Some of my latest creative escapades

The theme for September's ATC swap through the group in Helensvale Queensland is "No paper".  I cut up a chinese placemat made out of bamboo into ATC size and coated the surface with impasto using a Heidi stencil of a butterfly.  Once the impasto had dried and was transparent, I covered the whole thing in two-step crackle medium, then covered it in Ginger Alcohol inks to accentuate the cracks.  The butterfly was painted with Black alcohol ink and the edges inked with black StazOn.

Yesterday I did a Mixed Media class with Linda Baldock at Scaploot (http://www.scraploot.com.au/).  Linda's a very talented artist and I love her grungy style of art.  The class we did was called "Flooded Canvas" and here are some pics of my piece.

The piece is made on the reverse of a canvas. The inside is painted various colours, then a coat of impasto is applied, sticking in beads, watch pieces, rusty bottle caps and bits I've collected over the years, black mesh, rusty keys and a vintage photo.  Once touch dry industrial grade resin is poured over the top. My piece is not quite finished yet as I want to do some more colour around the outside edge of the frame.  In hindsight, I didn't realise the impasto would stay white, I think I would have either added more colour to the impasto before the resin or if I was making one of these at home, I probably would have let the impasto dry for a few days and go nearly clear.  Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the piece and I had a lot of fun trying something new.  If you want to see more of Linda's art, check out her blog here - http://atclindab.blogspot.com/ .

"Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality."

~Les Brown, Speaker and Author~