Let’s go fly a kite

This year’s St Anne’s Kite Festival was the best yet with more kites than ever! We really enjoyed our weekend so I was inspired to create this page.

I started by gluing strips of different coloured tissue paper to a piece of white cardboard with matte gel medium, letting the tissue cascade over the edges to form tails for the kites that I created. For the background I painted cloud shaped patches of white gesso using my finger, then with a paint brush added diluted grey Memento Ink, blue Colourfast Brusho Crystal powders and Distress Inks to create a cloud effect. I stamped the kite image across the page in diagonal lines using Memento Ink. I also applied word transfers diagonally and fussy cut some bunting out of a magazine to join the words together so they look like they are floating in the clouds. The butterflies are outline transfer stickers which I coloured black using my Sharpie marker. I then cut images from the card which I had covered in tissue paper to create my kites. I outlined them with a black Big Brush marker, used stickers for the strings and flower detail, and then stuck them all to the page using double-sided foam tape. To finish I stamped the verse with black Archival Ink and underlined it with dots so it stood out more.

Here’s some of my inspiration for the kites I created for my page. Even though most of the kites are the size of a bus, we liked the smaller birds kite in the picture, which we actually thought were real birds until we got closer as they moved independently to each other.

We had a wonderful day at the Kite Festival and set up camp on the beach to view the kites, listen to the live bands and watch the world go by! We had a delicious picnic of hummus, Naan bread pieces and crudities followed by ham and smoked cheese sandwiches with crisps (chips to my American friends), and our dessert was homemade Victoria Sponge filled with fresh cream and homemade jam and of course all washed down with ice cold home brewed beer. A good time was had by all! As T Stands for Tuesday, I’m joining Bleubeard and Elizabeth and wishing you all a Happy T day!

I think these images may appeal to some members of the T Gang, please let me know which are your favourites.

Birds, bees and dragonflies!

The ladybirds (ladybugs) and cows are tethered to the ground and look like they are moving as they bob around in the breeze.

There’s just so much to see!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Pébéo White Gesso
• Memento Dye Ink (London Fog)
• Tim Holtz Distress Inks (Salty Ocean)
• Colourfast Brusho Colour Crystals (Turquoise)
• Ranger Archival Ink (Jet black)
• Faber-Castell Big Brush artist pen (Black 199)
• Uni Pin Fine Line marker (Black 0.1mm and 0.5mm)
• Sharpie Permanent Marker Fine Point (Black)
• Docrafts Papermania wooden stamp (Nostalgia by John Byers – Kite PMA9061309)
• Docrafts A5 clear stamp set (Alphas Folk DCE907115)
• Docrafts Craft Planet Metallic Waterfall Stickers (Beach CPT6771205)
• Sandylion Kelly Panacci Scrapbook Collection (Stitches & Borders KSCB102)
• Hobbycraft Outline Stickers (Silver Mixed Butterfly 5933961000)
• Wilko A5 Stickers
• Liquitex Matte Gel Medium
• The Range double-sided foam tape
• Tissue paper (Assorted Colours)
• White cardboard
• Magazine