Bloom Like Flowers

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

I thought this quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh was very appropriate for my journal spread inspired by Cathy Bluteau’s class on the 21 Secrets 2013 course.

Why is it that whenever you want a specific sort of image in a magazine you can never find what you want? I ended up sourcing my flowers online from Five5Cats who very kindly allows her images to be used for private artwork. Thank you Cindy!

I collaged the background using old papers and flowers, then added doodling using Pitt Artist Pens. I coloured my doodles using Inktense pencils and filled in with more collage using various tapes and pieces of old artwork. I created the quotation using digital text and finished off by adding details with Pitt pens, an Edding 780 paint marker, neocolour crayons and distress ink pads.

I’ve never done anything quite like this before, but I really enjoyed it and will definitely do some more pages using these techniques. Thank you Cathy for a great class!

Mixed Media Fun!

Yeah! – at last, I got to play mixed media!! I had so much fun!

I finally got the courage this year and signed up for 21 Secrets 2013. As I have never really done any proper art journalling, I treated myself to a smart Strathmore Mixed Media Journal – it was a dream to use, and just the right size!

This is my play page, which I’ve titled ‘The Gift’, inspired by the class from Carissa Paige. I played with acrylic paint, ink sprays, stencils, foam stamps, staz-on ink pads, collage, and graphite pencils. I found the girl in green holding ‘The Gift’ lurking in the painty mix. Thank you Carissa for the gift of freedom you inspired with your class. I know I had fun – I’m still picking the paint and gel medium off my fingers!!

I made an interesting discovery when I tried to scan the finished picture – my scanner does not ‘see’ luminous acrylic paint, and as I used rather a lot, it left the colours looking a bit flat! So I spent ages trying to get a good photo which didn’t have too much reflection! Has anyone else discovered this problem?

Last but not least – I received my ninth postcard this morning all the way from Australia – a wonderful hand drawn mandala from Lulu – beautiful! Thank you so much. Only one more postcard to go – then it’s all over for this year – it’s been so much fun! I’ll have to hunt around for another swap to take part in. Anyone got any ideas?

Now I’m off to play mixed media in the next part of Carissa’s class!

Mystery Muse

Now that February is over and my Mystery Musee has safely received her gifts, I can show you what I’ve been up to! I took part in the Artella Mystery Muse 2013 Project; you submit your details and a word which sums up the year for you and get given in return a “Mystery Musee” person to send two hand made gifts to in the month of February. I had great fun making gifts for my “Mystery Musee”.

The first gift I sent was this collaged playing card with her word for the year on the back enclosed in the altered envelope.

For her second gift I made this canvas board collage using letter stencils and a quotation from Maya Angelou.

In return, I received 2 beautiful gifts from a different person who had been given my details. It was so lovely to receive surprise ‘snail mail’ and inspirational to see another persons work in this way. I will definitely be signing up for this challenge again next year, and will be looking out for other hand made/artwork exchanges during the rest of the year. Do you know of any?

60 Goals!

I just read this post from Samie (Journal Girl) and (having just passed a major milestone) was inspired to create a similar piece for myself. Only trouble is – I have more than double the goals to create. But I did it!!

I had great fun! I started off with a gesso base, then added a wash of acrylic colour. I created the text using a mixture of Stencils with acrylic paint and computer generated text washed with Twinkling H2O’s. Next came a border using stencils and Twinkling H2O’s. I added my 60 goals using a Unipin fine line pen. Lastly, I splattered a bit more colour with some paintbrush flicking and collaged some die cut flowers and leaves coloured with Twinkling H2O’s.

I’ve blurred out my goals for now, but will reveal them in a years time when I review them to see how many I’ve achieved!

Being Brave!

I have managed to get behind with virtually all my self-imposed deadlines at the moment, so I have decided to be very brave, not to even try playing catch up, but just to do the things I feel drawn to! So… today I finished last Friday’s assignment from Carolyn Dube’s Use Your Words workshop. This is such a cool workshop!

The first part of the assignment was to create a background sheet for cutting up. I used homemade letter stencils, white gesso, an Artist Cellar letter stencil, and gel medium. After I scanned it, I cut it up into five pieces.

The second part was to create a journal page incorporating a collage made using a piece cut from the background sheet. My collage is made up of a hand cut tag painted with acrylic paint, the piece of background sheet, two scraps of material, some paper lace painted with acrylic paint, and a bird cut from foam and coloured using acrylic paint. The words were added using a uniball eye pen – which is supposed to be waterproof – but as you can plainly see, didn’t survive the background sprays without joining in the colour runs! (the sprays were ink and twinkling H2O’s). But I wasn’t too upset as I think the runs just add to the feeling of movement on the right hand page. What do you think?

Faces and Letters!

