What's On Your Workdesk 211

Yep! It's me ! The messy one is back!! My poor craft desk has lain neglected for months and turned into somewhat of a 'dumping ground' I'm afraid thanks to an NC Art and Design course at the local college. I finished that last week and have been using the time to catch up on 'stuff'. This will probably be my next ' to do '  project!! Tidy it up a little I think!! LITTLE?...erm try a LOT!!

Anyway, I would just like to apologise for being AWOL for so long , I just couldn't seem to fit this in along with all the course work AND the homework! Wow ! Did we get hammered with that or what? !!

Still, I have learned so much on this course and I have have loads of inspiration and new ideas that I would like to try out. (IF I can ever get that desk tidied up that is).

Right, I'm off for a wee nosey around everyone else's desks on this wonderful inspirational bloghop that is WOYWW over at Julia's place  so I may be gone for a while !!


Oh, before I go.... I just KNOW some of you will be curious as to what's under the bubble wrap?! ... It is a project that I did for Sculpting class, a clay tile that was made by taking a piece of a drawing/photograph, carving it out on the clay then making an opposite using plaster of paris! LOVE this as you have a 'positive and negative' image if you will. Glad we did this because when I was about to carve the tile I wasn't sure which pieces would look better 'taken away' or left. This gives me a look at how it would have been either way.

Right, rambling over for now.

Take care everyone, have a great WOYWW!

Thanks for dropping by

Jackie x

Rain !

Good afternoon everyone....not the best of weather today and all my poor mates who are off to the Download music festival to see Iron Maiden are going to be up to their knees in muck!!

Anyway...I have had this image of a "faceless" man with an umbrella in my head for days and I have no idea why or where it came from. Sooooo seeing as the eeathet is totally rotten today I thought I'd try and put it on paper to see how it would turn out. It's quite creepy actually because this is EXACTLY how it looked in my head. I used Reeves Watercolours for this. Don't normally work in watercolours so these ones are a budget variety.

On that note I shall be off. Hope the weekend weather brightens up a little. Take care and thanks for dropping by.

Jackie x

Spray inks and rocksalt!

Good afternoon eveyrone, such a glorious day to be stuck inside playing so I went outside to enjoy the weather. Not very often Scotland has it warm sunny so I'm making the most of it while it lasts!

Seeing as I'm coming to the end of my college course all of my class work AND HOMEWORK is now finished... YAY ! .... I find myself with more time to ry out some of the techniques we learned in class.

The photograph above is a variation of one I tried with watercolour paints , so I gave it a wee try just to see how it would turn out. REALLY pleased with this and I will definitley use it again. Makes great backgrounds!


This was done on WATERCOLOUR paper, simply because it needs to very VERY wet to get such good results so I would advise on using only the watercolour paper.

I sprayed on some Vibrant Turquoise and London Blue Dylusions inks,  and some Copper Coloured Cosmic Shimmer, blended them together with a water spray then just sprinkled over a generous ammount of rocksalt, left it to sit for about 5 mins then sprayed over again with the same colours. I set the page out in the sun to dry! You are better to let this AIR DRY though, so patience is a must. I think you get better results rahter than using a heat gun. Drying times all depend on the conditions really. Mine dried super quick because it's scorching in Scotland today.


Here is one I did in different colours, exactly the same technique on this time Iused some of the salt that I had brushed off the previous one as well as fresh salt just to see what happened, got a nice bit of colour transferrance and you can really see the texture on this piece.

Had fun doing this and you can bet I'll be using this technique again. But don't think I'll use the 'brights', much prefer the muted colurs and the copper addition.

Anyway, it's a lovely day som I'm going to sit outside and have a little arty play.

Take care and enjoy your weekend everyone, Thaks for dropping by,

Jackie x

Playing with Acrylics.

Good evening everyone.

Today was a glorious day and a day off from college as I have passed the classes I had on for today so didn't need to go in.  Was given a directed study day and really glad I was because the weather was stunning.

