Quilt blocks complete and Cards from scraps

In the middle of June, I started making a spiked border a day for my "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues" quilt. When I started, I knew that if I stuck to my plan I would have my 25 blocks ready to put together by 5th September...happy to report that I completed my last block on the 14th August, and now I'm ready to share them all up on my design wall. Click on the photo to see it larger.

Next step is to do some rearranging until I am completely happy with how they all look together, and then to find time to sew them together to make the quilt top. I've loved how they've come together.
At the end of that stage of the project I've got a small box of tiny scraps I knew I could use for a further project

I bought a pad of board from the dollars & sense store (only $2.50) and started to make some cards. I just used a free-motion foot on my old Janome machine to stitch the fabric scraps to the card

I like their simplicity

and now they only need some stamped or found words to personalise them for occasions that arise

I'm sure there'll be more of these to share with you again soon. Which one's your favourite?

JOY birthday gift

In March, a friend had a birthday and I took a wooden word and made it into collaged wall art

More details about that HERE.
I enjoyed the process so much that I thought I'd have a go at something similar for another friend this month. Her word is JOY - again I started with a layer of gesso, and then 2 layers of acrylic paint :

I then printed some images and words onto tissue paper. To do this, attach a piece of tissue to a page of printer paper with a strip of glue stick along the top. Make sure it is trimmed to the correct page size, and feed through printer glued end first. 

I love how tissue/serviette images blend into the background. I used mod podge for this project - applied first to the painted letter and then again over the top of the serviette to seal. 
Click on any photo to see it larger.

There's a mix of serviettes (top layer only) glued alongside some of my printed tissue

and stamping with staz-on ink and brilliance gold

Washi tape can be a nice addition (although sometimes it needs some extra gluing) and you can create a different look by stamping on tissue and then tearing and gluing that down

Because she is a poet and lover of words, there's at least one word on each letter

and I love letting elements spill over the edges

Was going to theme each letter differently, but in the end they're a bit of a mix of things she loves

Happy birthday and Bon Voyage to my lovely friend

- hope you have lots of joy over the next month.

Click on the photo to see it larger or go HERE to see it in my Flickr album of wall art.

Weeks 32 & 33 : DLP 2015

I've been so busy this past couple of weeks that once again I've decided to combine 2 weeks of Documented Life challenges together.

Beginning by answering the journal prompt :  my biggest challenge is when I have so many things to do that I start to feel overwhelmed, and added to that is the worry that I'm not getting time to make art. My strategies - Breathe and smile - take a moment just to think about what I'm grateful for and remind myself that I always get through these times...and truthfully - I enjoy crazy busy!
Make lists, prioritise tasks, and re-think my expectations - stop doing some things that don't have a deadline. The rose pruning can wait another week - I don't HAVE to do a Documented Life blogpost every week...how much time to I really need to spend on this project to be happy to call it done?
Make art when I can - I could still find 5 minutes in my day to do some spikes for my quilt block borders for my Wild Women quilt. This is the last of my 25 blocks completed!  {happy dance}

Hopefully have a completed quilt top to share before the end of the month....
Onto the challenge : cleaning up paint from another project with a wet wipe and smearing it on these pages was the start of this spread

The blue flower was cleaning paint off my poppy stencil from last week's spread (previous post). I added my weekly journal sections

and that's when I saw my character

Confession - when I was adding the paint for her lips, some dripped on the page. Solution - another wet wipe to smear it around

Loving this - her calm in the storm. This is my "breathe and smile"  strategy. She needed hair - one of my favourite things to do with acrylic paint is to apply it through a stencil

and then I had to let her sit for a couple of days - not sure if I wanted to added anything else.

Decided I did want to add some subtle details, so used my white sharpie paint pen - still sticking with the challenge :-) 

Added some doodles (make art when I can) and calling this spread done (rethink my expectations).

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.
And just for fun, thought you might like to see my creative character from last week - I was Snow White at school finishing a wonderful book week :-)

Week 31 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE weekly Documented Life Project is HERE. So pleased to see this month's new theme!

I'm still a novice at faces - only been doing it this year - but enjoying the challenge of drawing them, and there are 5 weeks in this month....YAY {happy dance}
Onto the first challenge for August :

 First I did a background - mainly stencilled layers to start

Then I was thinking about what to do for the face. Initially I was thinking about just doing eyes like Jane Davenport's example for this week's challenge HERE, but then remembered that in the Life Book lesson I did with her, she made a photocopy of a face she'd drawn previously. I thought that would be interesting to see how different she could look, so made a copy of my face from Documented Life week 28.

I printed her on photo paper, and I chose to make her smaller than the original. I cut her out and moved her around on the page.

Hard to decide, but eventually I put her on the left-hand page (but further up than in the trial above). Immediately put clear gesso over her so I could alter her colour - clear gesso gives great tooth for paint to grip on.

The printing made her paler than the original - and also changed her green eyes blue which was a bonus. Her placement suggested big blue hair to me, so I started with that and a warmer skin tone.

Next up was to give her hair more interest - loving the white highlights especially (inspired by watching a recent Life Book lesson)

I added white to her brighten her eyes, and some more painted details to her face

Now she looks quite different from the original base.

I also love the new poppy stencil I used for my last journal spread (see previous post) and it also looks quite different with white pen details added

I would have liked to spend more time on this page, but sometimes you just have to accept what is achievable with the time you have. A few more white doodles...

Here's the completed spread : 

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.