Birthday Celebration Zine

In 2017 I was teaching this book form but I didn't know that catchy name Zine. 

Dina Wakley has a great demo of making these on YouTube and in my library community this great post from Christchurch City Libraries was shared recently. A Zine is a book you can make from one piece of paper.

This is my most recent version, inspired this month by a bonus lesson by Wendy Solganik in Fodder School and versions by Tiffany Sharpe. First to make collage master sheets.

Recently I managed to find this A3 pad of cheap watercolour paper.

It's 190 gsm weight so about double the weight of my printer paper, and I thought the size would be really useful for creating bases for cards and also for Zines since it's a lighter weight than normal watercolour paper so easier to fold down. By the way - worth a trip to Feilding from Palmerston North for art supplies - got the gold pens from Aotearoa Art Supplies (you can also order online), and the paper was from Dollar City - Top Cats Alley. Next to each other on Manchester Street.

Here are a couple of master sheets created with papers from fodder school lessons

If you're not part of fodder school, Wendy Solganik has a really cool course about a way to make collage master sheets and then turn them into tags which you can get free by signing up for her newsletter HERE. 

Step 2 - fold and cut

Adding stitch and words

Then folding it into a Zine and stitching - I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make lots of pockets for tags

In case it's not obvious, front of tags above, and backs below.

Celebrating my 55th birthday this month creatively 

Free creative online inspiration

There are some fabulous free offerings happening June-July. I joined Tam's Kaleidoscope course in 2020, and while I haven't completed all the lessons, I recommend this course. She explores colour in such an accessible way and it's another collaborative course with many wonderful teachers. Each year she creates a new version and there's a new free taster week to launch it. This year it starts 27 June. Register HERE.

These are the lessons from Tam for the Taster and I'm particularly excited to see the Klimt inspired piece : 

Looking towards July, The Free Fodder Challenge will run July 5th-13th (9 days of short, fun fodder lessons from our new Fodder School 2 teachers). 

Sign up for Willa Wanders newsletter HERE to make sure you don't miss out plus you'll get the Surrender Pocket instructions and her mixed media tags online class as a free gift 💜

In the middle of that, I'm very lucky that this free creative weekend falls at the beginning of my next school holidays.

Register HERE. From past experience, this one can feel more pressured because you only have 24 hours to watch the content, but you mustn't feel like you have to see it all. Best strategy is to choose a few favourite teachers and enjoy them as free inspiration and time for you.

And remember when I made this tag book?

It was inspired by a workshop called Tagged, Sewn, Connected with Kristi Nazzaro from Soul Positive and Kristen Peterson of Altered States Studio. They have recently done another fun collaborative project where they traded papers and then made a project from them. So inspired by all of this. Just looking at what they sent each other sparks ideas, and if you watch the project directly after you can see how you might incorporate papers into a similar project of your own.

Kristi's unboxing of the papers Kristen sent here

Kristi's project made from the papers here

Kristen's unboxing of the papers Kristi sent here 

Kristen's project made from the papers here

Wishing you creative joy. 

New cards and fodder school with Laura Dame

I watched a gelli printing technique with alcohol ink markers with Kate Crane and it gave such lovely ethereal print results I thought they would be perfect for my next lot of card bases. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work! Then I used isopropyl alcohol to do some cleaning up on the stencils and the plates and this is my pile that 'didn't work'. There really aren't any failures using a gelli plate!

Our instructor for Fodder school in May was Laura Dame. Lots more fun with stencils and gelli printing - I learn something new from every teacher we have. It was especially great to be reminded to get out my spray paint cans again and have fun creating patterning with stencils over papers that weren't finished or didn't feel right for whatever reason. I worked over some of the papers above and a few others.

These are some of my favourites

That last one was on some uninspiring scrapbook paper. Everything is fair game.

Dig into Laura's YouTube channel for free instruction and a taste of her teaching style including using coffee and paynes grey on book pages and using coffee, stencils and watercolours to make collage papers. I have yet to try these but don't Laura's look delicious? 

I needed to make some more cards and decided that some of the lovely sprayed backgrounds above would be just perfect. 

All with some fodder school focals added and I have a few spares that can have words added as the occasion arises. A pink background was also perfect for my Journal 52 Week 22 prompt.

I am really enjoying my new Pink monthly journal for June. I shared the cover here. 

May monthly journal with Journal 52

Time to share my completed May monthly journal. I chose Brown for May since we're nearing the end of Autumn and the trees are getting bare. Thought it would be lovely to include gold and bronze metallics. Here are my gatherings. Even my underpaper fits - an old street map.

I was quite excited by this, and I don't often work with neutrals. Here's what happened

My art on flip-out pages in this journal is mostly created in response to Effy Wild's Journal 52 cards for 2022. My rules : each 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'd been sharing these in a separate blog post, but that seems silly when it all lives together. 

Week 18 : Quicken. A new journal, new challenges, stimulating my creativity 

Week (19) : no prompt because Effy had Covid so I just created using lovely collage fodder that fit alongside the above spread.

Week 19 : Strong (Effy has promised 52 prompts in total this year so just a week out of sync with the year now). Exploring dark and light neutral contrasts. Loving that all my papers from this and the above prompt were created by me - all my own colours, textures and marks. 

The weekly spread was done after this flip out - I thought it would be fun to use scraps to frame journal spaces

Week 20 : Serene. The other side of the flip out page above and I had to include a figure with this one. The colours complement what's seen of the journal spaces 

Decided that since there were only 2 days left for the month to fill my last double-page spread, I'd wait and see what Effy's prompt was. I'd been having a play with some spray paint and this was what I started for my June cover and this final spread

Week 21 : Onward. The stencil looked like hair, and I loved that Effy used a profile for this prompt. Then I remembered my stencil faces that I made in August last year during the free fodder challenge. Journal circles in her hair, a little bit of left over flower fodder and sheet music, and I really love this last spread in my journal.

You can get access to the prompts by joining Effy's Wilderhood group on FB or subscribe to her newsletter. See all my posts about Journal 52 HERE. 

And now we move forward to June - my birthday month 💜 Time to use my pink file folder and I am so excited to work in this one. 

See all my posts about my monthly journal project HERE. See more regular postings from me on my FB artist page and Instagram.