100 Pages Experiment

Once again, these dog days of summer have me neglecting my blog. The days are winding down though and soon it will be back to school and the colors of fall will emerge. Soon I hope. This summer has been miserable. Between the super hot Chicago temperatures, the nearly daily rain storms, the suffocating humidity and the blood sucking mosquitoes swarming us, we have pretty much locked ourselves in our air conditioned house and we're all going stir crazy. Even the dog is miserable. I pay homage to the beautiful dragonfly that sat still long enough to allow me a photograph. They eat mosquitoes you know. That's why I love dragonflies.


I have been busy with the business, trying the products, experimenting some. I needed some motivation to do something on a regular basis so I joined a challenge hosted by Leilani Pierson over at the Cloth Paper Scissors forum. We make 100 little pieces of art in 100 days. We can skip a few days and make up for it, but we can't work ahead. Most people are using 3 1/2" x 5" index cards.  I've decided to stick to that size, but I'm using a variety of "canvases" including watercolor paper, fabric, canvas, felt, etc. In addition to that, I've challenged myself to use at least one Stewart Gill product (or anything from the Artistcellar store) on every card. I'm up to day 20 and I think there's only 3 cards where I did NOT use a SG product. I've photographed days 1-9 so far so I'll start with those. Each card also has the number incorporated in it in some way.

When I started the 100/100 project I hadn't challenged myself to use the Stewart Gill products yet so I went back and added some Galactica Glitter paint to the peach and an Alchemy wash over Page No. 1. Can't really see it in the picture! Below is the back of No. 1, I used Pearlise paint for the background.

Page No. 2 I used scrapbook paper and stamped the Fleur de Lis on with Illuminata Byzantia paint.

Page No. 3 above is a painted dryer sheet base with Bijoux Blends Stone chips flowing across the bottom. The polymer clay heart is painted with Byzantia paints in Seraphym and glued over a nest of loose threads.

For page No. 4 I got out the iron and played with the Glitterati Fibers and Angelina Film. I was heating the film and happened to melt a hole the shape of a heart. Serendipity? Page No. 5 below uses handmade papers and scrapbook papers. The flower was overpainted with Byzantia Excelsius.

I tore into a vintage children's reader for page No. 6. I believe it was a Colourise glaze (rust?) I washed over the picture. The numbers at the bottom are stamped with a cardboard tube using True Colour Opaque White. Opaque even went over the dark orange color. Fabulous! Page No. 7 uses the same color scheme (I was getting rid of excess paint on my brush!) and painted the background the same orangey color and wiped the opaque white over it with chopsticks. I captured some loose fibers under black netting and stapled it closed. This was an ultra quickie!

Page No. 8 was collaged and then painted over with a Colourise Chocolate Glaze, smooshed around for depth and texture and laid on thick at the edges. A piece of canvas was attached with a brad and a secret message underneath. 

And finally, page No. 9. The base is a handmade paper with little leaves occluded within and I stamped the leaf with a foam stamp and True Colour Lime. Simple.


I'm going to try to photograph the rest of my pages until I'm caught up. If you don't hear from me in a few days, the blood sucking vampire mosquitoes probably got me.