DLP : "Add a Gratitude" and Loving yourself

This past week's challenge from Documented Life began with a pocket art card (PAC) prompt : "Add a gratitude", and included another ListTEN prompt. I was inspired by their guest Lois Stoneking who did a cover and put her list inside

I began with an old gift card holder

Check out Lorraine Bell's free tutorial on decorating covers for gift cards HERE which I watched again before I started. Her video inspired me to do some stamping on some under paper before I started. 

Then I set to adding layers of paint and stamping, and my dictionary definition of "Gratitude". This is my PAC for the week.

You can see I did use some of the original stamping on the green background- cut out and added to various places. It becomes more than an ordinary PAC once opened :

The ListTEN was supposed to be "things I should never have done" and many approached this light-heartedly (platform shoes, heavy eyeliner). However, I don't believe in looking back : 

I've been thinking a lot lately about loving yourself, giving yourself credit for what you do well, self-compassion, being kind to yourself and exploring ways of thinking that encourage personal growth. So I decided to continue the gratitude theme, and list 10 things I love about me! I had a few issues with finding a background light enough to print on. As I was going through my papers, I saw some old calendars and inspiration struck. I trimmed the calendar to A4 to fit through my printer, printed a test list so I knew it would print in the right place, and was very happy with how it turned out. I will need to use these more often :-)

I trimmed and glued my list to some painted card, then edge stitched it and added some sari ribbon to finish

This is the back

And here it is within my "Pocket Art Card" holder

This will of course feature in a later post when I've completed my next spread in my daily art journal. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE. 
If you want to explore the Self-love idea further, you might enjoy this blog post of links by Hanna called  Self-Love & Self-Compassion | Inspiration en masse and check out Tam's YouTube series called Self Love TV.

My Daily Art Journal : last week

I started Spread 12 in my daily journal with the second base I created when I unclogged my spray bottles.

I like using different ways of adding dates to my journal - sometimes I just write it as part of the journaling, but I started my first page a little more creatively.

I also like the little additions you can make to a page that are not obvious at first glance, but make you smile when you look at the details - the title of this piece of music for my Valentines' entry is one of those things

and it's fun to add doodles in gaps - this is my sakura silver shadow pen again

and to unexpectedly find wonderful words hidden in the background :-)

I shared the Pocket Art Cards from the Documented Life Project (DLP) that now appear in this spread HERE. The prompt for the pocket art card from DLP 2016 for January Week 5 was "ask someone to draw or make marks on your card". I changed the challenge to suit myself! I won the privilege of being sent a card made by the very talented Tracy Verdugo while she was on her travels last year. This arrived in the mail for me : 

It's been sitting on my windowsill and now it has a place in my journal. The colours are both very her and very me :-)
The words that appear in the background of my pages, since I am altering an art book, can be cool (as in the word example above) or too intrusive. Sometimes I need to apply another colour to disguise them before writing

I enjoy including photos of what I'm currently reading and watching - loving this book - the title attracted me :-)

And an art journal is also a handy place to pop in those little pieces that I seem to have lying around without a place - this flower is from a 21 Secrets class with Ro Bruhn from 2013!

It's fun  that the background has the word SKY repeated...
Here's Spread 12 complete - click on the photo to see it larger :

You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE.

LB2016 : The Art of black and white

In week 7 when Tam offered a bonus lesson for Life Book 2016 which was "Build your dream and affirmation board", Donna Downey also presented a bonus lesson called "The Art of black and white". When I saw others in the group doing portraits, I became inspired and today it was time for me to take a breath and give it a try. 
I used acrylic paint for the most part - white, payne's grey, and black, with the addition of black (posca) and white (sharpie) paint pens for facial details and a couple of stamps with staz-on ink for final touches. I love the way the words on my old book pages (my art journal) create another layer of texture and interest on her face. Here are my progress photos 

I love colour, but I'm surprisingly pleased with how she turned out :-)
Click on the photo to see it larger, and go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. 
Love the contrast of both lessons from Week 7 beside each other in my journal.

You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.

DLP 2016 the unPlanner : Pocket Art Cards

This year, the Documented Life Project is an unPlanner. Check it out HERE. Although I don't want to work in a planner, I really ♥ the idea of their pocket art cards (PAC), and think I will try & make them a weekly challenge for my daily art journal. Here's what I've done so far...I have been inspired by different bases including repurposing tags, watercolour paper and cardstock trimmed to a pleasing size that inspires me. There is no reason to keep the pocket cards all the same size or shape. Previously shared as part of my daily journaling pages:
January Week 1 : Incorporate 16

January Week 2 : a quote and an action for the month

January Week 3 : Use magazine clippings. I did 2 for this challenge! HERE : 

AND HERE : 

This past week I've caught myself up :
January Week 4 = to use a piece of a receipt from your week : Amend the challenge as needed to work for you! I bought a lovely new skirt on sale recently, and quite liked its attached tag which was printed with a greyed background pattern and already had the word "spirit" on it. Decided to do a little arting up on that rather than using the receipt :

February Week 1 = incorporate thread or floss. This was easy for me since I often do that anyway (as evidenced by the cards above). The new theme for February is "Love without Hesitation : Taking the leap". You can see machine stitching across the top, and down the right hand side across the bottom of the card, as well as to outline the found words.

