Looking forward

It's been raining and quite cold at times this week - but today it feels more like Spring isn't so far away. I've got a bit of a head cold, but 2 weeks of school holidays start NOW - I am looking forward to the start of daylight savings on Sunday, some holiday relaxing, time putting the garden in order, stitching a quilt top together, and hopefully swapping out all my merino and winter layers for spring colour in my wardrobe as warmer weather arrives...
I've been making a few more greeting cards recently from scrap card that I used to collect excess paint and printing. I cut the A4 card into smaller pieces and sewed them onto card bases before adding various serviette additions. 

Simple but pretty

Expecting that the holiday rest will also inspire me to make more art - Tam (creator of Life Book) recently released another free time-lapse video of her process making this lovely piece :

 See other views and the video by Tam HERE

The combined annual Manawatu/Wanganui/Taranaki Regional Embroiderer's guild exhibition is currently on display here in Palmerston North. There is a huge variety, and very high standard of work and I encourage you to get to Te Manawa to see it if you here any time from now until 11 October. Here are a few of my favourite pieces from that exhibition by Jenny Hunter - I've shared her quilts from another show HERE.

Click on any photo to see it larger. Her work is beautiful - these pieces reminded me of a gorgeous book I have in my collection by Jan Messent - have a peak inside via Amazon HERE. 

I also loved the humour and the technical loveliness of this version of "The Walrus and the carpenter" illustrated by Judith Balchin, one of our talented locals :

AND I ♥ this quote (found on Hanna's blog)

You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.  Barbara Sher
Wishing you a happy and creative weekend and looking forward to sharing with you again soon.

Week 37 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE weekly Documented Life project is HERE. Last week's challenge was :

The main focus of this challenge was on using various software apps to manipulate photos with different effects and digital design. The featured artist was Susan Tuttle who creates beautiful effects - that link is worth checking if you are interested in having a play with that idea. At present my use of digital design is merely in having my images on my computer to be able to print in different formats...I enjoyed the transparencies I used for last week's challenge (see my previous post) and was inspired by the "what makes your heart sing?" part of the challenge so went ahead and printed off some transparent images. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of what makes my heart sing is the beach, so this was the first photo I printed :

Art makes my heart sing, Klimt being one of my favourite artists, and a great deal of my own art includes butterflies. I started by layering the transparencies over each other, but nothing was clicking, so I turned to creating with other things that make my heart sing : stencils and swirls - inspired by the beach photo above

Loving that and immediately inspired to add my 2 other transparency images and my weekly journaling block with gold pen (click on any photo to see it larger)

I also love layering - serviettes and paint in Klimt-inspired shapes came next

followed by tape and ribbon

Texture makes my heart sing, and doodles add more layers and pull the Klimt inspiration right across the spread

And now I've created an art journal spread that makes my heart sing with happiness when I look at it - challenge answered :-)

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.

Week 36 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE weekly Documented Life project is HERE. Welcoming September with a new challenge for the month :

and the first week's challenge :

Spring is a time for me to get back on track in a number of ways. I've been thinking a lot about my health and well-being. Yesterday I decided to make myself a checklist of things I need to do to get back to where I was at the beginning of the year. I included images from some work I did last year :

So this art journal spread followed with my mind on making healthier choices, getting back to running on alternate days to the gym, and looking forward to Summer sun. I started, therefore, with a mix of orange and yellow paint applied with a wet wipe, then added white through one of my favourite stencils.

I've tried a few different methods of transfers in my time - most successfully. Click HERE to see all my blog entries on that subject. This time I wanted to just use what I had on hand, so that was my inkjet printer and transparencies. I successfully printed some photos onto my inkjet transparencies

I reversed the printing of words, but as I applied my first image to the background and went to check if it was transferring, the gel medium just started to tear my background :-(

Not sure if it was the cheap gel medium, or my surface - I had a bit more success transferring using mod podge onto an inky paper, but didn't want to risk further in my journal, so I just went ahead and glued the transparencies down, adding some tape as well for interest.

I wanted my other quote to stand out against the background, so drew on the back of the transparency with a black permanent marker to enhance the yellow letters

The photo of me is from January - a few kgs lighter than now - that's the "here to there" part of the prompt - my aim over the next few months is to get back to there on the scales (hopefully even lower if I can manage that), and I'm looking forward to sunshine there in my days as well.
I loved how much the white looked against the orange, so completed the page simply with favourite white pen doodles

And here's the spread all finished

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.  And I'm pleased to say that also brings me back on track with being up-to-date with Documented Life - this coming week I'll be working on this week's challenge! Hope you get some creative play this week and that the sun shines where you are.