Today I have been getting really messy! In addition to creating my face for 29 faces, I’ve been playing with letter stencils.

I created today’s face using pencil, watercolour pencils and acrylic paint. She still doesn’t look entirely like the one I was copying, but I’m getting better!

I signed up for this free workshop, Use Your Words, from Carolyn Dube the other day and have been having fun playing with letter stencils for the first lesson.

I started off with a collage of torn newspaper which I covered with a few layers of acrylic paint. Then I started playing with stencils! As I didn’t have the letter stencils Carolyn recommended, I made my own by removing a set of chipboard letters from their holding sheet, then using the sheet as a stencil. I used the whole alphabet and numbers to create the first layer, then made the word ‘creative’ over the top in a darker colour. I finished off using an Artist Cellar stencil to create a bit of interest at the bottom of the page.

I quite like how it looks right now, but I have a feeling I may be adding some more to it later!

Finally finished!

Yes! – I have finally finished my game board for last weeks Life Book lesson from Kelly Hoernig.

I ran out of space on my board to glue my car, so I attached it to a hinge so that it could be flipped to see the board underneath.

I may add some flowers to the roadside later – I can’t decide at the moment!

Meanwhile the ingredients list! I used collage, white gesso, acrylic paint, Artist Cellar stencils, a home made mask, some ribbon, a button, a little jute, a uniball eye pen, some digital text, most of a cotton bud, plus some ink and hot glue.

I really enjoyed making this – thank you Kelly for a great lesson.

Time Flies!

Doesn’t the time just fly by! I can’t believe it’s a week since I last posted here. In between a very special birthday, the celebration of which got delayed by snow over the entire country, followed by a nasty tummy bug which laid me out for a day, I’m only just catching up with myself now!

It all began when I had some leftover paint from creating cards for this week’s Life Book lesson. As usual I painted a page in my notebook with what was left of the paint. Then the postman brought me some very special paint that I’ve been coveting for a very long time – some Golden fluid acrylic paint! Well – I just had to try that out didn’t I? Isn’t it lush!

With two pages of abstract paint marks scanned I just had to play digital! So much fun and such beautiful colours!

Today I finally finished my game cards, the first part of Kelly Hoernig’s Lesson from Life Book this week.

I created my own playing card size cards using glossy white card, then painted them using acrylic paint (the old paint!). I used collages of stamped images coloured using watercolour pencils to decorate the front of the cards, and luggage tags coloured using distress ink pads to write my goals on the back. I obscured the titles of a couple of them as I am not ready to share them at the moment.

So now I’d better get back to completing the rest of Kelly’s Lesson! I hope to be able to post it in the next day or so.

Getting Messy!

Once again I’m playing catch-up! I’ve been having so much fun getting messy, I just haven’t had the time to post the images!

On Friday I played with some embossed flowers, trying to colour them using a couple of ink pads. It didn’t work quite as I planned. Instead of nice clean colour on the raised areas, I ended up with a very dirty, grungy looking image (and a very dirty grungy me, covered in ink!). Not being one to let these things deter me, I stuck the image to a page in my notebook and created a grunge border round it using acrylic paint and an old credit card (getting covered in paint this time!). I think it looks alright now. What do you think?

Yesterday I finally got around to completing this week’s Life Book Lesson from Monica Zuniga. I was a bit apprehensive when I watched the video, but once I got started I had so much fun (I got covered in paint and glue with this one!)! I started by creating a painted background, but once I created my doll and put her on it she disappeared, so I decided to use a plain black background. I created the doll using a collage of a mixture of stamped and embossed images, with the exception of the face which I scanned from a magazine and altered digitally, then coloured her using watercolour pencils. I’m really pleased with the way she turned out. Do you like her?

Today I thought I’d play digital and mess free! I started with a photograph of sand patterns I took last week, then added a scan of an acrylic paint background I made a while ago and blended them together.

I really love how the colours draw you into the image.

Catching Up!

I’m playing catch up today – it’s been a really busy week!

On Tuesday, I created a couple of backgrounds using a mixture of acrylic paint and ink. I scanned them both into the computer then added a photograph of some flowers and blended them to create this image.

On Wednesday I followed a video from Doll Dreams teaching us how to draw these cool doll birds! I tried it out in my everyday notebook using a uniball eye pen, then did the doodle later using my rapidograph pen while I was on the telephone! I didn’t plan for them to go together, but I think they do anyway! Do you agree?

Today I had fun playing with all sorts. I started by colouring the page with neocolour crayons, then collaged an embossed sheet which I had coloured with distress ink and the stamped image of the globe which I cut out. Next I added the text which I printed on the computer and coloured using a watercolour pencil and a gold marker pen. Finally, after scanning, I added a bit of digital shading and distressing. I really like how it turned out. What do you think?