Wanderlust 2025 - part two

I've completed the second part of the online art journaling course that is Wanderlust and the themes this time were Personality, Feelings, Senses.  I have picked my favourite pages or the pages I most enjoyed making to show you.  Above is a linocut printed face from my imagination (we could choose our own face, but I decided that wasn't something I wanted to include) together with some resist watercolour patterns, some stamping and some stitching.  I really liked the stitching and have used it in other pages.  I also would like to use it in some other mixed media pieces which are going round my head at the moment.

For this one, the teacher was focusing on the colours of lakes and streams, but as it was allium time in the garden, I focused on the colours I could see there.  The watercolour circles with different techniques - wet on wet, wet on dry etc. are strung together and make a hanging decoration, should you want to do that.

I enjoyed using the bright colours in this page which was fun to make.

You'll see more of the stitching here. The background technique was messy but really fun as it was all about adding different media to tissue paper, including gesso, watercolour, acrylic ink, colour burst/pixie powder/infusions (water soluble dye powders some with added mica or walnut ink), alcohol ink. They were left to dry and then scrunched up, smoothed out then wrinkled as pieces were glued down to provide some texture.  It was very freeing.  The pocket on the left includes a tag covered with the tissue paper really smoothed out and a colour swatch piece that was hanging about.

This page was made in the teacher's style (Dyan Reaveley).  Bold colours, big shapes.  It is quite a textured page as the strips on the trees are collaged on, the trunks are embossed, the flower centre is sticking up and has a button in the middle, and the blue heart is card embossed with ultra high embossing powder (several times) and then stamped into while still warm.  The two hearts in the trees are covered with 'Glossy Accents' which is a product that dries to a resin-like finish.

Finally, here is a portrait of someone.  In the lesson, she was described as a 'forager'.  We had to make leaves from gel printed tissue paper or tracing paper, or copy paper.  Before I collaged the leaves on, I showed Chris the watercoloured face and he said she had a look of a 'Svetlana', someone from Eastern Europe.  The face is created using layers of watercolour in a single shade, then a bit of coloured pencil. I turned 'Svetlana' into a forest goddess, with her leaf costume.  

I wonder what the next twelve weeks will bring.

Wanderlust 2023 - weeks thirty-three to forty - Pigments and Powders

 It has been a rather messy seven/eight weeks, exploring pigments and powders.  For me, these included embossing powder (where you use a sticky ink to adhere the powder, heat it and it leaves a raised glossy surface.  It comes in a multitude of types now, metallic, clear, coloured, with glitter, with large or small particles.)  There is also embossing glaze which is a translucent powder, leaving just a hint of colour.  Pigments and powders also included Infusions (dyes with walnut ink added).  I have Brushos (watersoluble pigments which came as a powder) and Pixie Powders (Dye based powders with added mica for a lovely pearly finish).  Most of these will stain if you don't wear gloves, hence the messiness. They are fun to use though!

The first week was thinking of somewhere special to you (I chose my garden) and then enhancing the photos with gold embossing powder, having created a background using the powders.

I enjoyed all the making we had to do for this page - all about lichens.  We added powders to material and to threads and created background papers as well.  I added some embossing powder in white.

This was a bit of a tribute to my parents - Dad died in 2013 and we lost Mum earlier this year. The photo of Mum and Dad is from 1960, when they were guests at a wedding.  I wore the dress she is wearing (which she made) in the photo at her celebration of life service. Her favourite colours were turquoise blue and orange, so that's what I used.  We were using the powders to colour the texture paste.  

Week thirty-six was really enjoyable to make, using embossing powders and glazes and making bold marks with the sticky ink. On the right, the purple and blue glazes allow you to see the images underneath.

This wasn't one of my favourite pages. The teacher used lots of ephemera and her piece was created on a piece of wood. I used die cut shapes to add texture on my page.

