Pastel art swans

Another of Colin Bradley's lessons - Swans and Cygnets

This one was a lot harder - trying to make an all white swan look all white but fluffy at the same time. Not a good job on my part.

Venetian Acccents

This card was made using the venetian accents  die from Spellbinders. It is layered and the cut out in the centre is layered down, but it needs more depth. I have been trying to figure out how to do that. I have some theories - I just have to put them into practice and hope it works. My problem is accuracy and how to manage that without wasting too much card.

The centre flower is a pressed bronze metal piece with a half pearl glued in the middle. On something simple like this, it looks quite effective. Not to feminine so it could conceivably be used for a card for a man.

Waterfall Pastel Art

This time another landscape exercise from Colin Bradley's lessons.

This one was very hard. The bushes in the background are a challenge at any time. then there were the rocks. I couldn't seem to follow what Colin was doing and mine was very different to his in the end. What he started out with and which I did, was patches of pale colour which were then blended into the paper with a colour shaper - all looking very vague and a bit of a mess. then he started shaping the rocks and that's where I got lost. What I ended up doing was rounding off my rocks that looked all angular and darkening the areas between them. I was just about to rip it up in frustration when the phone rang. When I got up and  looked back on it from a distance it looked like real rocks! It was all done by sheer accident - me just messing around with the shapes because I didn't like the angular look of what I had drawn originally. So I started scribbling with a variety of colours, darkening the shadows between the rocks, rounding the rocks off and adding some highlights just below the darkest parts and miraculously it looked a bit more real.

Then of course I messed it up again with the waterfalls.....

Hedgehog Pastel Art

Another of the drawing lessons from Colin Bradley.

I'm not very good at animals and this picture leaves a lot to be desired,  but it is by far the best animal picture I've ever managed.

Sun Flowers

So cheerful and just right for a card. This started as an exercise in shading with copics...something I am yet to master on small scale things.

I was also trying out a new type of centre fold card. I made a mistake on cutting the side panels - they should have gone right down to the bottom. Of course I didn't realise you'd see the bottom of the side panels until I'd cut and glued them on. So then I decided to cut out some flowerpots (which you can't see  very well) and some foliage and glued one set of foliage behind each flowerpot at the back of the fold and one set behind the front of the fold. It gives it a rather nice 3d effect. While I was scrabbling in my box of embellishments for something to put on the front, I came across a packet of painted wooden ladybirds that I bought age ago.  I glued those on to the front. The ladybirds on the flowerpots in the drawing are part of the original picture, so it all tied in nicely.