So I spent some time sitting outside in the garden just sketching and playing around with a few ideas.
Came back inside for a while and decided to have a wee practice at painting. Not really my strong point and it shows but it was fun to try out.

Just a quick post from my phone so please excuse any mistakes.

Take care everyone and thanks for dropping by.


Jackie xx

Mixed Media.

I have had this idea in my head for ages but couldn't really do anything about it until now.

First of all the big background piece is a Batik piece that was created for Textiles, the smaller piece is a lino print and that was done in Printmaking class a few weeks after. The fact that these two pieces go really well together is a complete accident and something I didn't really pay attention to until I had completed the printmaking images.

I couldn't put this together because the pieces were in sketchbooks which were needed for assessment, so I had to wait until that was done, so as both subjects have now been passed it was okay for me to go ahead.

Many MANY apologies for the seriously naff photograph though, it was late when I got finished and my camera wasn't working so I had to use my mobile phone. That nasty rag is there to stop the picture from sliding down!!

I am going to enter this for the class exhibition. That way there is a piece used involving all the lecturers....does that make sense?

Anyway, I'm off for a while, 'sneaking' this post in while in class, well not really 'sneaking' as everybody can see what I'm doing anyway!!. Finished my class work for now and just waiting on a checklist to see if there's anything else I need to do.

Take care and thanks for dropping by.

Jackie x

Mixed Media self portrait.

This piece was started as a final project for mixed media class in college. My lecturer wasn't really too happy about me submitting it and wanted me to do something else, which i did and didn't like the end result. So having made a really good start on this and with all the annotation being done I decided I wasn't going to let it go to waste and just finish it off.

It is based on and inspired by Finnabair , who's work I think is amazing !

I won't go into a massive big spiel about the whole piece because I think you can basically see what was used, but I will explain certain techniques in simplified form or else I'd be here for ages lol !

First of all my photograph was loaded into Photoshop, I just used some of the filters to alter it slightly, printed it off the proceeded to rip it up! The frame it's in is actually made from some air drying clay. I used a Sizzix 'Frame' die cut and traced around it, also used a clay work tool to trace through the shapes on the frame. Set it aside to dry and then painted it with acrylic paint. I triple embossed the photograph and when cool, I 'cracked' the embossing. I then stick the photo behind the frame.

The bottom left hand corner is actually some pollyfilla and pva glue. while this was still wet I embedded some beads, buttons and various other objects also added some fusible fibres and some paper flowers.

The butterflies and 3D roses are from The Artistic Stamper Steampunk range  . I LOVE these stamps and have used them a lot in projects!

All the other 'oddments' are basically 'stuff' that was found in my stash or my 'junk drawer'....now i know you all have one of those!! lol.

Old key fobs, broken jewellery, broken watches, miniature playing cards, etc.

The top left hand corner is a piece of knitting done with ribbon yarn.
Just added various die cuts and a few other bits and pieces.
I sprayed over the whole thing with Glimmer Mists in Blue and Green, Used a darker Blue Cosmic Shimmer and a Copper cosmic Shimmer.
I also used Dylusions Blackand  Brown.


Here are a couple of close ups of the details.... top right hand corner,

Bottom left hand corner....

I am really pleased with the way this has turned out. I am going to take it in to class on Monday anyway just to find out the reaction. I may get to use it as my final piece in the end because all the work is done on it, but we shall see.

Thanks for dropping by, feel free to ask if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help.

Take care and Happy Bank Holiday to those of you who have one. (we had two days at the start of the month in Scotland).

Take care

Jackie xx

A little "Abstract" !

Just a quick post tonight, been playing with Acrylics paints. I was really just playing with some brush techniques, blending medium and colours. Just wanted to see what I could achieve. Had lots of fun wondering what the end results would be like. A nice welcome distraction to a rather traumatic week!

So I have ended up with two lovely 20 x 16" abstract paintings in lovely rich and strong colours!

I'm off for the night to relax before the mad rush for college tomorrow.

Take care and thanks for dropping by

Jackie x