February Week 2 = use shades of one colour. This was more fun than I expected. Once again, began with a previously gelli-printed piece of card-stock that I trimmed to a pleasing size

This week's DLP challenge also incorporated a Dare2B card : choose a word or action to focus on for the month. As explained in this post, for One Little Word this month we're focusing on the concept of "Practice", and we're picking one single thing to focus on every day in February. This led to my found words for the card, and I was thrilled to find the word "Dare" as well

Now I'm ready for the next challenge of February Week 3. Next time I'll share how they look in my daily journal pages. Have a lovely weekend.

LB2016 : Build your dream and affirmation board

Last week's Life Book lesson was inspiration again with Tam. I love trying out new techniques with faces, and there was an option to do an image transfer of yourself. Only person home to take the right kind of photo was my 11 year old son. He didn't do too bad a job although he was standing on a step beneath me 

First had to mirror-image it so it would be the right way once transferred. Easy way to do this is to open the image with "Paint" and under Rotate in the tool bar, there is an option to "Flip horizontal". Printed it out on my ordinary Canon MX726 home printer, and then decided that since it was so hot again today (loving this summer weather) I would use a heavy gel medium in the hope that it wouldn't dry out too quickly. Place the print face down on the medium, and use an old credit card to scrape over the back to make sure it is well stuck down with no bubbles. Once dry, you start to peel off the paper, leaving the ink behind. Mist with water to get more of the paper off and rub gently.

I was really pleasantly surprised with how well this worked! Definitely a great technique to use in future projects. Rubbed a bit vigorously in that top corner to start with, so peeled off more of the paper to better blend to the background. Thankfully got it right by the time I got to the face.

Now to get to work on transforming myself artfully. As one of my focuses on my word Transform, I am working on my internal spirit/soul stuff : self-compassion, being kind to myself, and exploring ways of thinking that encourage personal growth. This formed the basis for my page development. Started by laying down collage materials and some base paint layers.

Worked on my face and looking towards the next layers (probably paint through stencils)

Loving what those layers/colours add. Now it's time to add important words. Based on the size of my composition, I thought that once again found words from a large print book would work well, so went hunting for the ones I wanted. 

I stamped the word Transform like a necklace. Butterflies appear often in my work, and were perfect here as a symbol for transformation and to hold some important words.

This was a great exercise for thinking about the practices I want to nourish in myself this year (I haven't finished with Nourish from 2015). This also fits with Effy's Week #7 prompt for Journal 52 of "Self Love".
I love how the fun creative experience can also carry much deeper meaning.

Click on the photo to see it larger, or go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.

Daily journaling

We are in high summer here in New Zealand - sunny days - hot temperatures - sometimes a bit much humidity, but mostly I love it, especially when there is time for swimming in the pool :-) Seemed appropriate to start with hot pink in my background and had to include some screen shots of our weather forecasts. All true except we don't seem to have had much of the cloud and no rain this past couple of weeks (Click on the photo to see it larger)

A few things to celebrate this past fortnight. In October of last year, I completed a Life Book lesson called Inner Warrior Princess - see my process HERE. 

Last week I received a message on FB from the teacher of that class, Andrea Gomoll, asking if she could feature my art to promote the class which is now being offered as a mini online class. I replied that I was thrilled and flattered to be asked, and she has said she will add a photo of my project when she next updates! 
As a side note for you, Tam has announced the release of 5 of her classes from Life Book 2015, now available as mini classes HERE. 

While I didn't do the two in the top line, my versions of the other classes are linked here : Fly High, Beacon of Light, Seeds of Love. For all of the lessons I did, I linked to the artist, so if you're interested in checking to see if anyone else now has lessons available, you can get to them via my posts about Life Book 2015 HERE.
Now we're in February, we have a new creative prompt for our One Little Word class with Ali Edwards. 

This month we're focusing on the concept of "Practice", and we're picking one single thing to focus on every day in February. It's an idea used with the permission of Elise Joy - the creator of the daily goal tracker. I am finding it motivating, encouraging, and helpful to be concentrating on just one practice for the month...may make this a monthly habit :-)
Monday 8th was a day off for us (Waitangi Day) and I spent some of it creating my Quirky Bird for Life Book 2016 - shared in my previous post.

The next best thing to being in the pool is lying on my bed with all the doors and windows open, and devouring this : 

And loving that I can make these daily journal pages whatever I want. After our lovely long weekend, Tuesday to Friday this week was mainly : get kids to school, go to the gym, go to work, come home and get in the pool to cool down, do jobs....so I just had a bit of fun with some found words and left out the boring details of those days and that's fine with me :-)

And I celebrated my 500th visit to the gym today!! 

It's been a good 2 weeks : 

Hope you have a great weekend with some creative time.
You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE.