Playing with sunflowers

I have spent a happy afternoon playing with Vincent's sunflowers.

The light has gone now - so  only artificial light so I will have to take photos in daylight - for now here are some close ups of parts of the images transferred onto bags.

One has a yellow background and the other a pale blue.

I actually grew this sort of sunflowers up my allotment this year - they were stunning and I now prefer them to the 'ordinary' ones!

Which do you prefer?

If you click on the photos you can see a close up of the textures.

Off indoors now - its dark..................................

I should have told you Vincent - Sorry

Well I took your advice ladies and just played without a care in the
world at how the finished art work turned out ! I think it fits the Created by Handchallenge this week.

A hessian/canvas shopping bag - and this is how it started

I painted a square-ish border

I then transferred one of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings onto it.

And then I erm, painted over lots of it with mixed acryllics

It was just to make it look more like an oil painting

(Click on photo to enlarge)

But then, in natural light the border looked really 'naff'

So I painted over the border again.

And it ended up like this....

The dark marks are where some drips plopped down off a tree above

But they have dried out now.

I think I need to tone down the Vincent Van Gough nameplate now.

That looks better and the wet 'drip' is now dry

I feel a sunflower coming on Vincent - don't turn in your grave

after all, it's only a shopping bag!

Oops - he surely will be - I spelled his name wrong! The good thing about painting is I can just paint over it and do it again!

Oooops

Oh dear - I have inadvertently rejected a number of your kind comments on my canvas bag post below.  Somehow a couple of spam messages had got through - those not nice ones - and when rejecting them 'it' rejected the rest of the comments.

Huge apologies - and thank you to those who left comments overnight.

Presents.......................

I have been busy making 'thank you' presents - and trying new (to me) experiments.

Now that this has flown to it's destination I can show you.

 

Image transferring!

I wanted to make something different, and original, and it took me quite some time to decide what.

You see this lady is far more talented than I - with years of experience.

I came up with the only solution I could think of.

Take some of my favourite examples of her art from her blog, and turn them into a canvas 'bag for life'.

At least I know that she will never get another like it!

And it will come in useful when she runs her workshops as it is very big and strong.

I wish I had..........

A card fairy godmother.  To sit and go through my 'stocks' of arty crafty stuff - pick out various bits and pieces, and give me a step by step lesson on how to make a card with what I have.

Mention the word 'card' or if I even think of the word 'card', I somehow get a mental blog.   I spend hours attempting to make them, and they end up in the bin.  I just can't produce anything in the 'card' department that I am the least bit thrilled with - despite browsing in awe at a long list of blogs for inspiration. 
Very strange.

This is today's disaster scanned into the computer on a sheet of red card.  I was so disappointed that I couldn't even be bothered to go indoors for my camera.

I have spent a long time making it - and it is now heading into the bin.  It just looks just silly rubbish to me.

At least I have achieved something today - I have managed to clear out and sort out the last corner of my studio which still had a stack of unlabled boxes of mixed contents.  (I have things for flower arranging, sugarcraft (which I no longer do, and must get rid of all that equipment), a sausage making machine, a food dryer, a flower press, books for crafting - I am sure that you can picture it)

It's a great feeling to get things organised - totally.  I will know where to put my hands on anything and everything in here- which is just how I like it.  But it still won't help me to make cards LOL!

I think I will do some work with materials for a little while - and wait for the paper crafting side of things to 'fall into place'

Grandma's Attic - Vintage tin

In the days of 'make do and mend' grandmas could re-create anything into something totally diffent - it was a case of necessity for the working class.

And so it was with rusty old tins.

You could turn them into anything you liked!

Uncle Jack was often at sea, and brought back things from his travels, so a ticket found outside a theatre.

A scrap torn from an addressed envelope

Little paint brushes in a pot sketched onto a scrap of paper one night to ease the boredom at sea

And a prized possession - an artist's postcard from Paris from Uncle Jack

All put together to make this..........for this granny's pencils

Or paint brushes, (now that it has had a coat of matt acryllic to protect it.)

Who would have thought that a tomato tin.

Wrapped in re-cycled brown paper and dabbed with Expresso ink. An artist's painting from a magazine, a scrap of cotton lace, stamped images onto dressmaking pattern paper (used for packaging from a purchase from Very Mary), all of which were distressed, and a very vivid imagination of  'pretend' relatives - could turn out like that!

Another find in Grandma's attic

Not 'politically correct' in these days - but it has a certain charm I thought.

It's from the bygone age of Gentlemen's Clubs, where men of a certain class in society could sit around in comfortable leather chairs dressed up to the 'nines'  to have a companionable chat and to smoke their cigars.

The cigars boxes in the Victorian era were very fine wooden boxes indeed, some were covered with fine leather, with the manufacturers often prestigious label taking pride of place.

This one says "Smoke Buzzer Cigars" -  I love the way the body of the butterfly is a cigar!  Very clever
I wonder if this was Grandfather's?

This scrap of leather is a remnant of a bygone era which I thought might look nice a on hanger.........




Or, is it just a torn piece of recycled  brown envelope, aged with Espresso ink, with an image stamped on a sheet of tissue which was host to yesterday's 'gold' leaf on Grandma's box?

Here are some examples of cigar labels from my CD collection, I thought you might like

Birds

Some lovely labels.

Look at these

What an outcry there would be today - children and pets playing with cigars!

I love the rooster but.................!

What an outrage this would cause - as if smoking a cigar would make you feel so happy at being a orphan!

I don't think so

There were lots of pretty flower labels - I think they all became collectors items

Last one for today