Fused Plastic Bags - Recyled

Have been busy sewing and making things out of my painted fused plastic bags. I made a couple of glasses cases with felt on the inside, note book covers and little clutches. I also created a folder from a cereal box which is my favourite - I can see myself using this and would like to made some more as I use up by cereal! Have taken a lot of photos of each bag and can see me using this as a background for future projects of some sort.

Fused Plastic Bags

Here are photos of my painted fused plastic bags and one cereal box. I have embellished a couple of the bags with some sewing, cord and yarn. My next step will be to "create" something useful from each one. I have used acrylic paint on all of them and then sprayed a matt finish to help seal them. But I have found that you can still scratch the paint off the plastic. So I really need to find a paint that adheres a little bit better to the plastic.

Close up image of one of the embellished bags.

Still working on my fused plastic bag project - should have some photos to add soon of the bags all painted up ready for the next stage. But just wanted to add a note about a new blog I am starting to follow and that is Creative Juice Arts by Chris Zydel a wonderful lady from California. How I wish I lived there so I could attend one of her classes. I connect with everything she writes. It makes me believe in myself, it makes me want to find the time to be creative and paint, it makes me be a better me!! It's all about intuitive process painting not about painting the "correct" way. While I want to paint wonderful correct paintings that wild part inside of me wants to paint without restriction, without rules. So check her out see what you think.

Recyle Month - Plastic Shopping Bags

Melting/Fusing Plastic Shopping Bags

Have spent today cutting up those plastic shopping bags and putting together about 8 pieces for each new piece. Have already discovered that the thicker plastic type of bags don't work that well on their own as they melt into my paper and sticks to it. The grocery type of shopping bag works much better if you have about 8 pieces. Just don't leave the iron too long in one spot as you will end up with holes which can give it a good interesting look if that's what you want. So these are today's "fused" pieces. Now ready for the painting part of the process.

Can't believe its been a few weeks since my last painting. I have been getting side tracked with all the normal chores everyone has, going to work and catching up with friends. It seems if you don't make an "actual time" to stop and create art work and be creative then it doesn't happen. There always seems to be something else that has to be done. Before you know it, weeks has gone past and I haven't picked up a paint brush or pencil and am starting to get a bit grumpy! You go through a slump and nothing inspires you or gets you going. How will I ever get better and improve if I don't stop be creative. How will I ever sell anything or make any income out of my hobby if I don't improve and keep going at it. Will I only ever dabble around the edges and never make a go of it. I feel like I don't put enough effort or time in to art to make it all worthwhile.

Anyway - will make the time to play and try new things or improve on the old. Maybe what I should do is give myself monthly challenges and spend that time expanding on the one idea or thought. I start too many things - something doesn't work like want or I get bored - wait for paint to dry and then start something new and don't finish what I started!! Energy going all different directions - no wonder I don't get anywhere.

So right now I am concentrating on using "recycle" things. Currently fusing plastic shopping bags together, painting on them and creating "new" items from them. Will post when I have created a few. Found this idea in my Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines which I love and have been wanting to try for a while now.

Chilli Painting

Li-Sa and I have not had any more recent challenges - so I have decided to try and finish one of my unfinished paintings that I started a while back. My chillies are from a painting lesson I did where you put together a series of pictures from magazines, move them around and create a new painting from it. I loved these chillies against the blue door. I keep fiddling around with it changing the leaves, etc - trying to decide if it needs more work - still not sure it it does.

Challenge 13 - Before Time

After playing around with building up a few different colours/layers to my abstract landscape this is what I have ended up with. I like the texture of the painting but not fussed on the scene. Have called it "Before Time" as it looks like a time when earth began with weird trees and big birds - didn't end up with my cavemen anywhere. Will put it up and look at it for a while and see what I can change to improve it or maybe just paint over!

Thought I should start and add some paint to my scene, whatever it will be, and see where it leads me. Definitely had birds in a sky, so I painted that. Then I picked out a few images that looked like trees and painted those. The rest of it was going to the ground/scenery - so I painted it green. I am hoping the texture from the plastic printing will create some interest once I add some more layers of paint. Not sure about it yet??

