March review

To be honest, I've been struggling this month. I have been feeling flat, tired and unmotivated. It's a combination of living with regular migraines and sadness that we are heading towards winter with less daylight hours to play. As always - this monthly review post is a great reminder that I am still being creative, and have lots to look forward to in April. 

I had thought that the #100 day project was just too much for me but then I thought of trying #100daysofstamps and I was inspired...for a few days! I've let go of this idea, but as you look through this post you'll see I've had stamps on my mind. I managed to create a little collage fodder with commercial stamps

and I had a lovely creative weekend with a friend 

where I was able to finally have a play with our fodder school lessons from last month with Lucie Duclos

Fodder school in March has been with Jane Chipp. I've made a start and will share more detail in another post when I've done a bit more.

I've been working a little in my JIYA Journal. I used some of my own stamps to do this page 

And I did this page too 

No supplies purchased this month, but I would like to add lettering with more confidence to this journal so I signed up to Wendy Solganik's Love your (imperfect) letters class when she offered a 3 day special. I like to support artists I love and Wendy's classes are life-time access and always packed with information.

I've made progress on my stitched "Down the garden path" roll. I'm keeping up with the fortnightly prompts and loving how this is evolving. This month our prompts were Pots of Flowers and Garden Creatures or Visitors. Another use of stamps : since it's a New Zealand garden I stitched over stamped images of a fantail and a bee

I've seen this free online event come up again for its sixth year: 

The initial release of workshops was from March 20 - April 1, with 2 new sessions released each day. After that you can able to watch all the sessions until April 20th. More information about the artists involved and sign up HERE.

Our first lot of school holidays start from Easter and I am looking forward to finding more motivation and creative time. I see there are less visitors to my blog and I think many people use the quick instagram fix now. You can find me there and on Facebook with more regular updates but I will continue to blog my main projects and a monthly review because it's a nice record for me.  I hope you are finding time and enthusiasm for creativity where you are. 

Bookmarks

I work at a private school in Palmerston North, part-time librarian and part-time administration support. As part of my library role we have student librarians who help throughout the year. Since 2015 I've been making bookmarks for them all as a thank you. Every year it's VERY busy at this time, and every year I think it's important enough to create for my special helpers. These are my process photos and what they received this morning

Spray inks through stencils over an original stencil on watercolour paper from several years ago. Look really different once you cut them apart, curve the top edges and punch the hole

I thought I would have to add more but once I put the ribbon on, they are really cool. 

And I purchased a custom-made stamp for the back 

Especially lovely to hear some of them say they still have their bookmark from last year 💙 Check out my other postings about bookmarks from previous years here. 

Fodder School : stamps

In Fodder School we have a new instructor every month. On the 1st we learn how to create fodder, and then mid-month we get to use that fodder in a project. This month our instructor is DeeDee Catron. You can find her on Instagram and see her floral fodder on YouTube and check out her Website. Our first lesson with her was carving stamps. I'm no stranger to stamp carving although I haven't really done much since 2018 when I made this collection

I don't really need to have more and have limited time at present, but I am interested in creating more sea-themed stamps and re-discovered this which had been gifted to me

It was very quick to create a sand dollar and kina (New Zealand sea urchin) shell shapes 

I then stamped on different papers using both paint and ink to create variously themed collage fodder for future use. This circle stamp is 2-sided and one of my favourites. Using paint to stamp on different tissue weights complements my sea theme

Next are various stamps on underpaper - haven't cut them apart because I'm not yet sure how they'll be most useful. The bottom branching stamp is newly carved and I'm thinking I could use it for seaweed too....can you also see sea ripples at the top right?

And lastly, a fun border stamp and I'm very partial to that leafy one. The heart in heart was stamped by spritzing the stamp with water and then using watercolour marker and crayon for a more ethereal effect.

The bottom right heart shows how stamping can ignite more creativity. I had only created the right stamp, and when I stamped it out with the turquoise, I realised I could make a mirror image stamp and create hearts too - so I did.

See all my posts about Fodder School HERE. It's not too late to join us. 

Gelli journal to collage fodder

In January 2019 I took a wonderful class with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer called Gelli journals. I had purchased it on an early-bird special price and was so glad I did. I learned a lot and created a whole journal with gelli printed papers inside and you can see those prints HERE. 

I created this journal to take away for our dream Hawaiian holiday, and I did create a few pages there. But then it sat until October 2020 before I created another page which I don't think I ever shared with you since I thought it would be the first of many...but I've not touched it since.

I do love the look of this, but I feel no desire to finish the journal so I am repurposing these inky papers for collage fodder. 

