Creative Fun with Donna Downey

Hi all,

I'm feeling very lucky at the moment as I have had one fantastic day creating and am getting ready for my second. Donna Downey is here in Rockingham, teaching at Made With Memories, and I am taking all four classes with her. I am having a blast! It's fun being the student for a change.

Yesterday the first class was about painting with stencils and we made a largish canvas. Here is where we stopped after creating the background layer:

Then we came in and stencilled over the top and added paint, highlighting some of the background. I got a bit carried away and forgot to highlight much of the background as I was having so much fun playing and mixing paint. Here is my finished piece:

The second class was working with different Faber Castell mediums - gelatos and big brush pens. Must admit I am not so in love with that finished piece, main reason was I made myself use a different colour palette then my normal and I am not happy with the results. Live and learn. Great class just not happy with my finished piece.

Well that's it for now, off to get ready for today's adventure!
Take care,
Helen

Layouts

Hi all,
2nd post in one night!! I took in some recent-ish layouts for Judy Made With Memories to display in the shop, she is wanting to have inspiration up along the walls and me being me I gladly gave her some of my layouts to hang up. All of these have been completed in the last 10 months. In no particular order here they are:

 Sorry about the quality of the photos but I quickly snapped them with my iPhone rather than my good camera. I also gave Judy one about Ben, don't think I'm playing favourites but Ben doesn't let me take his photo as much as Sam. The layout was the one where he is making a gingerbread house, I shared this one here months ago.

Judy also gave me a challenge, a pack of older papers to make a layout out of. Well I accepted the challenge (of course!) and this is what I came up with . . . 

 Well that's it for tonight. My house shows are nearly finished so it's off to bed ready for school tomorrow. . . only 33 more work days before I jet off to Surabaya! Not that I'm counting :)

Take care,
Helen

Lindy's Stamp Gang August Colour Challenge

Hi all!

Even though I didn't make the design team for Lindy's Stamp Gang I still want to join in their monthly colour challenges as I love their sprays as my 'small' collection can attest to. Plus it does't hurt to show them my brilliance now does it!

Anyway, I turned to the next page in my journal which I had already started by making a hot glue tree and giving it a layer of light yellow paint (this was leftover from a mixing for another page and I didn't want to waste it).

I bought a textured rolling pin from a local cake shop and tried it out with some texture paste, unfortunately it didn't quite work out how I imagined it but it did leave an interesting layer of texture. I then painted the tree with brown paint, Viva Decor Ferro (copper colour), some sprays and then black paint. Sprays used were:Mission Bells Brown, Cattail Copper Brown, Milk Chocolate Brown .

Following this I layered the background with a number of sprays, I was inspired by the photo of the lake for the colour challenge and wanted to create my own take of it. Sprays used were: TiffanyLou Blue , Tainted Love Teal , Hag's Wart Orange , Pretty in Pink Pink , Jazzy Jivin' Purple and Passionate Plum .

Next came the flowers in the foreground. I used a teal Twinkling H20 and then painted the flowers with white paint with the best paint applicator around - my finger! Into the centre of the flowers I added some drops of Pretty in Pink  and Jazzy Jivin' Purple sprays. I used my black Big Brush pen to highlight the stems.

To finish off I added some embellishments, some words in my tree as well as 2 Studio Callico wooden birds and 2 brads that have images of bees on them. Can you see the little bug hiding on one of the flowers?

And that's it my finished journal page. Hope you like it.

Take care,
Helen