Moonshine : Full Moon Gratitude February

Oh hi - I missed you. I haven't been well...I'll give you full update about what's been going on when I do my end of the month review, but for now, I'm back - YAY ♥ Sharing my latest art journal spread. Full Moon is for being with what is - to celebrate or express gratitude for what has come to fruition or to acknowledge something being good/right in my life. My New Moon intentions were about nourishing my body (food as fuel), and how I can nurture my Inner Wild Child. I celebrated the Wild child at New Moon. Full Moon in Virgo : "Be in your body this full moon, enjoy your sensual self". I've made a huge shift this month in how I feel about my body and it's time to celebrate that. I'm returning to a lesson from last year that inspired me to create this binder cover embodied :

One of our themes for February is Devotion and in that wonderful way the universe has of synchronicity, I have been reading Mary Oliver's Upstream and found this perfect quote : "Attention is the beginning of Devotion". With all of that in mind, here's how my journal page evolved. 

I'm being challenged by my new smaller altered journal size, but it pushed me to try a different silhouette ♥

I stenciled the hearts in titanium white before adding the glaze. 

Using some of my favourite stencils in the background and then the words completed my page. 

So glad to be back creating again. Talk to you again soon 

Book of Days : Collage spread

Book of Days 2019 is being taught as a collaborative this year. This month, all our teachers presented a lesson using collage elements. Our guest artist for February is Tangie Baxter and our bonus emerging teacher is Lynn Wilson.
I used to do collage a lot - my first online art journal teacher was the wonderful Kelly Kilmer and I filled my Full Tilt Boogie journal with collaged pages. The memory of these 2 in particular informed the spread below and in turn my latest spread

Now I still like to include collage elements but mostly they are part of backgrounds, embellishments (love serviettes) or under a paint over collage technique. When I saw Effy's lesson, I was reminded of this spread I did a couple of years ago :

That inspired my initial gatherings of a magazine face and an old calendar page for floral focal

Lynn Wilson shared some of her techniques for art journaling in an altered book and began by highlighting words. I often do that too - I love locating found words in backgrounds or applying dictionary/large print book words. This was my first layer - paint avoiding the words, my face and I was drawn to a different calendar flower to surround her. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I just kept adding layers to my background using some things from my stash including gelli printed tracing paper (which cuts and tears easily and gives a bit of a wrinkly texture when glued) as well as gelli printed micropore tape. Needed to include a butterfly as one of my important symbols

and decided she needed to hold something so added the heart. I coloured her top with a faber-castell pitt pen to tone with the background and couldn't help adding pen detailing to her face so she is altered. 

I love how white doodles light up the page. I needed some larger word/s, and in the end this was easily solved with some new washi tape ♥

Most of my art journal pages evolve organically and I never know how they will turn out. I really enjoy the process and keep working until the spread feels done - it's not done until I love it. A few final doodles in the centre of the flower and ♥

You can sign up to BOD2019 HERE. 

Moonshine : New Moon February

New Moons are for setting intentions. I'm thinking about nourishing my body (food as fuel), and how I can nurture my Inner Wild Child. Above some of my original gatherings - a photo of me and a dress tag - not included in the end but how perfect ♥ Will have to use it in a future spread. I was inspired by the memory of a page created in my art journal from 2015 using paint over collage and a printed photo of me as a child

I was also thinking about self-portraits....This is the result of those combined inspirations. I began with a lovely background of my favourite colours and a photo of myself (posed for this page) printed on copy paper for the paint over collage technique.

The angle of my original wasn't quite right so I added more hair and made the eyes larger and reframed the mouth so not open....I still know it's me under there!

Love adding paper serviettes as collage elements in my art. 

And this is my spread all finished - loving the colours ♥

You can find out more about Moonshine with Effy Wild HERE.

Self-Portraits

A day off for us today and I got a bit distracted looking at other people's art...Very inspired by Caterina who has a tradition of creating a self-portrait in her journal every January. I wish I'd thought of that! And then I realised that I have created self-portraits over the years - just not at the same time of year. These are the portraits that began with my actual face (using an actual outline of my face in some way) or something about them feels to me like they became personal.
I began my journey with creating faces in January of 2015. I took my first Life Book class then with the intention of learning how to create faces and this Beacon of Light was my first ever face! I feel like it looks like me because of the colours and symbols I used and the brown eyes and "curled hair" ♥

A week later, I was posting this : 

February 2016 begun with an image transfer of an actual photo of my face

Although I didn't begin with with my own face in this paint over collage in July 2016, this next one really feels like a self-portrait - I think it's the imagery, colours and brown eyes/curly hair

January 2017 - a repeat of that image transfer technique (even used the same photo to transfer)

And even repeated again in March 2017 for my vision board 

April 2017 - begun by tracing over a photo of me

November 2018 - another traced-ish beginning

Now for February 2019....I did actually start it today so I will share soon I hope.

Klimt in the Garden with Rumi : Your heart knows the way

For our first lesson for "A Year of Rumi" with Effy Wild in December, we were encouraged to use our own quote. I wanted to revisit the opening ceremonies lesson using Effy's quote this time. My first intention was to use a butterfly as one of my important recurring symbols in my work. I fussy-cut one from some fabric I'd already used on the lid of my collaged box (the container for this project) 

and selected my gatherings for this art card around that - these gatherings are just so I have more limited choices as I work. I know not everything will fit on the card.

I watched Effy's Live for Moonshine talking about our theme for February whilst I worked : listening to your inner wild child and devotion to your wild self. I was thinking about the season in New Zealand right now - heat - abundance - fruiting - ripening - heart opening - taking time to relish and experience current joys....."Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction". This card came together with Ease, from my heart ♥

See all my postings about this project by clicking HERE. 

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. 

Wishing you a lovely heart-led week

January review in my Inner Work Journal

End of January signals the end of our Summer School holidays and the beginning of a new school year and back to routine. I've been so lucky to have an awesome start to my year : a relaxing holiday away, art making time, and the offer of a few more hours at work. I'm happy with my focus words of the year, I've completed 3 spreads in my new art journal, very inspired by my Rumi art cards project and I've completed a quilt. This seems a good time to talk about my Inner Work journal - I began this practice mid-January 2017 and now wouldn't be without it. I'm on my fifth journal.

They are just ordinary hard-cover exercise books which are a place for memory-keeping, saving various printed inspirations, daily journaling, more in-depth personal writing in response to things that happen or sometimes from class prompts, as well as written responses to tarot pulls and my weekly oracle card. It's a way of digging deeper into self-knowledge and development. I thought I'd share how I work in my journal in case you want to try it too. At the beginnning of the month I set up my focus for the month - creative projects, any important social events, space to track when I blog, and the facing page for noting my oracle and tarot cards - these pages come from the Southern Hemisphere printable PDF which you can purchase HERE. (she also has a Northern Hemisphere version of course)

There's space to add photos and notes about my progress in the month - this is my finished January page : 

 That PDF is also where I get my weekly journal pages which start out looking like this

When I glue them in I make sure there is space at the bottom to print out a few photos so at a glance I can remember some highlights of my week. And I note my Oracle guidance for the week at the top of the page.

If you follow my blog at all you will have read this month about our gorgeous family holiday in Hawaii. I was really good about keeping up my daily and more detailed written journaling but when I was flicking through the pages they weren't looking colourful and interesting enough so I spent a bit of time sorting that out.

I decided that I could add tape to my pages and I have now made that a regular pretty addition to my written journal pages

Whilst in Hawaii I collected some postcards and ephemera 

I put these to good use as flip-outs and an insert of ephemera built up on one of the maps

Note you can also print out and stick in emails as a way of memory-keeping as well.
Other things that go in this journal are my #arteveryday photos for my own continued motivation

Inspiration from others as well as printing photos of my own art

and at the end of every month I print out what I've been reading and watching

My focus for January came from the first letter of my word Shine : Self-care. I've tried to establish good habits for the year ahead and I enter February with my focus on Healthy practices. 

My art project list feels manageable for the year, and I may have an opportunity to teach in February which will be fun if there is enough interest to enable that to happen. 
I hope I've inspired you to start some kind of life documentation and regular written journaling. It really is a wonderful addition to any kind of creative practice.