Challenge 13 - An Actual Painting

Have decided to change my headings to which challenge number we are up to. Li-Sa and I thought we should take one or more of the art challenges we have already done and create an actual painting - take a month to work on it. Without any idea I stared at a blank canvas for ages not wanting to create a failure or mess - afraid to start. Decided I liked the white gesso over black with the plastic printed into the gesso to create some texture. Thought I will do plastic men/bird figures and create a scene with cave men and big birds in the sky!! Totally lost my cave men as I got carried away with the plastic creating texture. The brown on my white gesso is from some old plastic I used previously. So now I am staring at a black/white painting wondering what it will become. Maybe a abstract scene with big birds in the sky, trees coming out of the ground???

Week 11 & 12 - Painting A Forest Floor

This is another exercise from the book by Mary Todd Beam. We did this one over a two week period as it had a few steps. I used watercolour paper, watercolours and some acrylic paint. Some leaves were added first using adhesive shelf liner, then washes of watercolour paint to build up the layers of leaves, lifting off techniques to create sticks, laying down of plastic over the wet paint to create more leaves in the layers. After everything dried I pulled off the adhesive shelf liner leaves - unlike Li-Sa I had trouble making my leaves stick where Li-Sa's stuck too well. These leaves are suppose to be the top layer of the forest floor and have more detail in them although it doesn't show too well in the photo. I liked using the shelf liner to create the white which can be painted in after and can see myself exploring this technique further in other paintings.

Week 10 - Printing With Plastic

This week we followed an exercise from my book Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam - have found quite a lot of good exercises in this book to expand our knowledge by using different items, like the tissue paper and aluminum foil challenges.

The first layer is just a coat of dark blue mixed with black, then a very wet wash of white gesso - into this I laid some geometric shapes I cut out of a plastic painting drop sheet. After drying and removing the plastic the first picture is what I ended up with.

I wanted to try some new acrylic paints by Matisse - a transparent yellow oxide and transparent venetian red as well as quinacridone/nickel azzo gold by Golden. I loved the look of all these paints and went in with a few coats. I left a couple of areas and decided to paint these with ultramarine blue for contrast and didn't like it at all. I felt like all the attention was centered on the blue and not on the printed shapes. So I painted a white wash over the blue and covered it with more plastic to create some extra texture. While creating this whole painting I was looking at it horizontally and when I turned it vertical I saw two prehistoric creatures with eyes - just like you see on cave walls! So this is what my painting became. I put washes of the yellow and blue over the painted over blue areas - used my charcoal and smudged all the edges.

Overall I enjoyed doing this challenge and love the texture that printing with the plastic created. I especially love the fact I have ended up with something that looks like two prehistoric creatures.

Week 9 - Paint a Macro Organic Item

Li-Sa suggested we paint something organic but take a close up look at it like you do with macro on a camera and paint or draw what we see. So one afternoon I wandered around my yard and took a heap of photos of flowers and leaves up close. Decided on this one leaf as it had a lot of lovely veins through it with different shades of green.


Thought I would try my hard pastels for this one. Found it quite hard to get the right colours of the different greens - the vein down the middle is quite yellow with a lime green edge. The dark green markings on the leaf had touches of dark red and white blobs which you don't really notice at first when looking at the whole leaf - these colours only seem to appear when you take a "macro look" at it. I put a brown border around the leaf to finish it off.

Forgot how messy working with pastels was - used only cartridge paper and it didn't take as much colour as I would have liked. Didn't mind this exercise but not one of my favourites.

Week 8 - Paint With One Colour

This week the challenge was to paint with one colour using different shades by only adding white or black. I decided to try watercolour on watercolour paper. The first colour I experimented with was ultramarine blue - added a lot of white and did a wash of this pale colour first leaving a lot of white areas, then straight colour, then added some darker shades - waited till it dried and added a bit more straight colour to add some depth. Got carried away with the wavy black lines.

I enjoyed doing this, so did a second one with cerulean blue in the same way. This time while painting the pale wash I thought it should look like a sky scene. Very happy with the softness of this painting and quite happy of what I achieved using only the one colour.