I struggled with this page. The teacher showed us lots of techniques, which I enjoyed, but left the page design to us and I took ages to decide what to do.  

This page was by a teacher called Rachel Greig, a photographer and owner of a stamp company in Australia called Darkroom Door (really good quality rubber stamps). She was going to be leading this lesson, but so sadly, she died earlier in the summer, due to cancer.  After consulting with her family, there were two lessons put in place, from 2016 and this one from 2020, where we were stamping and I used powders which were made into paints to stamp with.  Underneath the tags is some journaling about doing something you enjoy every day and making the most of your time.  Two lessons I have certainly taken to heart.  

The Artful Musings lesson was about expressive writing.  The teacher discussed journaling (where you write about something that happened) and then expressive writing (where you write about how you were feeling).  I wrote about being resilient.

The final seven/eight weeks of the course are on Monoprinting and Carving, which I am hoping will be completely up my street!

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!
 

Index Card A Day (ICAD) - Week Six

Here are my index cards from week six.  This challenge goes on until the end of July, so I shall have to find something else to challenge myself with after that!  Above is Ocean; Hydrangea and Rust.  Lots of fun was had with stamps, stencils, watercolour crayons and acrylic paint for these.

Here are Mirage; Gradient; Cinnamon or Spice and Knot.  I really like Cinnamon/Spice which was really relaxing to paint. I used a grid stamp and embossed it with white embossing powder, to create the raised lines.  Then I painted in the squares using gouache, in what I hope was a random pattern.  Knot was created using an embossing folder and then dry brushing with different shades of acrylic paint.

Just in case you needed a closer view to see what I had done for Mirage, here it is at a different angle.  I used black card and a unicorn stamp with clear embossing powder.  Now you see it, now you don't!

Cards and flowers

 I have been experimenting and making again.  I recently bought a very versatile stamp set - the poppy in the photo above, which has two layers and which creates a lovely hand painted look.  I think this is one I will use a lot.  As you can see, its first incarnation was as a thank you card.  I was really pleased with the results.

 My friend had a birthday, so out came a card making kit and this card was duly created.  I hope she liked it.

 I have also been playing with my Brusho paints again, trying to create loose watercolour flowers.  I watched a video on you tube and thought I could manage it, but as with so many things, it didn't quite work as I had hoped.  I stamped the flower centres and then pulled the paint and water out to create the petals.  This is what I was aiming for:

(image from Sandy Allnock's blog )

 Hmm, I'm not quite there yet!  Practise, practise, practise!  The nice thing is a that practising something like this is a rather enjoyable occupation in itself.  I may try different brushes to see if that might help.

I embossed the stamens on some of the flowers and liked the raised texture it gave.  I shall have another go and see what happens.

Learning New Things

 I have been learning some new crafting techniques - this time, stamps, embossing powder and a heat gun.  I have been investigating the internet for 'how to' videos (of which there are many, as you'd imagine) and decided to have a go.  This technique wouldn't work with polymer clay due to the direct heat required, but as I already had lots of different stamps and some pigment ink pads, I thought, why not try?  I can use the technique for cards, tags, and decorating notebooks (all useful for blog swaps and birthdays!).  Above is an embossed stamp pattern (the embossing powder when heated forms a raised surface), painted with iridescent acrylic paint (Pebeo Studio Acrylic Iridescent).  The magic happens when the light hits the paint in a certain way and the metallic element shines out.

 Hmm, I may have to be a little more careful where the paint goes as I seem to have gone over the lines a bit!  The gold paint looks very shiny here.

 Here are some of the gorgeous paint colours.  The paint covers well and is nice and thick, but can be thinned with water as required.

 Even the water used to wash the brush gets some added sparkle.

 Here are a couple of hummingbird stamps, embossed and then painted with the acrylic paints.

 I really like the blues and greens, but then I would!  I am looking forward to more experimenting with black background paper and other stamps as I  really enjoy learning new skills.