Glass Moon - a painted suncatcher

Just last night I finished a new suncatcher. I make lot of suncatchers, usually from wire and beads, but this one was quite different. It involved painted glass, which is a technique I haven't used for quite a while. I used to do it all the time. This time though, I've not done it in the usual way. How you're supposed to do it is put the outliner on the glass then, after it has dried, put the paint in between where the outliner is, to look like stained glass with lead. I instead just painted onto the glass straight away, painting over the outliner in places and using it on top of the paint in others, to give it extra texture and colour.

I started off with a rectangle of glass, which was originally in this frame. I don't like to waste anything! I painted this glass with blue glass paint:



then painted a moon onto that with white glass paint:



After I'd let that dry, I then wrapped steel wire around the edges of the glass to form a frame, and also something from which to hang this piece:



I then painted a tree onto the glass, painting over some of the wire. This wire forms a frame for this painting and also gives more texture to the tree. I also painted silver-coloured outliner on top of the tree to echo the colour of the steel wire, and add to the texture. This suncatcher measures 17cm (6.5") wide by 13cm (5") high.



It's for sale here.

Batty Moon - a mixed-media painting on canvas

In the end, I didn't add bats to that sketchbook piece, but I did draw this, using charcoal pencil and normal HB pencil, to get an idea of how the painting might look:



So, using the above sketch and my previous moon painting as inspiration,



I painted this piece, Batty Moon, using acrylics, silvery poster paint, liquid watercolour and blue glitter glue. It depicts a cloud of bats, silhouetted against a bright full moon, in a dark blue night sky:



The dark colours of the sky continue over the sides of the canvas on which this is painted, as do the shimmer of the blue glitter and the bat detail, to give one continuous block of colour. This means that this piece does not need to be framed. This square box canvas measures 15cm square by just under 4cm deep.



Find it for sale here.

Well that was short and sweet ...

That had to be the shortest unemployment in the history of me. Acme let me go on the first of this month, and I've been offered a job at New Look today :D So I start on Saturday.

In other news, I've done a new design:



I've named it Repurposeful Suncatcher, because almost everything in it has been re-purposed. It measures just over a foot long, and consists of gems and beads hanging from, and held together by, chain and twisted steel wire. The blue glass beads and steel wire are new, but the other components are not. The purple plastic beads were originally part of a bracelet, and the chain and faceted plastic gems were re-purposed from this belt:



It's not available on Etsy, (it's been given to a bricks and mortar shop) but something very similar will be soon. I also have a few other suncatchers similar to it. Click the image to go to those, and my other suncatchers:

The Escape

For the past few days, I've been working on a painting called "The Escape", so called because it depicts a tree escaping from its frame. I'd bought a second-hand frame I bought from a charity shop, and took a while deciding what to do with it. I remembered an idea I'd had for continuing a painting onto its frame, so I made a start:

First I sanded the varnish off the frame:



Then added some woodstain:



After adding a thin coat of blue woodstain, I painted some branches onto the green, using glass outliner:



After painting the piece to go inside this frame:



I then added a trunk onto the green, using glass outliner, and painted a coppery brown within the outliner:



After that I felt that it perhaps needed more blue, to balance out the inside, so I tried a couple of things:



In the end, however, I decided not to add birds or butterflies.

To finish the piece I wrapped some copper wire around the frame to hang it from. The curves and colours of the copper I feel compliment the glass outliner on the frame:



This piece is for sale here on DaWanda.

My first art cards

I've just listed a new ACEO diptych in my DaWanda shop. It looks like this:



and is for sale here.

It's a mini version of a favourite composition of mine, which I've used here and here. It depicts a tree spreading across two cards. The first card shows one side of this tree in daylight, and the other shows the other side of the tree at sunset. The tree on the daylight side has been painted using a mixture of copper poster paint and black acrylic, giving it a metallic sheen that looks different in varying light. The sunset tree is in silhouette, painted in black acrylic, a striking contrast to the bright acrylic colours of the setting sun. As I believe is standard with ACEOs (I did say these were my first!), both of my cards measure 6.5cm (2.5") by 9cm (3.5").

I've also painted a circular art card, on display here:

New on DaWanda

My latest DaWanda products, pictured below, include Purple Rose, Purple and Green Fire, Darkshines, and my newest listing, Dark Day:





The diptych "Dark Day" is actually a mini version of a previous artwork of mine, Dark Day and its Sunset. That piece is no longer for sale (I love it too much!) but if you'd like a similar one, I'm more than happy to paint that for you :)

Watch this space, I guarantee there'll be more art coming soon, including a Blue Rose painting and more trees.

Thanks for looking!