Celebration of Quilts show coming up

This coming weekend our local club is having its biennial quilt show : 

When we had our last show in September 2014, I had nothing to share, and I vowed to make more quilts in the next 2 years so I could show something this year. I've managed to make a few and didn't give them all away so there are three I can show : 
Simply Delicious - October 2014. Just missed being able to show this last time around.

Feathered Christmas Tree - December 2014

Star 21st Quilt - March 2015

Wild Women Don't Get The Blues - May 2016

Baby Quilt- August 2016 

Obviously the Baby and 21st quilts have been gifted away, but the other 3 will be on show. If you're local, it'll be a great show - quilts on display plus a chance to win some lovely quilt or fabric raffles, and a chance to shop...might see you there :-)

WOW : World of Wearable Art

Looking forward to our Spring school holidays - last day of the term on Friday. I am starting off artfully with a weekend at Raumati beach with my lovely friends - hopefully the weather will be good enough for this

And on Saturday night we are going to this amazing show in Wellington - sooooo EXCITED.  
Looking forward to some creative time and art sharing when I'm rested and over this head cold...Hope you've got something to look forward to this week ♥

BOD : Sweetness

I won Book of Days semi-annual for July-December with Effy, and I'm loving her weekly lessons and the FB group. This is the first spread I've got completed in my journal from the first main lesson in July (week 27). I am working this year in a recycled art book that I bought at a library book sale for only a few dollars. This is what it looked like in June.

This means that sometimes I get blank pages, and sometimes I get pages full of text. 

I really love the look of that in my background so I always just start on the next page, even if a face falls on such a busy background. After drawing in the face and initial lines, it was time to block in colours and while sometimes I want to challenge myself to try something different, this time I just wanted to use my favourites, as seen when I created my Art Symbols Dictionary. Effy talked about using Tombows with iridescent medium to get a shimmery paint. I pulled out my Tombows and Aquamarkers - again my stash of these consists of my favourite colours plus a sensible brown for eyes ;-)

I did the pink with the tombow and the orange with the aquamarker and they both worked well with the medium. The other areas were too large to waste my markers, so I mixed dark purple paint with the medium, and then turned to my trusty iridescent paints for the turquoise and lime sections

Then we did the face in detail - I have been thinking prismacolors might go on my Christmas wish list since I have lovely watercolour pencils, but not permanant ones. However, I made a visit to our local art supply store (Ochre Art Supplies in Square Edge) and found I could buy Faber Castell Polychromos pencils individually. I bought 3 that I thought would be useful for face shading, and love them. Upon reading reviews, I have bought a brand that is fabulous - very expensive - but if I'm only going to buy them individually as I feel I need I am happy to do that, rather than spend $60 on a box of pencils that may contain colours I don't use. Anyway - here's how I shaded my face using Derwent Graphitint Slate Green and Ivy with water in the eye, and the Polychromos for shading - I rubbed with a blending stump, and later applied white paint in some areas.

Then the doodling began...Hair in progress.

Serendipity - the words grace and beauty were part of the background text so I kept them from the very start to inspire the entire piece. The theme for this lesson was Sweetness - I love the sweetness of creating with colours and symbols that make me happy. From a stressful week, I moved to the sweet spot that comes whenever I'm creating. I used a mix of doodles and my new stencils with gold in my colour block areas

I was thrilled with the look I got with my new star stencil in the sky area, and couldn't resist adding white pen dots for extra sparkle

It was worth doing this page after my art symbols spread. I felt that process added to the depth of meaning in this spread. She's all done here - all that shimmer makes me happy ♥

The time this lesson took was so worth it - I am very happy with the finished spread. Click on the photos to see them larger.

See the rest of my spreads in this year's art journal HERE.