DLP (Add a Face) and daily journaling

This spread has been a roller coaster of emotions. We had a sad start to our holiday time with a funeral to attend last week - made this card for the family

And a day later news of the sudden death of a friend's mother

I'm also starting menopause - a Transformation ....this is not what I expected of my one little word for 2016! I'm a bit thrown by some of the symptoms which I hadn't known to expect - insomnia being one. Thank goodness for a good book to distract me in the wee hours of the morning 

What I love about art is that I know it will be waiting for me when I am ready to throw myself back in whole heartedly, and while I'm not "my usual", I can look at what you're doing, and still find inspiration to do a bit - that helps...You saw a couple of my page starters in my previous post

I struggled with an art journal page and finally finished it last Thursday - I added a stencil here in my daily journal that I'd used successfully to help complete that page

I felt less blocked after that, and was able to go on and complete the cards you saw HERE and then started quilting again....

You've seen this quilt in various stages since I started it in January last year - click HERE for more of that. Last seen in January this year when I started anchoring it with in-the-ditch straight lines, it got put aside again during Term 1 and I'm now onto the fun free-motion part and wanting to get it completed to show at our club's annual Tote & Gloat show next month.

I'm thrilled that I'm back doing this...hoping you'll see more quilts from me after this one is finished. Back to my daily journal - I love using under paper : paper used to catch excess paint/printing from other projects. This is one of my favourite ways of adding colour to a spread or covering up things in my background 

A couple of weeks ago, the DLP prompt was about faces (see their sneak peeks HERE). My first inspiration was from Lorraine Bell who put colour on a card first and then added a face. I went even more random by grabbing some cardstock that already had colour and stamping on it.

I like how she turned out

Monday was ANZAC day and I wanted to include a simple poppy. One of the joys of working in an old book is the discovery of appropriate words in your background - I masked the surrounding page and put a bit of masking tape over the words

Unfortunately the tape peeled off one of the words as well...I just replaced it with one from a an old dictionary. And here's the completed spread

Lots captured there. Click on any photo to see it larger, and you can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE.
Not sure when I'll see you next - I'm really wanting to get that quilting done...hope you are fitting creative joy into your week :-)

This leads to that....cards and art journal pages

Thankfully, even when I'm feeling sad or dealing with challenges in my life, art is always there, and I seem to be able to do at least a little to keep me going. This past week, I found that the little things I did were able to inspire me with other pieces. I shared my layered art journal page from Life Book with Rae Missigman in my previous post. This is an early progress shot from that page

In one of the background layers you can see some yellow that was through one of my favourite stencils. Knowing I had cards to make, I cleaned the stencil off on some card backgrounds. With a couple of them I thought it would be fun to spray over a feather

The one on the left is a print made while the feather was still wet. 
Also on that journal page were those pink flowers which I was also able to add to my daily journal page, and a couple of other cards 

I was wondering what to add as another layer to my feather cards - decided that purple would be a good addition, and that got added through some lace to all of the cards

and happily the treatment also unblocked my journal page (see previous post for the finished page)

I tried to get a print off the wet ink on another daily journal page but that didn't work, so I spread the ink with a wipe, and then sprayed again with white spray for a different look

I'm happy to report that I went on to complete all 4 cards

Wishing you a happily creative weekend.

LB2016 : Layers of love

Lots been occupying my thoughts and it feels like more than a week since I shared with you. Finally completed my art journal page created from a Life Book 2016 lesson with Rae Missigman. If you click on her name it will take you to her blog - I always love her work. She's one of the team that began the Documented Life project, and she was also a teacher on 21 Secrets 2013 where I made this book cover project : 

Remembering this class was called "Layers of love", these are my page progress photos 

I thought this project would be easy for me because I love layering, but it came together very slowly. I've had a week of challenges and sadness which affected my art. The page got too dark, and even when I lightened it with the white I still wasn't inspired. I had faith that something would click eventually, so just walked away until that something happened 

Once I put that spray through the lace on a couple of edges (which came from working on another project), I was sorted. I knew I needed to add more light with a central focal so decided to check out my colour wheel for some inspiration. 

I was looking at the split complementary triad of Violet (of which I have lots!) and decided I wanted to add more yellow-green (currently a bit in the background) and "red" but decided I'd like more Pink brought up so not just in the background. I selected a couple of feature stencils, and grabbed my green before deciding that actually what would give more light to my page would be gold...and then while the stencil was still in place and the paint wet, I added sparkle with glitter as well. Loving it 

If you click on any photo you can see it larger with closer views of the layering. I was finding joy in my project at last :-)
When I did my last Life Book project called Wings & Light I enjoyed using a watercolour crayon with a blending stump to smudge the colour and I did that again here to add much of the pink - really pleased with how that worked.

