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 Challenge (ICAD) 2022 - Week 5

Week Five of the challenge brought: Neon; Magical (a 'Galaxy' background with distress inks, white splatters and sparkly Stickles); Postmark...

...Sky (watercolour sparkle inks and a stamped image); Quatrefoil or Ogee; Rooster (collage made using some of my clean up sheets) and Yellow (using alcohol inks).

On to Week Six...

Colour swatching

Colour swatching is one of my favourites things to do when I have got new paints/inks/crayons.  Previously, I put these into my techniques book but have recently decided to make a swatch book separately from anything else.  The pages of colour are just so satisfying to look at and make a very helpful directory so that I can see what I have and choose what I need to use for a project.  So far, I have done gouache paints,  sparkle inks, inktense pencils (my new favourite watercolour pencils), Woodys and Neo Colours. 

Lovely rainbows of colour...

These make me happy - so bright and colourful.  I still have dye inks, oxides, pigment inks, stickles, pixie powders and more watercolour pencils to do.  I can probably find other supplies that I need to make swatches for...

Wanderlust 2021 - weeks thirty-three to thirty-six - Rainbows

The theme for these weeks was 'Rainbows'.  For week thirty-three, we chose a landscape photo that meant something to us and then looked at David Hockney's landscapes, noting his mark making and use of colour.  We then created our photo in that style, using contrasting and complementary colours.  My photo was one I took in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

Week thirty-four was more rainbow colour-inspired and was about colour and texture.  I used watercolour sparkle inks and had fun letting the inks drip down the page.  

Week thirty-five was an abstract flower painting, using a 'mother colour'.  This was a new concept to me, where you choose one colour to be the mother colour and then add a tiny bit of that colour to all the other colours you use, to create a harmonious colour palette.  My mother colour was that lovely teal blue/green.  

Week thirty-six involved going for a walk or into the garden and seeing what flowers there were.  I picked these two little posies from the garden for my page.

Lots of pink and purple, but a punch of orange and yellow too.  We then made a colour swatch of the colours we could see and made some ink and pencil sketches of parts of the flowers.

I really enjoyed this and spent a very happy couple of hours yesterday.

The next theme is 'Haven'.  I have already signed up for Wanderlust 2022 as I have really enjoyed this year's course and can honestly say it is one of the best things I have bought.  The course has a different structure next year, with the themes being over seven weeks and focusing on specific materials.  I am really looking forward to it but am pleased to say there are still more lessons to enjoy in this year's course.