I loved the challenge of using the one colour and painted a third piece using sap green. Again added a lot of white did a wash, floated in some straight sap green - added black and fl0ated in some shadows. This one felt like a pond so that is what I tried to create with the different shades. Once dried painted in some reeds and branches using just the white and black. This is my favourite painting and I can see it expanded out into a larger piece, adding a few more colours and maybe a water bird of some sort.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the washy effect of the watercolours all running together and quite amazed of what I created with a limited colour. I like the fact with watercolour you can lift the colour out and create white areas.

Week 7 - Painting to the Music

As Li-Sa and I both enjoyed this emotion music challenge, we decided to repeat it this month but this time using a different medium and different music. I have been a bit slack due to having a overseas visitor but did finish just a little bit later than normal. I decided to use water colours and listen to mediation music by Sacred Earth - Pamanyungun. I was going to use blue/green colours but once I started putting washes of colour on felt like I had to use more earth colours of brown and green, then the red happened and a tree with blue leaves appeared! Maybe it was the name of the group Sacred Earth that made me think of these colours. I only used cartridge paper - much prefer to use watercolour paper and will try and get some larger sheets for next time I want to use the washy effect of watercolours. I do enjoy using the watercolours as I love the flow of colours into each other.

Mountainscape From Week 2 - Finish

This is my second painting from Week 2 challenge - creating a mountainscape using tissue paper. I put it up on a wall and after looking at it a bit decided to make the raised tissue folds stand out more using hard pastel crayons. I also lighten and darked areas with my pastels and decided I quite liked this painting and the technique of using tissue paper. Will try and experiment with on a different piece later on.

Week 6 - Use Aluminum Foil in a Painting

This technique calls for aluminum foil to be glued to your paper with gel medium and salt to be sprinkled on while the gel was still wet. I started with three triangles - different sizes going up the page and put a wash of blue and red acrylic paint to create different shades, then added a mix of yellow/orange/burnt sienna to create some rust and dark tones. The photo doesn't really show any of the foil still coming through - in reality you can still see glints of the foil. Not totally happy with this piece as I don't feel like it looks "rusty" enough - would like to play around this this technique a bit more and try and rough up the foil a bit.

Week 5 - Paint What You Hear

This week was an emotion painting. We had to close our eyes and listen to the noises around us and paint what we could hear. I did this on a cold wet day sitting outside with all my painting equipment around me. I didn't really like doing this painting - couldn't really get into it. All I could hear were cars, lots of car noises - fast, slow, loud and lots of different birds, flying past, chirping, fighting on the roof! With my eyes shut I noticed it was a light black with speckles infront of my eyes and if I squeezed my eyes very tightly the speckles became green/yellow blobs. So..... this is what I painted - a black background with speckles, with lines of car noises - all different sounds in the distance and ever now and then a car close by in a different direction. The bird sounds became arrows, my dogs claws on the concrete sounded like yellow dashes and the rain on the roof white dashes/dots/lines. As I said before - couldn't get into this piece and didn't enjoy painting it and don't like it at all!

Week 4 - Use Techique by Kelly Rae Roberts

These paintings are based on a techique by Kelly Rae Roberts which incorporates paper collage, gel medium and acrylic paint. I decided to create two pieces - one with a house using paper torn from a magazine. I added some stamping and extra collage bits. I got carried away and painted some flowers which I don't like - think it would have looked better without.

The second one I cut out scraps of paper from my scrapbooking stash and added some torn music sheets. I wanted to add a figure with wings. Again I added extra collage bits and some stamping. Both pieces I wanted to add some positive affirmations. I struggle a bit to be more "loose" and create my own style. I think too much about where I am placing my paper collage instead of being more free and flowing. I would like to play around more with collage pieces to try and find my own style.

WEEK 4 - Use Techique By Kelly Rae Roberts

This week we are to use the technique as described by Kelly Rae Roberts from a magazine article in Cloth Paper Scissors - which I love. The article called "Patch It Together" incorporates paper collage and acrylic paint - this is only a starting point and hopefully will get our own creative juices flowing to incorporate our own ideas. I love the work of Kelly Rae Roberts - she has her own web site and blog - so have a look and see some of her amazing work.