Rae said at the end we should "add that one little flair that makes it your own". Because I created this page in my journal, I couldn't add stitch as I often do. She had added journaling to her page, and I decided that one of my "signatures" is using found text. She had talked a lot during the class about being kind to yourself, and about letting your art speak to you and for you...these words were right 

At last, here's the final reveal : 

Click on the photo to see it larger, or go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. I worked on this page without reference to the page facing it - it was always covered with a piece of baking paper to protect it. So I was more than thrilled when I saw the finished pages together in one spread - like they were made to go together!

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

DLP (Black & white) and more daily journaling

As I shared in my last post, I've been having a very social and busy couple of weeks so haven't had as much time to create art as usual. At least I've managed to mainly keep up with my art journaling. 

Started the spread with our clocks going back for the end of daylight savings - always sad to see that happen because it signals the end of summer days, but we're still enjoying lovely warm days around 20 degrees so can't complain about that. In my last post I shared a cool technique by Julie Fe-Fan Balzer that I wanted to try. Did it in a bit of a cheat's way by using 3 different colour stamp pads on a large feather stamp - pretty don't you think?

Then I turned my attention to the prompt for last week's DLP PACs (Documented Life Pocket Art Cards) which was black and white. If you click on that link, you'll see previews of what was presented to those of us who have joined this year. The new theme for April is "Reaching for rainbows - creating outside the lines". I was looking through a wee gifted birthday quote book and found the perfect page to tear out and use as the base for a black and white challenge piece

I decided to keep it fairly simple and glued the quote to my page with the movie snapper to edge it, and then added various bits of tape, and black stamp pad through various stencils - it was so fun I even spilled off the edge and onto the background page = "creating outside the lines" :-)

Then I came across a black tag from a piece of clothing - I hope you save all your tags of interesting colours or shapes....Although summer hasn't fled, the words I found on the sheet music were too perfect not to include, and that cute white edged black ribbon worked well. 

No more arty details to share this week, but here's the completed spread. 

I know this spread isn't artfully fabulous, but there's a reason I share it. I just finished looking at one of Alisa Burke's most recent blog posts where she's created a new colourful giant mural on her bedroom wall. It was what she had to say in the words of her post that really resonated for me though : creativity (even painting giant walls) is more about the journey than the destination...It truly is ALL about love and passion for the creative process. And that's how I feel too - that's why I keep playing in my art journal, and making PACs and experimenting with new techniques. It's the process of creation that clears my stress and makes me happy. I just love to create stuff and share it with others in the hope that will in turn inspire someone else to find a pathway to happiness.
You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP2016 the unPlanner HERE.
This weekend sees the beginning of 2 weeks of school hols. Looking forward to a change of pace.

Stuff worth sharing

A few things on my radar this past couple of weeks which I thought you should know about too.
Hanna's doing an international Postcard swap again - read all about it HERE. 

These are the key dates :
Sign up BEFORE 1 May 2016
Postcards ready to send by 3 May
Last date to send postcards is 6 May 2016
See what I sent in November 2014 HERE and some of what I got back HERE. It's a fun way to challenge yourself to work small and produce a series or try a whole lot of different techniques.
Did you catch Alisa Burke's post about colouring with crayola crayons HERE? 

I especially love what she does with baby oil....and she's shared some free colouring pages designed by her on her blog over time - get to them HERE. She's also just shared another excellent post called Colouring OUTSIDE the lines which includes a YouTube video.
I've always wanted to know how Julie Fei-Fan Balzer gets this multi-colour effect with her stamps :

and now I know....go HERE to find out all about it. Want to have some time to try this.
And forgive me if I've shared this before, but watching this video of Flora Bowley mixing colours gets me inspired :  

and she's just shared one about dynamic colour pop using contrasting colours - go HERE for that.
I'm having a very social and therefore not very creatively productive week, but I've got 2 weeks of school holidays coming up from 16th April so hopefully more stuff worth sharing will happen then! Talk to you again soon

LB2016 : Wings & Light

This was another Life Book 2016 lesson with Tam called Roots and Ground, Wings and Light. There was a meditation with this one that was supposed to lead you to grounding in the present, and writing poetry about how you're feeling. But I just went with creating a darker skinned angelical character this time. Happily my next page in my journal was nearly completely blank. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I experimented with using some of my watercolour pencils and crayons with a blending stump to soften instead of using water. Enjoying the effects I got with that and will try more in the future. Because my art journal is a recycled book, my neocolors don't blend as well in the background as Tam's seem to, but it gets me using my acrylics, and incorporating more stencils into the background of my pieces which I really enjoy as another layer.

Very happy with how her wings turned out - including more words from a large print book

We used modeling paste in this lesson, and mine turned out a bit dirty looking from not cleaning my stencil so I added bronze metallic paint which had a lovely effect, and I included it in her hair as well which was a happy addition

Here she is all finished

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.