Week 14 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE Documented Life Project is HERE. Happy April - a new month means a new theme focus for our challenges. Really excited to see this one :

This week the guest artist is Gina Lee Kim - a talented watercolour and mixed media artist and teacher. Her demo included a video which I especially enjoyed because it included a flip-through of her journal pages - so much inspiration there. Looking back through Gina's blog brought me to a post where she articulates something I very much believe.
She says : "Art journaling is a creative practice that teaches many things, like letting go of any guilt for taking time for myself. Making art isn’t being selfish; it’s part of good self-care. If I pursue the things that nourish my soul, I know I’m sending a profound message, especially to my son — that it’s never a waste of time to seek beauty, find meaning in my work, or to believe in my dreams"  
It's a great reminder about "Nourish" - my word of the year. Back to this journal spread....I also found a post that she did last year for DLP with another video flip through of a completed journal - that made me want to dive in with watercolours.

At first I tried a koh-i-noor watercolour directly in my Dylusions journal. Was okay, but not the wonderful effect you get with proper watercolour paper. I then applied the watercolour to the correct paper on the right, and then lifted some with a wet wipe and used that to apply colour to the edges of my spread in my journal. 

I will work on watercolour paper, and my intention is to apply machine stitching and to add a tag and clear envelope (inspired by Gina's journal flip through) before gluing the pages into my journal. Decided to use Gina's salt technique first, and I used these watercolours

I used a large fresh page as well as some leftover pieces to just explore some different colours

I love the different effects you get with watercolour, and last year spent months playing in my watercolour calendar journal. Doesn't this effect look cool once dry?
Click on any photo to see it larger 

I decided to start by trimming the turquoise/purple piece to fit inside my journal

First up those marks are begging to be turned into flowers and I want to add stitch straight away to create the journaling section

The pink stitching isn't as bright as the neon pink pen - I add stitching to the other page and add some darker pink to the flowers

I had seen a quote around that really spoke to me and seemed perfect for the "water under the bridge" prompt - here's where things didn't happen as expected. My lettering size was much larger than I'd intended and while I love the quote, it takes up most of my left page!

Forgot to take a proper progress shot, so just imagine the lettering without the stamping touches...While I think what to do now, I know I still want to make a tag so I cut the shape from that original piece of watercolour paper and grunged up the edge with a purple staz-on ink pad, and added some glittery corner stickers.

I have a heart leftover from another project which fits well on here, and some fibres for the bottom

I add interest to my backgrounds with various stamps and inks

There is no room for a transparent envelope, unfortunately, but I have a place for my tag and stitch it into place as I outline stitch both pages - I use 3 lines of "messy" stitching.

This is what the page looks like beneath the tag. I used the butterflies to symbolise rising above past mistakes.

Ready to glue my pages in - I added some doodles to the actual journal pages to frame the watercolours

and disguise the bit of discordant colour at the top of the original journal page (see it on the photo where I was testing the watercolour directly in the journal). Needed a little more embellishment on the tag too

And then the spread was done :-) Click on the photo to enjoy it larger

You can see all my posts about my Documented Life Project HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my DLP 2015 spreads HERE. You can also go HERE to see all of Gina Lee Kim's Flickr albums.

Happy Easter

Hope you are having a lovely long weekend. Today we started with toasted hot cross buns for breakfast before the boys started on their chocolate eggs, then I made some Easter cookies : recipe here.

Especially enjoyed using my grandmother's piping set -1950s from the look of the box :-)

...although I think snipping the corner off a plastic bag may have been easier on the hands!
Had lunch with extended family at the Ashhurst Domain and a lovely bushwalk.

Daylight Savings finished for us in New Zealand this morning. It is officially Autumn but we are enjoying the lovely late Summer weather for as long as we can. Happy holiday.

Week 13 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE Documented Life Project is HERE. Lucky 13....I have been keeping a note of the weekly challenges at the front of my Dylusions journal, and this challenge signals that we are quarter of the way through our 52 week year!

I decided that I would like to carve a new stamp to fulfill the "create a custom element" part of the challenge. I had thought a peacock feather would be lovely, but it turned out to be a little more "tribal" than I expected

I love how it turned out though. The piece along the bottom can be used as a border stamp. I decided I would gather other stamps I have carved in the past that also had stripey or feathery elements :

These stamps inspired the evolution of the page, starting with the base colours (the colours are much brighter than this as you will see as you scroll further down)

I'm thinking tribal will be organge/yellow - probably some red - and definitely some strong black lines. Next up is the base of that new stamp to define the journaling space

and I added another border with my other more curvy lined stamp to the other other edge of the spread

Then I decided to add red through a stencil - the tag is paint through the stencil, left on the page is moving the wet paint with the sponge onto the page, while the top is cleaning off the stencil with a wet wipe

Left the page there and tonight I was feeling really tired. At 9pm, my husband asked what I wanted to do - when I said I wanted to go back to my journal spread but was too tired, he told me to just go out and start...sure enough - once started, my enthusiasm generated my energy and there was no stopping until I'd finished :-)
I had been thinking about a unique spirit being a person, but thought I was too tired to make a good job of a drawing, so I grabbed my face stencil that I had made and used in Week 2 of DLP - you may remember her :  

This time I turned the stencil over to face the other way, and instead of spray paint, I used a cosmetic sponge to detail the face with acrylics, and then sponged in the hair.

Click on any photo to see it larger

She looks quite different doesn't she? Now I had to turn her into my tribal spirit by adding a headband and my custom element and feather stamps in gold. She needed curly hair so that was doodled with a metallic pen

I used the leftover wet paint to stamp these elements again in my background

At this point I decided that I was going to cast the tag idea aside and instead use my "believe" stamp directly on the page

It needed some doodling to make it more "tribal"

I decided to add the quote from the art prompt this week since it informs my word

Just a few more stamps and doodles and my spread is complete. Click on the photo to see it larger.

It's now pretty close to 11pm, and I have spent 2 hours creating art happily, photographing my process, and sharing it with you - that's much better than sitting in front of a screen telling myself I'm too tired! Next week we'll be onto a new monthly theme....can't wait to see what new challenges await.
You can see all my posts about this project HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE.