A Monthly Journal practice

Since late last year I've been admiring the small monthly Daily Creative Practice journals I've been seeing around (especially Willa's collected from 2021 HERE). You can take the class, but I'm trying to limit my spending in that area and decided I am experienced enough to make up my own version. I had to purchase a few more file folders and found this lovely pack on special for $4.99

I've cut all the card to size but am not working too far ahead because I'm going to let these evolve organically each month so they become a true reflection of my creative focus for that time. They will become a way to track my creative life and capture the good things from my year. They are quite small, measuring 12 cm x 18 cm, so a lovely project that I feel is achievable. And it means I'll actually create a book a month this year 💜 

I picked blue for January since it is Summer holidays here with lots of blue skies and swimming. I started with some collage and stenciling for the backgrounds, before stitching the journal together.

Then I was ready to start using it. 

There are weekly spreads with journal blocks for me to capture highlights of my days and add extra collage or paint touches as I wish. I do these a week ahead with different shapes and mix up collage/paint options

You can see I'm using my collage fodder. For my last week I had 8 days to complete January so I painted onto a sticker sheet using the technique I'd used from Autumn Moon's painted papers and then was able to peel them off and stick them down

At the beginning of the journal I included a print from my first piece of art for the year containing my word of the year. 

When Effy announced her new Journal 52 weekly prompts for 2022, I decided they could have a place in here too, as well as photos and quotes. 

Sometimes photos can be added as tip-ins

I am so glad I decided to do this year-long project. It feels very manageable right now and I've planned ahead with which file folder colour I'll use every month. I chose Red for February because of the obvious Valentine's associations but also our Red light Covid setting. Also thinking about self-love and the things we tell ourselves. I have some gorgeous papers to use this month - gathering is one of my favourite parts of the process. I think those bits of turquoise will make this journal sing

I decided that since I'm so keen about adding stitch into projects this year, I'd do that on the cover.

Once more I'll be including pieces of art in the front of my journal from Journal 52 and any other inspiration that may strike. This is my first week's spread

I've glued down the first 4 weekdays but want to wait and see what inspiration might strike for arrangement of the weekend days. I am excited that Fodder school's teacher for February is Megan Whisner-Quinlan and expect I may want to inject some of that in here. 

I'm back at school working administration hours and we are back to normal school term with children from 8th February. I say normal, but given Omicron we'll just have to take one day at a time. Please look after yourself.

Journal 52 in January

It's just as well I didn't plan too far ahead with my commitments for this year because Effy Wild unexpectedly announced new Journal 52 cards for 2022! You can just read her musings and print the cards out for your own use, or you can use them as prompts for your own responses. In 2020 I did a card a week. I'm planning to respond this year on various small cards or tags that can become part of my monthly journal project. My rules : each small piece will include stitch, a found word, and be inspired by the project I've been working on that week or what's lying leftover on my work table. I know I've been on holiday and everything seems possible right now, but it's a nice option to include if I have time. 

Week 1 : Thrive. Used one of my card bases and collage fodder

Week 2 : Creativity. Inspired by Fodder school dyeing and fragment lesson from Aimee  Bishop

Week 3 : Companionship. Had to include some of my paper from this month's fodder school lessons with Autumn Moon. Sketched the companions and glazed lightly for contrast. Did this one right in my monthly journal. 

Week 4 : Behold.This one had to be on a tag to fill a final spot in my journal. Was a quick one because I wanted to be inspired by my journal spread colours and found this collage paper in my stash.

I look forward to showing how this project aligns with my monthly journal. I share these Journal 52 responses weekly on my Instagram. You can get access by joining Effy's Wilderhood group on FB or subscribe to her newsletter. 

Fodder School with Autumn Moon

You may have noticed that I'm blogging less but that doesn't mean I'm being less productive. I share more often on my Instagram but I really like sharing here for bringing the parts of my projects together. Time to share what I've done so far with our January lessons with Autumn Moon. I've made painted papers 

and explored a heap of different ways to include my own handwriting on fodder for my art. 

I really love the marks and the writing out thoughts without people being able to read it but it's still obviously my hand writing. 

And if you can't think of what to write, song lyrics and poetry is also really fun - you can let go without having to think of what to write and concentrate on getting into the the mark making zone. 

We also had bonus lessons from other class teachers : with Megan Whisner-Quinlan

Creating our own personalised tape with Tiffany Sharpe 

Roxanne Padgett did a bonus using other kinds of papers. I had a try with my baking paper under-paper. You really can't create this kind of gorgeous background except by accident!

And I used some gold writing on this and thought about transparency which led me to play with black, white and gold pen on tracing paper and then white and gold on black paper. Loving these samples

Putting our collage fodder onto sticky labels with Rebecca was extra fun. I adore how these turned out

And finally, cutting and punching some shapes and cutting and tearing some of the written painted papers to get a feel for how it looks as actual fodder

All this fodder making is just the first lot of lessons for the month! The project to make with the fodder is a personalised junk journal...I hope to get onto that next. You can still join us. We are only 4 months in of 12 and you have "lifetime access," which means the lifetime of the course. They will be available in Willa Workshops on Teachable for many years. It's pretty obvious that I recommend this course wholeheartedly 💜 See all my posts about this class here. 

A new batch of bases and cards

I really love making cards and I typically make bases on watercolour paper and then attach focals and words as occasions arise. I begin with collage, white gesso and watercolour crayons, before adding a bit of stenciling.

I worked on 2 x A3 sheets of watercolour paper this time to get 16 bases. I think they look enticing and full of possibility once cut to size. They will fit stitched to a standard small white card. 

I particularly love the mix of soft colours with the metallic. Already had 3 birthdays this year. Happily still using my collage fodder elements.

More Fodder creation with Aimee Bishop

I shared my dyeing experiments inspired by Aimee Bishop in this post. She shared so many cool ideas in our December class and I've had a wonderful time playing with papers, fabrics, lace and stitch. 

Then time to use all of the above, plus my dyed materials

as well as other extra papers and fibres from my stash 

to create 3D embellishments 

A reminder about making paper beads - the tiny one is new but the rest were already in my stash so good to bring them out again

Making small layered collages is really fun. 

While I have done similar things previously and adore adding stitch to my projects, this class really got my creative juices flowing. I'm going to leave those lessons there knowing I can return to them at any time. Really want to start our January lessons with Autumn Moon. I can't say enough good things about Fodder School. Every teacher so far has been amazing and I've only watched 3 months = a quarter of the lessons so far! You can still join us.

52 Flags

I loved participating in Anne Brooke's weekly tag project in 2021 and as soon as I found out about her new idea for 2022 I joined up. Find out all about it via her YouTube video. The project is bunting and you can do entirely fabric ones, or work on a card base. After some deliberation, I decided that I'd like to make mine entirely of fabric. I've cut these bases and will fill one side for weeks 1-26, and then turn the bunting over and complete the other side.

Week 1 : A pocket and note to self. I decided to use some of my lovely home-dyed fabrics that I shared in my previous post inspired by Fodder School. 

On the back of my tag, I have written a list of the creative projects I've committed to for the year. 

I really love that this project will be hanging on my wall to enjoy right from the start. I'm attaching them with the little pegs and will stitch them once both sides are complete.

From now on I'll post these flags to my Instagram as I make them weekly, and I'll do a monthly photo share here on the blog. You can join us at any time on Anne's Ko-fi page (￡3 = around NZ$6/month).