Perfect, not perfect.

One of the reasons I love taking collaborative workshops is because you get to make discoveries of new wonderful artists. In the Free Life Book 2021 Taster event one such new discovery for me is Maria Pace-Wynters. 

Her gorgeous lesson was called Perfect, not perfect : how to make the perfect mess and stop perfectionism from limiting your creative life. It was a lesson in using acrylic inks, lots of water and blotting, and enjoying the flow - the beauty of what evolves with happy accidents. Was a bit of a scary process in the art journal and I made it this far with the mess of ink, water and blotting before I moved into a more controlled way of working.

And as I continued to work on her, I was reminded of the reasons I work in my art journal 

I just love the whole process of creating - experience and expression, process not perfection. I will keep going until I find the face that I love in this and I'm learning with every page how I can try and use a teacher's inspiration to add something to my own art and creative voice. She doesn't look like anyone else's and I love that.

Wishing you a happy and creative weekend - whatever that looks like for you.

New Art Journal

I loved my altered art journal which started life as an old children's book. Very rarely did I wish for something different in the way of base pages which were thick and covered with text that showed through most of my finished art - an effect I loved. 

While I did work in a Watercolour Calendar journal (spiral bound and cheap paper) in 2014, and I created my own watercolour journal from the pages I used for my She Blooms in Ink class with Tam in 2018, I've never purchased and worked in a proper, quality page weight, bound watercolour journal. 

I am equal parts excited and nervous to work in this! So many choices of what I could do on my first page, and a very white blank page it was to start with....I decided that I would try a lesson from the Free Life Book 2021 Taster event since it's only available for a couple of weeks. Inspired by a watercolour mixed media portrait lesson by Toni Burt. If you click on her name you'll find some free tutorials to try with her. 

Brave beginning - my non-dominant (left) hand with non-permanent pencil. 

Watercolours, black permanent polychromos pencil and a little collage with Daler Rowney ink in the background and my first page in my new art journal is done. 

Happy Sunday.

Life Book 2021 Taster with Laly Mille

I joined up to the free Life Book 2021 Taster event which happily for me is running for these 2 weeks while I'm on school holidays! I decided to start with Laly Mille's lesson when I needed to create my card for Journal 52 this week. 

Laly's lesson was to create twinchies (2" squares) but I wanted to use what I created to make cards. I ended up with my completed Journal 52 #39 card and 5 other backgrounds to complete.  

Butterflies, gold and found words were added before being machine stitched to bases.

You can still join us HERE. 

Journal 52 : Week 39

Journal 52 is a weekly prompt from Effy Wild (Free HERE) that I'm creating on a deck of jumbo playing cards 3.5'' x 4.75'' (8.5 x 12 cm). Each card 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. See the original post HERE.
#39 : Puzzle My main puzzle at present is which project to tackle first! It's school holidays and I have a huge "want to do" list. Decided I would start with Laly Mille's lesson from the Free Life Book 2021 Taster sessions and see where it took me

Resolving the puzzle of what this card would look like was magical. 

I'll share in a separate post what I did with the rest of my papers. Find all my Journal 52 posts HERE

Life Book Summit 2018 : Creative Warm Up

This page developed from a creative warm up lesson to introduce this FREE online summit hosted by Tam 1-15 October. It was just what I needed right now ♥ I didn't entirely follow the lesson since I already had swiped off paint from when I made my Spring Portrait

Love to take process photos so I can look back and see the evolution of a page (click on any photo to see it larger)

I am making an effort to add stitch to my art where I can - this began as a piece of recycled card from an old diary that I'd arted up 

I can't seem to call many pages finished until I add words or a quote

and calling it done ♥

This lesson was Tam's warm up lesson for Life Book in January 2018, and is a good example of her teaching style. You get the lesson if you sign up to the summit. 
Read more about the summit and sign up HERE. 

Some FREE Inspirations

Happy creative September days to you - Spring is here and I am so excited that our days of sunshine are lengthening and I feel like I'm waking up creatively as well. Enjoying these inspirations so sharing the love : 

I am totally inspired with Rae Missigman's work at present. Her book has just arrived at my house - take a peek inside via Amazon HERE. 

I just love it. It's full of her lovely colourful art and there's a lot of information with written introductions to each section, as well as great stepped-out instructions with plenty of photos. 

This book is full of inspiring ideas to make marks with a huge variety of tools/mediums, and even though I'm not a new artist, I'm glad it's got a place on my bookshelf both for ongoing inspiration and just pure enjoyment of turning the pages of a lovely book. Some of her techniques are featured in a Cloth Paper Scissors article HERE. Rae is the September guest artist for Soul Journey 2018. Sign up for FREE to that FB group HERE. She shares a simple way to create artsy notebooks.
View all her YouTube tutorials HERE (including many of her series "15 minutes of mixed media") and check out her take on Donna Downey's series Find Out Friday HERE. Many great artists have featured so lots of free inspiration if you care to explore there.
Flora Bowley also inspires and has a Free offering of a virtual painting session happening in a few days HERE. You have to sign up to get the link and there'll be a replay available if you can't watch in real time.

I will work on a new large-scale acrylic painting and share tips and tricks along the way. This will be less of a specific “art lesson” and more about simply being together and seeing what wants to happen organically.

There are many year-long offerings being advertised for 2019 already. This is a FREE summit hosted by Tam, which will feature interviews with the artists who will teach in Life Book next year, as well as bonus creative and wellness activities that you can access from 1-15 October. Lucky me - it's happening in my school holidays!

Read more and sign up HERE. 
Some lovely stitch inspiration on YouTube HERE.

Read more about this project with some nice photos HERE.
Don't forget you can also click HERE for my list of cheap and free online art classes for 2018 (always to be found from the link top right in my side bar).
Hope something there to inspire you. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for my annual Girls' Weekend so I won't see you again until next week. I'm doing a happy dance ♥