Art and Craft News

I've created a PreOrder section to the shop - a special place for new treasures that are on all our wishlists - Click here to see the PreOrder collection and see what's been ordered

Dylusions by Dyan Reaveley
- everything else new by Dyan will be arriving in March, um, sorry... now April

So many different techniques for getting texture into your art.

When I was young, I used to use leaves and the ground to get great textures for my drawings. I simply placed the leaf under my paper and rubbed over with a pencil or crayon. Using another pencil, I'd enhance the leaf shape by drawing it in another colour (usually white or dark brown). Then I'd lay the paper on the roughest ground or fabric I could find (jeans are great!) and rubbed other colours for the background.

These techniques works well with anything and everything that has a surface or texture.

I never worried about what colours went together or how it was going to look when it was finished - I just did it because I loved it. The creation of art is what heals our hearts and calms the mind, the finished piece is a byproduct! A nice byproduct and most of the time its either beautiful and or useful :)

Now you can get texture pastes and mediums for nearly everything - clear, white, gloss, matte, black lava, glass beads, tissue, stringy, matte, gloss, clear, thick, thin, rigged, flexible, smooth, rough - the list goes on.

Many of which you can create yourself using either white or clear texture paste with things like beads, sand, clay, tissue, stamps, paper mache, papers, fabrics, string, ribbon, leaves, branches, feathers, pebbles or stones and even the ground!

If it has any kind of surface or texture, it can be used for art. Just make sure they're clean unless you're not concerned about the dirt in your art. One advantage to the shop bought ones, you don't need to wash the sand or sweep the ground!

Ranger's texture paste has been developed to be used with all water-based inks and paints like Dylusions Ink Sprays and Distress Paints. It behaves as just another part of the paper rather than a semi-resist.

From the video of Tim Holtz using Ranger's new texture paste.

Most texture pastes appear to have a plastic finish to them, even the matte ones. This is great with acrylic paints but with inks, stains and sprays that don't have the same pigments as acrylics, the colour just sits on the surface.

In this video from Noell Hyman, Tim uses the white texture paste and explains it all. You can see how the ink and texture paste behave together - its fantastic! Enjoy the video :)

What do you get when you mix serviettes with glue, paint with iridescent medium and butterflies with fairies? An enchanting art journal page!

I'm happy to say that I'm pleased how this page turned out. What started out as a selection of serviettes, a small Dylusions Creative Journal, Dylusions Paint and Matte Gel Medium has turned into such a pretty page.

This particular page was made for a journal swap in 2015... my journal is currently travelling around Australia enjoying the creativity of other artists. I'll see it again in around 8-9 months so will show it off when it gets home.

I started with a blank page with the fairy serviette with a bunch of stamps next to my pot of gel medium... then forgot to take more photos! So you've just got the beginning and the end :)

I tore around the fairy so the serviette would blend into the background. Then did the same for the butterfly serviette. By the way, if you only have one serviette to use, rip carefully! It saves having to rejoin certain elements of the design :) At least I didn't rip the poor fairy's wings off!

Using the gel medium, I glued down the borders and fairy then added some purple, white and brown paint with a rolled (screwed, squished, scrunched) up piece of kitchen paper. I love how fast this Dylusions paint dries! Makes layering so much easier. It did help having the heater on as it was freezing that night.

I chose the stencils while it dried, then added more paint, again with the kitchen paper stub. I do use regular brushes, foam blending tools, sponges and stencil brushes for creating my art, but this time I wanted to keep a really rough texture to the background while keeping it flat.

I mixed paint as I painted, just adding a bit at a time. The white I just splotched on anywhere then added the purple and brown to get the paler colours. Then added more white as I made it too dark.

The green you can see is from the Chameleon Pens - why? I don't know, they were there next to me and the green just jumped into my hand while I was messing about with the stamps. The toadstools and flowers were stamped with black StazOn then blended into the background using my olive green, grey and clear Chameleon Pens.

Finally, I used a paint brush to add the Liquitex Iridescent Medium to the crystal ball and wings of the fairy and butterfly. I love this stuff... it reflects whatever colour you have underneath and makes it sparkle.

I was expecting the page to get thicker from the amount of paint and gel medium I was adding, but it didn't. And it didn't leak through to the other side (I do get a bit heavy handed with paint). Yay :)

I can't wait to see my journal when it gets home, but in the meantime, I need to create something magical and enchanting for each of the other journals when they visit.

I hope you enjoyed reading how my art journal page was created. Next time I'll remember to take photos :)

Happy Creative Day!
:)
Jenny

Check out this fabulously informative and brilliantly entertaining video with Noell Hyman interviewing Dyan Reaveley during CHA 2015.

Wow... so Dyan's Dylusions acrylic paints aren't new! They've been around, just not with Ranger :) So happy to finally be able to buy these gorgeous treasures!

Everything is available at Art by Jenny - the book Distinctly Dylusional - Dylusions Paint - Stencils - Stamps - Mixed Media Paper - Blending Tools - Journals - and much more!!!

Listen to what this amazing artist says - wise words and sensible advice :)

"Everything is easy - one easy step after one easy step after one easy step..." Eventually you will have a beautiful artwork! Nothing is wasted (check out her monoprinting, so many things we used to do before the digital era).

You can't make mistakes and when you want to go over your artwork with white pens... Let your artwork dry overnight!!! The reason our white pens don't work is because we don't wait for the artwork to cure first. Thanks so much Dyan for your wisdom, reminders and awesome artwork and products :D

Enjoy!