Artful August Challenge - in January! Week Four to end

Here is the final week (and a bit) from the daily challenge I did in January.  'Person' was a gel plate printed background, then masked shapes and Payne's Grey acrylic paint with white dots. This is a technique I have done before, but it's a good one.

For 'Shape', I knew I wanted to cut a shape into the page, so with a bit of advice from Chris, I did this.   I die cut shapes from painty papers and  made this colourful page.  You can glimpse a future page through the rectangle window.

'Type' was made using some interesting font stamps from my stash and a typewriter stamp from Visible image.  

I used some of my own stamped 'Tissue' paper as the background and added shapes in translucent paint.

'Botanical' was inspired by a page from a flower book which I made into the pocket.  

Inside the pocket I added a card.

I used stamps and embossing powder to demonstrate 'Resist'.  

I went with a vintage feel for 'Travel', just using stamps and ink. 

I enjoy creating 'Drip' and it's something that I use in my art journaling too.  This one used sparkle watercolour inks.

Two of my favourite books made up the background for 'Book' - 'Persuasion' and 'The Secret Garden'.

'Vintage' meant I could look through my many digikits and find some suitable images.  I added an embossed frame and a snippet of material with a button.

The back of the journal was covered with an alcohol ink gel print.

The front was stamped and had a die cut title added.

Finally, the inside cover was stamped and the prompts list was added.

This was such an enjoyable project to do during January and I may well look out for it again this August, for January 2024!
 

Wanderlust 2022 - weeks forty-three to fifty - Papers and Fabrics

Wanderlust 2022 has finished and I really enjoyed the final theme of Papers and Fabrics.  Week forty-three was about exploring different papers and substrates and then make a patchwork page, joining the pieces together with sewing.  I used walnut ink and paints, archival ink, stamping, stencilling, mark making and texture paste and I loved every minute.  I love the end result too, which is always a bonus.

Eco dyeing was the next focus and I used blueberries and coffee (not together).  The blueberry dye was a lovely purple, but when I added bicarbonate of soda, it turned a teal blue, which was unexpected but lovely.

Week forty-five was using Tyvek paper, which is a plastic paper which melts when you apply heat and can also create bubbly effects, which is what we were aiming for. I did melt a hole initially but tried again and got the bubbly texture.  This was used to make a Humanimal - a mix of human and animal. 

Week forty-six was time consuming but enjoyable and quite meditative.  After creating our own stencilled papers, we then had to tear them into small pieces to make a collage.  Adding stencilling over a block colour background helped to show the collage off.

Portraits in charcoal, ink and stitching was week forty-seven's task.  My portraits are improving and I found I enjoyed using the charcoal with water to create some shadows.  Continuous line portraits were also included and we then collaged together some of the different images we created.

Week forty-eight was a layered piece and I used a favourite illustration from The Secret Garden as my focal point, which also dictated the muted colour scheme.  This was a really enjoyable piece to create.

The final week of the theme was more collage but also including stitching into images for added texture.  Another very enjoyable piece to create, with similar muted watercolours to the previous week.  The squirrel was sent to Chris in happy mail and worked so well as a counterpoint to the bird.

The final lesson was about binding pages into a journal and decorating the cover.  

My journal was held together with binder rings, so all I needed to do was to decorate the cover and I chose to collage lots of bits that had been left over from weekly projects throughout the year.  

So now its the end of this year's course, what have I learnt?  

• I am now likely to say 'I'll try that' rather than 'I can't do that'.  
• My portraits have really improved and using a tracing to get the correct proportions is a good thing to start with.
• I really enjoy using watercolours.
• Serendipity often adds something special to a page.

I am looking forward to starting the new course in January 2023. The first theme is pastels - not one of my favourite supplies - but I am looking forward to learning and experimenting more with them.

Crafting and Baking

I have been making a card for my sister's birthday and went full on mixed media for it - hope she liked it! It has a die cut leaf which I coloured with acrylic ink and then clear embossed, so it looks as though it is wet.  The background is a mixture of book pages and collage papers and the envelope has leaf stamps on it.

I have been inspired by some Youtubers - I think this one was Ceri Griffiths.  I made three postcard sized collages using lots of bits and pieces of papers and stamps and the odd digikit thrown in..

The inspiration for these was Crafty by Toni here - inking and then stamping onto self adhesive labels.  I used Tim Holtz stamps 'Field Notes' here.

This stamp set was another Tim Holtz set called 'Eccentric'.  I really enjoyed this and now have some lovely bits and pieces for art journals or cards.

I tried a recipe for Devon Apple Cake which was on Corners of my Mind blog here  It was really easy to make, smelled beautifully of cinnamon and mixed spice and tasted even better!  It is great as a pudding with custard, or with cream or yogurt or just on its own.  As it has apple in it, it won't keep for that long, but that wasn't a problem in our house!

