I think blogging for 9 years is a pretty amazing achievement💖 At my first bloggiversary I had done 120 posts and had 34 followers.
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This is post 1110 and I now get many more visits per post than that number of followers. I know many people have given up blogging for Facebook and Instagram which are a much quicker hit of art (and you can find me there too if you click on those links), but I've kept up my blog because it's more than just sharing a finished piece of art for me.
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I want to tell my story in the hope that I inspire others to be creative and find time for art in their lives; I want to share the inspiration I find in the form of excellent teachers, special workshops, and FREE online offerings; I want to help you discover fun new supplies and then where to purchase them; I want to engage with you via comments or emails; I want to share my love of all sorts of different kinds of creativity in my life.
I also want to capture my process so that I can look back and remember how I did something; to celebrate completing projects;
to set myself challenges; to capture my journey both artistically and for self-growth;
to be able to set goals and see how I'm making progress; to have a record of achievement when I feel like I'm not doing anything....
I've learned that we all have seasons of creativity, and sometimes you need a break, but sometimes what's needed is a look at what was happening last year to recognise how far you've come, or that this feeling of not wanting to do much is a regular response to this time of year. In short (which this isn't!) I am grateful to be here, in full colour, sharing my process and my thoughts about my creative life, and I'm especially grateful for your presence here as well.
I am currently coming out of a time of low creativity for a variety of reasons. I love my monthly reviews as a chance to reflect and to plan ahead. I am now in the middle of school holidays and have been very grateful for the time to recover properly, and to have a chance to have a bit of tidy up as we look forward to the second half of the year. Here's a before and after photo from the beginning of the week
I am so lucky to have the space. Mine is very practical - I would rather art and organise my supplies than make it all really pretty. So while I do have pretty things around
my main focus this last few days has been to organise a few things. I've been very interested and inspired by Laly Mille's free 5-day email workshop of videos covering her favourite supplies. Find out more and sign up HERE.
Of course there was lots in there that I already knew, but she has such a lovely way of explaining things and as a result of watching her I've re-sorted all my pens/ pencils/ markers
as well as organised all my brushes by size and shape for paints
vs gesso and glues
and I feel like I can put my hands on things more practically than before
Today I've basted the quilt that's on my list for completion for the coming week
and I'm planning my next move on this art journal page....
and after that - you just never know! For now, I am happy to be here, sharing my creativity with you and looking forward to seeing what the rest of July looks like. I hope you are inspired to continue on with me. I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next 12 months.
Talk soon 😊
Last month, I shared my samples in my journal from when I taught a class about transferring an image from your printer to your journal. Apply gel medium (I use 3D gloss super heavy Reeves) and adhere your image face down smoothing to make sure there are no bubbles. When dry, spray with a water bottle and rub the paper off gently leaving the ink transfer behind. The black and white image was a photocopy, and the colour from my home printer (Canon MX726). Both worked really well. Great free images available from Unsplash.
I purposely demoed for the class in my journal so I had 2 pages begun. Now it's holidays I've had time to get back to them and I'm really thrilled with how the first one evolved....Simply started with black gesso, black posca pen and skin toned acrylic paint just to get the basic shapes in. I fancy doing something special in all that black hair.
Once I did that blocking and it dried I realised that there was still quite a bit of pilling from the paper underneath - perhaps I should have done another wet and wipe. Anyway - covered with clear gesso and then proceeded. The rest is in photos only - click on any to see larger.
Will share the other face next time.
It's school holidays. Yay. I got a bit run down during the term and paid for it with a nasty flu that began a week ago. I couldn't even teach my class on Journal construction so you'll have to wait for the post on that until August. But I'm on the slow mend and I've started my holidays by making another art card inspired by Effy's A Year of Rumi online class. The last one you saw of this series was an Autumn card at the beginning of June, but I hadn't yet done the actual quotes from May or June so now it's finally school holidays I'm having to play a bit of catch up...I looked back at what I was doing in May for inspiration, and I began by teaching my Gelli plate printing class so an old gelli print became part of my gatherings. I knew I wanted to use the Klimt faces from the serviette I've already used on the box and for March, but this time I wanted to rearrange the position of the heads. I also wanted to use that lovely heart that I made some time ago of polymer clay.
Stitched the base paper, fabric, sari and decorative ribbon down. Then needed to make a decision about which way to orientate this with positioning of the serviette faces and quote
Then I remembered that I'm doing Klimt in the garden - need to add some floral...I just love this very Klimt fabric that I have in my stash.
This is where I got to by the end of day one - the green is very dark behind the faces and I didn't quite position them as I had originally thought but can work with this
Today I added my mix of machine and hand stitching, and the buttons. White posca pen to highlight her nose so not so green, and gold dots complete the card.
Loving the repetition of elements which are working as an additional linking of this series together. These include hand stitched Xs, using metallic thread for machine stitching, quotes all printed in the same font/colour on recycled paper. All cards begin as a square of watercolour paper measuring 5 3/4" and become truly mixed media by the end. Click on any photo to see it larger.
Find out more about the "A Year with Rumi" class with Effy Wild HERE. You can also enjoy this class by joining Effy's Patreon account and paying monthly. Check out the labels below for more entries about my project.
