Craft A Scene April 28th - Farm Scene

This is a scheduled post.

This is the final chance to join in this month's challenge over at Craft A Scene.  The theme is for a "Down on the Farm/Ranch" scene.  The idea is to give everyone a chance to produce a scene that is familiar to them, no matter where you live.  Your scene should include a background and a foreground and show a complete scene.  What media you use is up to you, whether it be stamping, decoupage or draw your own.  Use what you have with your imagination, and have fun.  That is what crafting should be about.

If you have seen my two previous offerings on this theme, you will have noticed that I have been using Hobby Art Stamps to create this month's cards.  I have three different sets of farm stamps, and this card involves bits from all of them.  I had not realised just how many different sheep stamps there were between the three different sets.  I mount all of my stamps on Clarity mounts which are so easy to use and to place accurately.  they are excellent if you have any dexterity problems, being perfectly balance.

I also used pencil lines to join different scenery stamps to make them one and to draw in in some field boundaries.  All the colouring is done with Derwent watercolour pencils, which I love.  Some of it has water applied but not all.  I also used a Twinkling H2O on the stream and pond, and also for the rays of the sun.  As usual, you cannot really see that on the photo, but it is there.

This farm scene is not really like most farms these days, but I wanted to try to recreate what farms used to be, a mix of arable and grazing, small fields with hedges, with a village close by.  Most arable farmers these days would have a fit to see bright red poppies in the middle of the corn and wheat fields, but I remember that from my childhood, along with grass verges full of beautiful wild flowers, full of busy insects and birdlife.  

Although I have not used any of my favourite Clarity Stamps on this image, most of the techniques used have been learned from watching the very talented Barbara Gray.  I heard her say recently that when she is travelling (and she does an awful lot of that) she is constantly seeing the folds of the hills, the way trees grow and generally picking up inspiration.  While I do not pretend to have a fraction of her talent, I have caught myself seeing the landscape in a different way, and planning scenes around what I see.  I bet you do the same if you think about it.  So come on and join us, show us something of what your eyes can see as you go about your life and travel through the countryside.  Have fun.

Craft A Scene - April 7th - Farm or Western scene

Here we are at the second week of April and the second week of the latest challenge at Craft A Scene, which is to create a scene of Farms or Western scenery, depending on where you live or what stamps you have.

I am lucky enough to have three different sets of Hobby Art stamps, all on the theme of the farm and countryside.  They are really good and will mix together to create different scenes.  There are three or four different groups of sheep to make quite a good flock.

Just take care when you start a scene like this and make sure you have your fences etc the right way up.  How do I know this?  Oh yes, I managed to get the wall on top of the fence - don't think that would work in real life, and there was no way to get out of that one.  Just take a deep breath and start again.  The other thing I have learned is that you do not need to colour every leaf on each tree separately, a little white space between gives a better effect.  I was never taught that in art classes at school.  It was only by listening to talented people like Barbara Gray that I understood that.

Any farmer would have a fit (unless he was an organic farmer) if he saw the poppies in the corn or wheat fields in the background, but they do brighten up the view.

Another gem I heard from Barbara Gray was how she now looks at everything with a different eye while travelling round the countryside.  I know just what she means, I find myself looking at things in a totally different way now, looking at the way the hills fold and change colour for example.  When I was teaching a few years ago, I encouraged the children to look carefully at things and draw what they can see, not what they think is there.  I very much hope that I did not put them off drawing in the way I was put off in my own time at school.

I also hope very much that seeing  what I can do will show you that anyone can do it.  Come on, take a deep breath and join in with our challenge over at Craft A Scene.  I know you can do better that I can. 

Craft A Scene March 31st - Farm/Western scene 1

This is the first week of the April challenge over at Craft A Scene  where the theme this month is to produce a Farm Scene or Western Scene, whichever fits your homeland best.  As I am English, the farm was my choice to begin with, and this set of stamps is from Sheena Douglas.  There were other stamps in the set, but I felt I did not need any more.  If I have any criticism of this set, it is that they are rubber stamps so you cannot see exactly where you are positioning, and also that they are quite large which means a large card.

I do not use sticky rubber cushioning on any of my stamps.  I totally detest the stuff and spent ages removing any that I had put on.  All I do is to spray the back of each stamp with Crafters Companion Stick and Spray, a repositional adhesive, and then put the stamp on the rocker block or acrylic block, and then put the paper or card on an upside down mouse mat to give the cushioning needed to get a good impression. 

My mask positioning was not the best (my fault, a bit careless and lazy as I did not want to start again) and I did end up with a halo effect initially, but I was able to use a pencil just to continue the lines and join things up properly, and things seemed to come together again.   I also used the pencils to draw in the birds as and where I needed them.

The Barn Owl is not truly a daytime bird, but they do come out at dawn and dusk to hunt so I thought a little poetic licence could be allowed, especially as it is such a beautiful bird.  The other thing that is probably not truly correct these days is seeing cows and sheep in the same field, which we did see when I was young.  The cows ate the longer grass while the sheep nibbled the shorter bits, leaving the ground in good condition.

All the colouring was my usual Derwent watercolour pencils, with extra shading with the Graphite pencils in suitable places, trying to give some idea of where the sun might be.  I added water in some places but not everywhere.

I hope you are all going to join us and put together your own scene.  Apart from keeping to the theme, the only other rules are to make a scene with a background and foreground.  If you can draw, then draw your own, use stamps, or do a decoupage and it must be a completed project of some kind.  It is up to you.  Colouring is also optional, just shade it in if you do not want colour.  When you have completed your project, just upload it on to your blog, and then link it over at Craft A Scene.  If you do not have your own blog, you will find a link there to send your picture to Nancy by email, who will then post it for you.  Come on, join us and have fun.