Creating a book a month : Shine

I began the year with an Intention to create a book a month : small and gorgeous, mixed media and stitched. This one's taken me 3 months but I have focussed on a different part of the process each month, and I needed to take this relaxed approach. 

In June, a friend gifted me Joanne Sharpe's lovely online class Art Sparks 1 : Words and Watercolour. We started by playing with watercolour to create base pages

and I shared in July how I had begun to put them together

I wanted to include stitch in some way and had more fun later that month creating stitched embellishments

Now in August I've finally been inspired to finish my Shine book. I love it and am so glad I took my time. 

I promised I'd share how my new uniball pens worked. It was really fun to use in combination with my Faber-Castell Brush pen to create this lettering - very smooth application and very black. I will be using again.

Here are my completed pages

Art Sparks 1 : Words and Watercolor is very reasonably priced and includes watercolour play, lettering, and bookbinding. Joanne's already produced Art Sparks 2 : Color. Collage. Concertina, and Art Sparks 3 : Pockets full of posies with more coming I believe. 

Hope you are inspired to create this month. 

Creating a book a month : June and July

I have an Intention to create a book a month this year : small and gorgeous, mixed media and stitched. I had originally thought that I would celebrate my birthday month (June) with another daily journal, but circumstances change and I have decided I will use that format for my 2020 December Daily. In my first post for June I was questioning whether I even had the energy to create a book. Later that week, a lovely blogging friend gifted me with this class by Joanne Sharpe! So very thoughtful and solved my creating a book a month challenge for June....and July! 

It's called Art Sparks : Words and Watercolour and includes watercolour play, lettering, and bookbinding. Below are examples of Joanne's gorgeous inspiring work.

I haven't done much with watercolours so enjoyed the loose paint play Joanne teaches

We then moved on to cutting the papers to create the pages for little books.

I decided to put all my large papers together to create one book with quotes about Shine - a favourite word of mine. I'm not sure if the cover is done yet

This book measures 4" x 6", while the little ones are only 2.75" x 4"

I've not bound these books yet, but here's a couple of sneak peeks at pages in progress in my Shine book. I'm hoping I'll be able to somehow include stitch as well...

I'll share my progress on these little books at the end of the month. See my other posts about creating a book a month HERE

Joanne's developed a series of these classes. She calls them the big, project focused, online classes with the teeny price. She has just released Art Sparks 2 : Colour, Collage, Concertina. Also US$14.95 and starts 20th July.

LB 2015 : The Artful Wordsmith

Life Book week 3 was a lesson with Joanne Sharpe. If you click HERE you will link to all my postings about what I've learned with her previously. So this was a lesson of familiar techniques but great to be reminded. The lesson was to illustrate the phrase "Art feeds your soul". For obvious reasons, I had to change my phrase slightly ;-)

This is worked on watercolour paper. I wanted to reflect my NZ, so first I added ferns by using a sponge to apply stamp pad through a stencil. You can see here I added pen lines to give my own details

I drew my own flowers, similar to those I learned from Alisa Burke's class. Here's a shot of how line drawn flowers are transformed by watercolour

click on any photo to see it larger

Of course a big part of this lesson was about lettering

and if you saw my last Life Book lesson, you will have seen that I want to include stitch in every project, so I finished by framing this piece by machine stitching with metallic thread

I just love my wee fantail stamp - one of my favourite New Zealand native birds. And I'm not usually very good at leaving white space, but managed to leave the border on this one.

You can see all my posts about Life Book HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my Life Book projects HERE.

Watercolour Calendar Journaling

I wanted to inject some more background colour into my calendar journaling, so started my next spread by spraying ink through some lace. A small thing, but I love that effect

then I used a piece of background paper that I'd created with a gesso resist as my first day section - the journaling shows I'm trying to get to where I want to be

I cheated a little with this page, and went back to complete Thursday and Friday after my birthday on Saturday which is when I was given this wonderful book

Have a peak inside via Amazon

Although I've done some of Joanne's classes online, and some of the letter love ideas appear in this book, it is a wonderful reference, and there are different examples included than seen in the online classes. If you were wondering if you need this book, I would say yes! Here's my Thursday title inspired by the book

And here's that page complete

Click on any photo to see it larger

Then I had to devote an entire page to what happened on my birthday because it was so wonderful :-)

The page includes wrapping paper flowers, example of the pack of serviettes given for use in art, and photos of the day (some of which are under a flip out).

My Fabric banner project from my last post started that day.

You can see all my calendar journal pages in my flickr set HERE. 

Christmas Cards and FREE classes

I love making my own Christmas cards. In October 2011 I spent a month making a card a day, 10 of which were Christmas themed. This year I've been playing with sprays, distress ink pads, stencils, gelli prints, glitter and stitch.

Variations on using a fern stencil as a Christmas tree with gelli printed tape trims

I apply the distress ink pad with a sponge dauber on my finger through a stencil - you could also use a cosmetic sponge.

Variations on trees cut with cuttlebug by a friend

Gelli printed backgrounds and gelli printed tape

And glitter - you'll see it if you click on the picture and enlarge it

If you'd like some further card-making and seasonal inspiration, check out these 3 FREE classes!
1. The amazing and generous Alisa Burke has created a free class called Holiday Play. Read all about it here



2. Five Golden Letterings by Joanne Sharpe was created in 2012 to inspire your holiday handwriting, packaging and creative gift giving in a golden palette.

Example from Joanne's workshop

3. Don't forget the Strathmore online workshops still open until end of December 2013. Be inspired by Jane LaFazio and Joanne Sharpe to make some Christmas cards.



Merry Merry