Even More Ancient History

Having finally got around to sharing one lot of Ancient History with my France Papillon altered book, here's another piece made in a class from ages ago.  This 8x8 canvas was made in a fantastic day exploring Gelatos at the Craft Barn (when it was still in its former home) with the wonderful Chris Dark of Sketching Stamper.  This was way back in November 2013 - yup, even longer ago than the France workshops!

It's a bit of a hop out of kin for me, but it would have been even more of a hop if I hadn't done my usual classroom thing of going slightly my own way with it!

The finished workshop piece was meant to be much brighter in colour, and with bolder black outlines to everything, but I couldn't resist softening to these more natural tones and subtle shading.












It was brilliant fun though, and of course I meant to come straight home and make something along similar lines.  Funny how that never quite happens, eh?!













As you can probably guess, I loved creating the texture and dimension, with the tissue wrap background complete with stencilled texture amidst the wrinkles.













Though I don't go for girl figures much, I do enjoy the light carefree attitude she has...












... wandering through the poppy fields, garlanded with flowers!

Chris's idea for the pleated skirt was great fun to follow - again all that lovely dimension.











I surprised myself by really enjoying creating her hair (not dissimilar to my own frizzed curls, though not the same colour!).












I love how we created such a dimensional look just with simple card die-cuts and some shading.










I think it may have been this workshop which started me off on shading around things a lot.  That's definitely continued into my onward crafting.  And though red puts in only a very occasional appearance around here, it feels fine on this occasion because it's poppies...

Well, at least they're poppies in my head (though I'm aware they're not quite the right shape) and I do love my wild meadow flowers after all!  (Click on the photos if you'd like a larger view.)









Can't do without some words of course.  ChitChat stickers fit the bill nicely (these were the days before the Small Talk phrases).














And what would a summer meadow be without some butterflies, large...











... and small?!

So that's another piece of Ancient History dug up for you to examine.  













What with these projects from workshops long ago and all the Encore posts, it's quite a "historical" year here at Words and Pictures.  










It's all because I'm spending so much time out of reach of my craft desk, busy with other things in other countries so there are very few current projects.  Not to complain, but I do miss both my crafting and being able to visit all of you regularly.  Ah well, you can't have everything, can you?!











Just a quick reminder about my blog candy... There's just over a week left to put your name in the hat by leaving a comment here - my way of saying thank you for your company over the last four years as well as today.  Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you again soon.

Through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze most softly lulling to my soul.
From Endymion by John Keats