I have used it before and still continue to love my Ultimate Red Rubber Palette (small for these projects) so it is fitting I end my year with it the center point of my project.  These two cards are done completely in dye ink (reinkers) and permanent ink (StazOn) and India Ink/Dip Pen.  Nothing fancy at all. I began by drizzling Oregano dye ink (Ranger) in a center line on the palette. I then put my pointer finger in water and pressed it into the ink to spread and lighten it for a background coat.  I pressed a 3 x 5" piece of glossy cardstock onto the palette and pulled it slowly up.  

I repeated the same steps again with Chartreuse green ink to have some color variations but did not use water so this would be a very vibrant color.  Before pressing the paper into the green ink, I decided to add some Raisin ink to my pointer finger and pressed some small dots along the green. 

It doesn't look like much yet except a textural line of mooshed ink, but as the details are added, it will morph into a composition for a card.  Bear with me.  I found a tree stamp I just love any time of year

and added it just right of center near the top of the foliage.  I took a teensy piece of cosmetic sponge and carefully colored it with the chartreuse ink (a slow pouncing motion) and then decided that the star needed to be gold.  I added a bit of StazOn Metallic gold to the star with the top end of a paintbrush.  I was satisfied with the tree, but now had to find a spot for the "joy" stamp that seems to go well with the mood I am setting.    

There, I found it. 

My design was starting to take shape, but I wanted to add more contrasting black so I took out my Higgins India Ink and dip pen and drew and fanciful line in the foliage.  

I framed the scene unevenly with a thick black Sharpie before mounting it on green and burgundy and cardstock. 

Five black beads finished it off.

I was on a roll with backgrounds so I used one made the same way but using several drops of water to create thinner, lighter areas. I found "top hat" snowman and added it into right of center so that his head and the stars would be in the white space. I went nuts with the dip pen again and added some activity beneath him and then had to personalize it by penning a word.  

He needed some oomph....so I added some clear Stickles to the stars and buttons. 

I mounted it on iridescent Bazill with a little strip of black glossy beneath it to add some pizzazz.  NOTE:  My camera angle on this beauty shot makes the card appear off, but in real life it is plumb so use your imagination.  

HAPPY HOLIDAYS ONE AND ALL................. For more RubberMoon, head here.  For more me, head here and friend or like me on facebook.

Fragments

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

It was a beautiful day in St. Louis today and that definitely was the inspiration for my latest piece of art.  I chose to mount this piece on black glossy and a dull mustard yellow in card format, but this piece easily could be framed or mounted on cradled birch with the sides painted.  At the very heart of this process is a melding of a resist technique I've been sharing around the country since 2000.  I still love it because the results are imperfect and surprising every time.  I was very excited with the advent of the Ultimate Red Rubber Palette.  It makes doing this technique on a larger scale so very easy.  Today I used the 8" x 10" inch palette.  But, truth be told, I had to have them both!  

I got out a few products to start my studio play.  As you can see, it really doesn't take much once you have a vision.  For media, I have four bottles of Adirondack reinkers in oregano, wild plum, stonewashed, and butterscotch, a bottle of the Ranger Watermark Resist Ink, Titan Buff and Bronze Golden Fluid Acrylics, and a black StazOn pad.  

I began working on the palette by adding resist ink in a thick horizontal stripe, and a few dots about an inch up from the solid stripe.  I saw this composition as a scene, so I added some stonewashed around the resist dots.  Below the stripe I added a thin line of oregano and then added some dots of wild plum and butterscotch in the same area.  

 

Once I had enough ink, and a little goes a long way,  I lightly spritzed a cosmetic sponge with a tiny bit of water, and then pounced the sponge starting at the top left to top right and then proceeding below the resist ink, again left to right. The oregano and butterscotch, and wild plum below will mingle a bit, and that's fine.  They will then create new colors!

 

Once your ink is spread to the coverage you would like, you can then make a print with a piece of glossy paper.  I used a 2.75" x 8.5" piece of Kromekote.  (***** asked and answered in class hundreds of times:  No, photo paper will not work.  Inks are not meant to move on it and we need them to move in this technique.) Place the paper down and press evenly.  

 

I like to pull up a corner and see what coverage I will have before completely lifting.  That's my choice, but you can always re-dip if you don't like the print, want to add more ink, etc.  Notice the striations and the area that resisted the ink.  I am liking this a lot.

 

I almost always pull a second and sometimes third print and save them.  As I said, a little ink goes a long way.  Here's my second print:

 

If you look closely, you can see the variegation you get from using the plate and just a hint of water to spread the dye inks.  At this point, I take a gently used cosmetic sponge and move some of the ink that is still wet around to blend.  I don't want to totally lose the dotted nature of the print, but I do want to tint some of the negative space created by the resist ink.  Not all of it, just some. 

Once the inks are where I want them and I am satisfied, I heat the rest of the ink so that it stays put when the next layers commence.  I am skipping the obligatory heat tool picture.  Use your imagination.  I then stamped the spiral star five times on the same glossy paper using stonewashed and cut them out so that I could have some dimensional texture. 

Once cut, I used black StazOn and the checkered ribbon to create ribbons to hold these stars up in my sky.  I then affixed the five stars with Scor-Tape and moved on to the landscape.  Here I began by using the zen flowers stamp, black StazOn and a torn piece of paper as a mask.  I followed the natural color change in the landscape to create hills and valleys.

 

I had a little challenge come up next:   Obscured in the picture on the left, I added a tree using tree leaves (on right), which is actually a reverse image stamp. I was able to use this stamp by taking a medium sized Sharpie to the inner lines of the stamp.  (Normally the tree would be produced by the ink that is on the flat portion of the stamp.)  It worked like a charm, but you must work quickly because of the dry time. 

The rest of the composition came together with some bits and bobs.  The picture above shows me further delineating the landscape with a permanent pen.  It also will act as a separation from fragments that I had stamped just before that.  Fragments is from one of my new plates from my own stamp line at Nancy Curry Art. It's so hot off the press that it hasn't even made my Etsy shop yet.  Later, this week and that's a promise.  

The picture below shows the completed project.  I added some interest by taking Golden Fluid Acrylic paint in bronze and titan buff to the landscape by mimicking the shape of the zen flowers.  I also added some bronze to the tree and to the centers of the stars.  Once finished with that textural layer of paint, I cut a slightly larger piece of black glossy and affixed the composition to it.  Before adding the top sections to the final yellow cardstock, I brought out the imagery from the sky ribbons by stamping it so it seemed to flow beneath the scene.  To me, fragments is the perfect title for this piece of work because there are so many separate areas that come together and make this work.  Thanks for visiting a little part of my vision of the RubberMoon world.