Week 3 - End of Challenge

At the end of painting my week 3 challenge I looked at the left over paint on my plate and thought it was a waste to wipe it off. So...... I pressed small pieces of water colour paper into the plate to soak up the paint and look at the wonderful impressions I got!

Week 3 - Painting to the Music

Have struggled this week to find the time to complete this challenge and that was to listen to some music either dance or mediate and paint what you feel. So after cleaning out my fridge, food shopping, cooking tea for the night - I got started.

Put one of my favourite CD's on Enigma MCMXC a.D. I find this Cd relaxing and also uplifting when I hear what I call the monks voices - I love Mea Culpa and Rivers of Belief. I could see visions of darkness lifting into light purple with swirls going up to the heavens as the voices raised me up. So this is my first painting.

Then with the left over paint on my plate and to the sounds of Rivers of Belief - I just swayed to the beat of the sounds with a paint brush in my hand and felt like doing swirly things. Then I just had to add yellow to my red and blue purple swirls. Quite enjoyed the freedom of doing these second paintings as I just let my body loose and my hand fluid.

After doing a few more chores I decided to see what my painting would be like if I listened to a different type of CD. Poured myself a rum and coke, put on some blues/rock - these songs included JJ Cale/George Thorogood/ZZ Top/Robert Cray. After my third rum, a few songs and a bit of dancing around the lounge room, I decided this music was more uplifting and bright. So I chose red/orange/yellow in bands of colour - to the sounds of George Thorogood's Treat Her Right I flicked my brush onto the bands of colour then added me dancing to the middle of it all, did more flicking with black paint.

Once I found the time to do these paintings I did quite enjoy them - I found I needed to listen to a few songs before I got a feeling of colours to paint and the way I felt like expressing the sounds in paint. I felt very relaxed and happy after completing these paintings (unless that was the three rums I had!).

I also experimented with the left over paint on the plate - will post on that later.

Week 3 - Listen to some music, dance or mediate - paint what you feel or see!

Should be interesting!

Having trouble finding the time to do this one - will be working on it tonight after I cook my tea! Just do it and not think about what else I feel I should be doing - I'm sure once I start it will be relaxing and fun.

Week 2 - Mountainscape

This week was based on technique using tissue or rice paper, gesso, watercolours and acrylics.
Quite happy with my piece, had fun playing around with the watecolours which I do not normally use. Tried to follow the instructions but didn't always feel like I was getting it right. Felt like I didn't get enough light and dark into my painting.
Still working on a second one using watercolour paper this time.

Looking at this piece on the computer I can see areas I would like to lighten or darken - so may play around with it a bit more later on.

Week 1 - Painting Around Our Name

The challenge this week was to do anything we wanted as long as our name was part of the painting. I got carried away and did three paintings.

The first I just sat on my lounge and doodled my name. Started using a pencil and found I kept rubbing it out as it wasn't "right" so I grabbed my black marker and without thinking just doodled. Then I used my water colour crayons and coloured in the doodles. Quite enjoyed doing this piece as I didn't think too much.



The second I decided to use straight lines and paint with acrylic paint between the lines. Didn't enjoy this one as I didn't like painting between the lines - found it too structured and rigid. It looks rather messy as I was rushing to finish.



The third was in acrylic. Tried not to think too much, just wanted the colours to flow.



Quite enjoyed this challenge as I didn't have to think too much, it was just to get us started.

Second Part of Challenge - Finger Painting

Part of our first week challenge was to explore finger painting - only use the fingers to push the paint around. Quite messy and fun to do and a good way to feel the paint, let loose and just enjoy without any thought to what are you creating - it doesn't matter. Not too certain what the blue blob means?

The Beginning

This is our idea to bring art and being more creative into our everyday life. Both Li-Sa and I love to paint but always find it hard to do art when there are so many other things that have to be done. So we have set ourselves a challenge to create "something" every week. So every week we will have a challenge whether it is based on a technique or an emotion.

The guidelines are simple - to create at least one "piece" each week - the aim is not to create a masterpiece that we expect to hang on the wall but to throw together paint and paper and whatever - have fun, let go of blockages, relax and see what happens! Hopefully, we will find the time to do what we love to do and it will help expand our knowledge, add a bit of art therapy into our lives - and somewhere at the end of it all we may create the masterpiece.