March review

Happy Easter ♥ I've had another productive month and am happy to share this review for your inspiration and mine. I really love having this monthly record to look back upon.  I am still going strong with my weekly project #52cards2024 : to create a card that reflects the past week (ending Sunday). I must include stitch, the colour turquoise and a word.These are my March cards : there were 5 Sundays this month.

This month's tutor in Fodder School 3 was Shay Michelle. I managed to experiment again with modeling paste through a stencil which I haven't done for a while - love the look of these but that was all that I was inspired enough to try this month.

Grateful this class is lifetime access so I can come back to this when the mood takes me, and it did provide me with a focus for one of my weekly cards.

Monthly journaling in my JIYA Journal created from Megan Quinlan's class supported by Wendy's lettering class. Only a couple of spreads this month, but better than nothing! 

I've decided it's too much when I'm working full time to try and work in more than one journal, so this month I concentrated on my Summer Journal. While I didn't quite make my hoped-for deadline of the Autumn Equinox on 20th March, I did manage to finish it by the end of the month! 

There is more evidence of my lettering practice here. See spreads I completed in December here,  February here, and these are March :

See everything in the flip-through video

I love the satisfaction of holding a completed journal 💙

New Supplies : Gloss sprays by Ranger (ordered from Ribbon Rose) I've been wanting these for ages so got myself some favourite colours to try out. 

And first play with a couple of colours : 

They seemed to work better on the old book page and soaked in with less effects on the cheap watercolour paper. Megan Quinlan has an excellent video here on YouTube with tips and tricks for using them including cleaning up and making sure your nozzles don't clog up! More experimentation needed.

Fav free inspiration this month - the exhibitions of Paul Dibble and Boro embroidery at our local art gallery (if you are local this is on for a while). 

Paul Dibble is a renowned New Zealand sculptor of Bronze. He passed away at the end of last year, and since he was local, our city has many of his wonderful works. These are huia birds (now extinct) and a kowhai flower - cast bronze and gold leaf.

Favourite reads this month : 

And a pet update - the kittens and puppy are growing and becoming friends. Definitely still a lot of hard work, but we have lots of joyful moments too.

April contains 2 weeks of school holidays so I look forward to sharing more art, especially in the second half of the month. I post more regularly on my Instagram and Facebook Artist's page.

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. 

Bookmarks

I work at a private school in Palmerston North, part-time admin and part-time librarian. 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. This year I discovered I had some cardstock cut into bookmark shapes. I laid them out on old sheet music to catch overspray and then used some spare pieces of scrap watercolour paper to mop up. Sprayed with 3 colours through stencils.  

Because I've been doing this a while I've got a good sense of what works well together. Many pieces looked lovely once dry and only needed to have the fibre tassel added 

while others just needed a little tape glued on. 

Happy with this quick project and my librarians loved them too 💜

See the other bookmarks I've made over the years HERE.

Creative bookmarks

Every year I have a team of student librarians who help me in my school library. I have got into a tradition of making bookmarks for them as a thank you. These were from last year

And these from 2017 

I used the same method again for this year because it's a quick way to create with lovely results and I needed to create 30 bookmarks! Beginning with 2 x A3 sized watercolour paper for my base. This year I started by painting my bases first

Spraying through stencils and mopping up onto the opposite page as I went

 

Once they are cut they look quite different and I looked at each one individually before adding fibre and I wondered if extra elements were required. 

Turns out only a few needed extra white stamping 

I just love the bright ones but not everyone has my taste and I can never predict which ones the children will choose

It's really interesting to consider each one separately - each unique in its inky patterned loveliness. 

Bookmarks and Creative Cards

I work as a librarian in a school and every year I make bookmarks to gift to my student helpers. Here's what I did this year - sprays and stencils are my favourite base

Printed on the both sides of pieces of heavy watercolour paper

I seemed to have even less time than other years so at this point I just cut the paper to size, punched a hole in the end and added fibres

And below are the other sides - I was interested to see what appealed to the children - I didn't predict what they would love and my favourite was chosen last.

I wished I'd thought ahead before I cut the paper to size, but then my mind turned to other possible uses for the leftovers

I also have this pack of Tim Holtz Botanical Layer pieces gifted to me by a friend last year - they are cardstock 

You can just use glue to attach them of course

But very cool that the butterfly wings can stick out a bit if you just stitch the bodies

I always love stitching on a bit of sari ribbon

Great to have card bases prepared for future use ♥

All can have words and extra imagery added when I know who's going to receive them. I love how they've turned out so far and I'm never very good at leaving white space but really loving how these look....maybe some will just have some found words and be done.