No guilt about not finishing this 'project' as a gelli journal - it served its purpose for my learning and I feel very excited by this stack of gelli goodness now in my paper stash. I have torn my Hawaiian pages out and they are now stored with my written journal pages as part of my memories. And the fun has already begun....I used a piece for my most recent tag - perfect colours ready-made ♥ You can see the paper 2nd from the top in the stack of materials and at the top of the tag

And I've created these lovely bits so far having fun with some simple stamping and stencil outlining

- loving that once you cut out you can get serendipitous loveliness on the 'back' and that if you cut in one continuous line you have some other opportunities left on the page

Definitely going to be more of this kind of play in my future. Very satisfying to repurpose an unfinished project into exciting new possibilities. Get great collage fodder inspiration HERE and HERE and HERE and I've created a new label for my posts on the blog for this topic HERE.

Journal Jam 2

Effy Wild is sharing a weekly Journal Jam live session in The Wilderhood (her Monday, my Tuesday morning) and I've done 2 spreads so far following the prompts. I've just gone and added a label so you can see them all HERE (I include all the prompts). I've become a little addicted cos I create spreads I would never do on my own and it's great to be led if you're feeling uninspired. It is so fun to art together - I managed to catch her live this week : in NZ time it's 8am Tuesdays. Effy draws prompts and shares how she works in response to those directly in her journal, and you can follow her lead or go in a totally different direction. Go HERE if you want to play too. This is Effy's

Use a colour you don't often use I don't use brown - let's see what happens when I start with something neutral and muted. Effy blended with white so that's useful for colour variation

I used titanium buff for my light/white...At least the dark brown covered the background heading in my altered book. Not in love. I am hoping for colour next!
Yellow Still considering this a background

Draw a shape Inspired by my recent book of Winged things - I'm putting a butterfly in. Using Stabilo All Pencil again, blended with water and then sprayed with workable fixative. I had a mask in my stencil stash to use as a guide for this large pleasing shape.

Use a colour you love Whoop whoop. Pebeo Iridescent Blue Green it is....

Add a word Again inspired by my March book, I want to add Rise - and I'm stamping it so it's larger than a usual found word. Found these really large alphabet stamps in a drawer which I thought I couldn't fit but then realised I could stamp vertically - also something I don't usually do. 

Drippage Decided to take a bit of a risk and drip from the side with some kind of pink

Loved that so much that I did it from the top on the other side as well!

That's the end of the prompts so over to me to finish as desired. I still have a LONG way to go on this one but I think it's got promise.
Got back to this today. I love stencils so that's my first stop, and I have an idea about light in the background. First up - let's see how Pebeo Iridescent Green Blue differs from Blue Green! The Green blue is added through the stencil here : turns out the last word is what counts. Glad the blue went over the top. 

Then to make my background more interesting. I added more of that pinky red around the page and then layered up. 

I wanted to use my seed head stamps with VersaMagic Cloud White stamp pad for some light in the background and I ended up adding more brown for contrast. I love to add gold - this is my favourite gold metallic gelly roll pen by Sakura

Here is the page finished

March Meander : Winged Things

I have an Intention to create a book a month this year : small and gorgeous, mixed media and stitched. I shared my initial inspirations for this project HERE.
I paired a lovely project by Susie LaFond called a Meander book with Kellee Wynne's online workshop "The Layered Page" which she is currently leaving open for free indefinitely. I began by cutting recycled book pages into 16 x 6" squares so that I could add stitch and then pair the pages front and back to make 8 squares before joining into the lovely book format. My chosen theme for this one is "Winged things" and I'm working with nature's palette of blues and greens for my backgrounds. Here's where I got to in my intro post to this project. 

Next was to add more complexity with layers of collage papers. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I then worked on each page individually. As well as my main Winged focal, I'm looking forward to including appropriate found words, fibre and stitch. 

This first is my front cover with gorgeous sari ribbon ties already attached but I'm not sure of the order of the rest yet.

I wanted to include some native New Zealand birds in this one 

If you are interested in finding a bit more click on the bird names highlighted : Kea above. The Ruru/Morepork below (So sweet. We had a little Ruru owl in our tree earlier this summer - also fond memories of my childhood growing up on a farm)

Piwakawaka/Fantail - appear twice on my pages. They are one of my favourite native birds. I have had this stamp for a long while 

The wood blocks of the Piwakawaka/Fantail and the Huia (now sadly extinct) were recent purchases from Tatter Tales in Waipawa. Read more HERE.

And this is the back cover : 

Now to share the completed book all stitched together. All the stitching on the individual pages was done with the same green rayon thread but to stitch it all together I decided to use a variegated thread. The Meander book only has 8 pages so I had to stitch the above pages back to back - I only stitched the edges which would not be stitched later to an adjoining page. 

Then stitched them together - a couple upside down hoping it will be logical when it opens...This was very tricky - had to go very wide with the zigzag stitch for it to be able to fold. Don't think I'll do this again with double thickness of watercolour paper.

This is the Meander layout - 'front' side. You can click on any photo to see it larger.

The book covers

And then the pleasure of playing with changing foldings to see different pages together

Very happy with my book project for March and can't wait to show you what I'm doing in April. See my other posts about this monthly project HERE.