Fairies - Art Elements theme of the month challenge

This month's theme challenge at Art Elements was "fairies" chosen by Caroline. Even though I had taken time off work, I didn't manage to create a lot. The time was required to simply get back to recharge my batteries. The first days I made nothing. I had a lot of plans but my body just wanted to sleep and do nothing at all. Maybe drink some coffee...

Still, I played with different materials. Most importantly, I started my new water color sketch book! Yay! And I have to tell you, it works like I want it! Water color paper makes it easier. I may play with different brands in the future but probably will go on binding my own sketch books. The coptic binding makes it so easy to have it lay flat and paint in it.

Fairies was a difficult topic for me. Because as much as I enjoy seeing the cute, beautiful or playful interpretations of this theme, it is not me. So taking a deep breath, I thought about the other stories about fairies or the older name fae. If you are into fantasy literature, then you may know that in this world fairies and fae are actually describing different things. Not that it is "right" in the true meaning of these words. Fae is the older one, fairy rather the description that over time became the name itself (yes, oversimplifying here!). But in fantasy literature the name fae is often used for all the fae creatures, the seelie and unseelie court, while fairies is often used to described a certain type.

No, this is not important in general, but it helped me getting my ideas. I am a roleplayer since being a teenager and I also played a lot world of darkness (still doing) including changeling. So I went into the ideas of the unseelie court...

...and went on to the wild hunt. Keep in mind, this is all in my sketch book. There are no perfect paintings but rather ideas and experiments. For my wild hunt I went on to playing with layering to the extreme. There are a lot parts I went overboard (no going back with water colors) but I embrace them because they help me learn.

I also played a little bit with clay and made some new faces (I use the sculpey face mold, I think the most used one worldwide for faces? ;) ).

I had a lot of plans for them, since I wanted to create some earrings with the tiny ones and some beading with the bigger ones (yes, seeing all these gorgeous beaded creations of Art Elements members made me give it another try!)... but... somehow the time was gone. But as soon as I have used them, I will show you the results!

My husband and I managed to at least take a few days off for a small trip. We went to the Scharmützelsee and there we stumbled over this little place. I think it is magical.

Then a few days later back in Leipzig I stumbled over this place. It is not really as green as the one above since it is simply a green corner next to buildings but it made me smile!.

Last but not least I wanted to show you an old project that I still thought was fitting for this month's theme. I so love to use beetle wings in my work and I have made quite a lot of earrings with them. The colours look gorgeous especially in the sunlight.

I hope you enjoyed this month's theme challenge and please have a look at what everyone made!

Guest Artists
Vic
Divya
Alysen
Kathy
Tammy
Kimberly 
Hope 
Alison 
Cat 
Sarah 

Art Elements Team
Jen 
Jenny  
Niky 
Laney 
Claire (you are here)
Cathy 
Marsha

"Aloud" - Some more of my mixed media work

As my time to create is limited after all and also sometime I fell rather tired, to take part in challenges is a good way to focus myself and find the energy to create nevertheless (strangely enough I feel more energized after I started creating but even knowing this, sometimes it needs energy to go there).

Challenges help to narrow down the topic, parts, colour schemes and/or narrative to find a starting point. There are a lot of ideas in my head, often too many to decide what I actually want to do. ;)

Therefore I also love to combine challenges if they fit. This time I combined two challenges: 1. The colour mixing blog challenge at Paper Artsy and 2. The july challenge at an online mixed media class "Wanderlust" (sadly only open to participants). The topic of the july challenge was: Create a collage with at least 4 different kinds of paper and be inspired by Coco Chanels quote: "The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."

Here are my thoughts to my piece:

"It is rather difficult to see in a photo how different the paper qualities are as well as the tactile quality these collage pieces have. I used a lot of different papers with my homemade gelatine plates for printing. I didn't use words or script but rather wanted to show the ideas and thoughts as interlocking patterns, one above the others, being in her head as well as around her. If you have a closer look: Her mouth is open, she is talking right now and her colours and ideas change the world around her. Aloud not only by talking but shown through the bright and striking colours."

Since creating the piece I changed a few details, I added some contrast around the faces (very subtle but with a great effect) and very lightly darkened the edges.

There are 6 different panels that belong together. Maybe I'll mount them at a black background... or maybe I'll mount then as single pieces that could be arranged variably. I do think (at least right now) that they belong together but actually they also would work as single pieces. What do you think?

And to make and use homemade gelatine plates for monoprinting is so easy, I still don't understand why it took me so long to start using them :)

ATC - "I see you"

Paper collage from magazines and printes, combined with stencils and texture paste. She looks more beautiful in person than here on my blog but just let me tell you: I love my little warrior! 

A warrior not because of actual fighting with aggression but rather by not turning around, by not being blind. To be seen and recognized as human beings is often more important than a lot of people realize.

"Winter Solstice" - Ornament swap

Some of the rare few pieces that turned out as I imagined it! But... and there is a huge "but" involved, there were a lot of times I nearly threw it away! There were a lot of new ideas, material and methods I tried for the first time and way too much went wrong during the creation process!

Kimberly Rogers started the "Winter solstice ornament swap". What a great idea and I joined! My swap partner was Karin Grosset Grange. How perfect since I love her work! Maybe not as perfect for her... since my ornament arrived way too late at her... *sniff* I will show you the gorgeous ornament she send me as soon as I get the right light! I already tried but didn't like the results. So... will try again soon :)

First thing going wrong: My material order didn't arrive in time. I waited... and waited... oh... and I waited!  

The back is actually a postcard from the Grassi museum (just around the corner where we live). It is an old arabic pattern and the heavy car board was impressed as well as gilded with gold effects. To make the first cut was really hard but the pattern reminded me so much of the rays of the sun!

I also bought the sculpey face mold. Yes, a commercial mold but I wanted to have the mold for years! All these little moon faces are so lovely! I used super sculpey firm now one my absolute favorite polymer clays ever. It holds even the tiniest details so perfect and really firm even unbaked. Sadly only available in grey but grey was perfect for this ornament. The baked face was antiqued using acrylic paint and I added the gold details complementing the background pattern with gold (coloured) leaf.

The back is also covered with gold leaf. Both sides are then covered with resin. I added some purple powder in the back but the effect is a little but too subtle to really see it ;)

Some chains and czech glass beads to add some dangling because every ornament and jewellery piece gets better with "dangling"! The etched yellow drop just seems to glow.

I don't want to go to all difficult parts nearly going wrong. Just the worst (the one I wanted to start crying and throw it away): Putting resin on the back side it started dropping to the front (the piece was put on a little stand) and I didn't notice it. I saw it just the next day when it was hardened: A big purple drop around the nose. All the work that went into this piece, for nothing? But I remembered reading something about this resin cold glaze (it is only for adding a surface layer, not for big pieces): That is adheres to paper and metal and wood and... and... and... but not on plastic. So what is polymer clay in the end? Plastic! I carefully started to try to rip the resin blob off... then with a little bit more force and it worked! 

Now I just love this piece, my version of "Winter solstice" and if I am honest, I think I love it even more because of all the difficulties I had to overcome :)

On my work table: Body parts...

I made some doll parts with a Staedler mold to be used as cabochons, earrings or pendants. Actually I won this new mold together with a fimo set to create different skin tones from Kellie at "Make it with me". Thank you again! Now I just have to start using them to create jewelery ;)