Creating collage papers and more stamps

Recently, I was looking at some printed rice papers for collage and was tempted to make a purchase, when I had a revelation. I had tissue paper, acrylic paint, stamps and ink, so why on earth didn't I create my own papers?  I had a happy hour or so creating these, using just black and white acrylic paint, which I dry brushed onto the tissue paper.  I found I had a lot of stamps (no surprise there!) which would work really well to give that grungy look I liked.  These included circle shapes, patterns, text, splodges and splats. 

So, I now have four papers to rip up and use in collage projects and they didn't cost me anything (except for the original supplies, which I already had).  I foresee more variations on a theme to come...

I have also been carving my own stamps again, from pencil erasers.  The black images are the most recent ones I have made and I used this 'mop up' sheet to practise applying different watercolour pens and pencils to the stamp to get a multicoloured image too.  I found that the distress inks or Zig watercolour pens gave me the best results.  I think I may well be making more stamps like this over this year.

Wanderlust 2021 - weeks thirty-seven to forty - Haven

Wanderlust 2021 continue to inspire and I continue to enjoy the lesons each week, giving me a creative focus.  The theme was Haven - it turned out to include different kinds of havens, whether places or specisl items.  Week thirty-seven was about an outside space as a haven for me.  We had to sit in the outside space we had chosen and listen to the sounds around us, trying to transfer these into marks and colours.  These pieces were used as the collage in the background.  For the first time, I used leaves and flowers on the gel plate and was delighted by the prints I got.  A fern leaf, some hydrangea flowers and a japanese anemone flower all featured on this page.

Week thirty-eight was about special things around us which can inspire us or which we enjoyed using.  Mine included my paints (and I do love a colour swatch),  a chunky crayon, a paintbrush, a stencil, a fossil stone, my water jar and a foxglove I had been growing indoors before going out in the garden.

Week thirty-nine was all about home, or a place in which we felt secure.  This was all about the layers and stencilling, stamping and doodling.  It took a while to complete, as the layers had to dry.  I do like the end result though.

Week forty was about a mediterranean seascape viewed out of a window.  The teacher is based in Greece, hence all the beautiful blues.  I absolutely loved creating the collage papers and the seascape with a minimum of materials - acrylic paint, an old credit card/hotel card/membership card, a piece of cardboard for printing and a material for printing on the windowsill (I used bubble wrap).  Oh, and some scissors for cutting the shapes.  I think I may well do other versions of this in other colours - perhaps a more muted UK version?

On to the next theme - Movement.

Good advice and Art Journal 2 (part one)

 Before I start, just to say that I hope all are well out in blogland and that we will get through this.  The advice on the mug above seems particularly appropriate at the moment - I think a lot of crafters will be doing just that. 
Huge thanks to all the workers who are continuing to keep the country going too, in very difficult circumstances. 
I won't dwell on the situation but will post about my second art journal instead.  I made this journal out of recycled packaging and have used stamps, paint, paste, stencils, pens, glitter, embossing powder and anything else that took my fancy.  It took me a year to finish, doing a bit as and when I felt like it.  Here are some of my favourite pages, with more to come in the second instalment, which will follow shortly.

 The front cover is all about lines - scaffolding or buildings? 

This page was made after watching Creationsceecee on youtube, who made something similar but using watercolour.   My version is acrylic paint and stamps. This was a bit out of my comfort zone as usually I like busy pages!

 This page was inspired by Kate Crane who uses bright colours and mark making but then will break the backgrounds into strips or smaller shapes.

 This page uses a dramatic Visible Image stamp as well as texture paste and gold embossing powder.  The eye was stamped onto tissue paper and then glued onto the page, so that the background can still be seen behind it.

 This is a Woodware stamp which I heat embossed in gold and then painted in.  The background has hexagon shapes of card on it (leftovers from another project) and lots of stamping.

Finally for now, a page which for a long time had only the background on it as I wasn't sure what to do next. I stamped patterns and added some of my collage sheets - the figure, the circles and the patterns in the top right. 
I so enjoyed creating these pages - they don't necessarily have any meaning and the process making them is as important (if not more so) than the finished product.  If I don't like a page,  it can always be painted over and that is very freeing.
I look forward to sharing some more pages with you shortly.

Making collage papers and Daffodils

I have been busy with my second art journal over last year and into this and will share some of my favourite pages shortly.  I was looking at collage papers with a view to buying some and suddenly had a brainwave - I could make them myself!  I have tissue paper and a myriad of suitable stamps so what was stopping me?  I had a very happy time trying my stamps and  deciding what to use... 

 ...and here are some papers ready to go.  The good thing about these is that they add pattern to a page but you can still see the background colours peeping through.  I think they will work well.

 I couldn't resist buying some daffodils on Saturday as I was wanting some brightness in the house.  They started to open on Sunday...

 Here they are later on Sunday (excuse the flash - my camera does not like low light levels at all).

Here they are today - all open and very scented.  Even if they don't last long, they have given that shot of colour I needed and are very cheering.