Holiday Inspirations

I'm in the middle of 2 weeks of school holidays {kermit flail}. I'm not blogging as much as I used to, but I'm still creative and sharing at least weekly on my Facebook and Instagram, and I thought I'd like to do a mid-holiday check-in. Although we are heading into Autumn we have been blessed with blue skies (the photo above was taken today) and continuing warm temperatures. I am lucky that I've got extended family who live within an hour's drive and we spent much of Easter and ANZAC day with various lovely people. We've also had a couple of mini breaks away from home with a day in Wellington and an overnighter in Taupo. 

There has also been some time to make art. I'll share my finished April journal and this month's Journal 52 prompts soon

When I started this journal I did some gatherings

so I was especially interested to read Laly Mille's recent post about creating bundles of inspiration which reinforces my thoughts about why gatherings before a project are important and how they can seed more ideas. These are some of Laly's bundles : 

It's no secret that I adore Fodder School and this month's lessons are with Sarah Gardner. She is a fabulously inspiring teacher. Go and check out her tag book tutorial on Youtube or in her Stencil girl post. 

See her post about this month's fodder school lessons HERE. I've been paint swatching and creating micro-fodder.

I'll share more about my fodder project this month in another post soon. You can still join us.

All that swatching got me thinking about colour again and I've got Kellee Wynne Conrad's book out of the library. Lots of good stuff in there about how to mix vibrant variations from limited colours.

And in that lovely way this leads to that : Kellee and others are advertising this year's Virtual Art Summit from 2nd May.

You can register HERE and then you'll get notified on May 2nd to either use pay-what-you-can or buy the course at the forever price of $95. Interesting to investigate a mix of artists I already know and love plus some new to me. We'll see if I have time since this is after holidays....

I've never been very interested in podcasts, but the other day, while swatching, I listened to my first by Wendy Solganik - one of the creators of Fodder School - aka Willa Wanders

A very appropriate title for many of us in Fodder school, but what I was most excited to hear was that she said Fodder School won't end and they are already planning for the next session! I was additionally excited to get an email from her today announcing that there will be another Free Fodder Challenge for 2022 from July 5-13. 

I'll share more when I know more. You can sign up for Willa's newsletter HERE and get the Surrender Pocket instructions and her Mixed Media Tags online class as a free gift! She's so inspiring to me. 

And another Fodder School instructor who always inspires is Megan Whisner Quinlan. That link is to her instagram, but you might also enjoy her YouTube channel and her projects that appear regularly on the Ranger Ink blog.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the inspiration that's available, but mostly I just feel so very lucky. Now get off the computer and go make something!

March monthly journal and welcome April

Time to share my completed March monthly journal.

 I so enjoyed creating in this one and being inspired by Fodder school lessons once more.

Our fodder school teacher for March has been Rebecca Chapman and I remembered the stickers which I made in August last year during the free fodder challenge. Rebecca's got that lesson on YouTube now for you to enjoy. 

So cool that I found a way to use those outside pieces. You never know where fodder will work!

Each weekend, I try and do the spread for the week ahead. Sometimes I'm stumped for inspiration.  If in doubt, stencil is always my answer! I had some lovely Gecko stickers from some books purchased at work that week and that led me to add some other stickers that have been languishing for years in a drawer. So happy to use what I have.

I include my Journal 52 art in these monthly journals. See my previous post for detail about these pieces. Below left is a flip out inside the front cover

View when open

And inside the back cover which flips open to reveal the journal blocks further above

I really love including my art in my journals, but was trying to think of how to break it up a bit...the obvious solution (that I can't believe I didn't think of sooner!) is that I don't need to stitch my pages together the same way each time. January to March have extra flip-out pages inside the covers because of the formula I saw in the original daily creative practice journals which inspired me, but April and May are going to be different - I am sooo excited by this 💜 This is one of the joys of working in a series - new discoveries.

I've chosen Yellow for April - Easter, school holidays, and Autumn colour. I decided to take a photo of some blooms still on my Graham Thomas rose to include on my cover. It still mostly feels like summer with gorgeous sunny days. 

And I've started the first spread inside - keeping it simple. I may add more later. Daylight Savings ended here last night, a sure sign that Autumn is on its way.

See all my posts about this project HERE.

Journal 52 in March

I'm responding to Effy Wild's Journal 52 cards for 2022 on various small cards or tags that can become part of my monthly journal project. My rules : each small piece will include stitch, a found word, and be inspired by the project I've been working on that week or what's lying leftover on my work table. Each monthly journal is colour themed.

Week 9 : Spring. As you may have read in my post at the beginning of the month, I've been feeling a bit disconnected from northern hemisphere artists all looking forward to Spring. Instead I created a memory of Summer featuring a photo from my childhood and fodder school bits from December, January and February.

Week 10 : Sovereign. That week I was playing with alcohol ink printing on the gelli plate. I took a couple of my off cuts and put them together with masking tape for my base this week before I got the prompt. Then - can you see her? 

Week 11 : Prosper. "What's lying leftover on my work table" was the bottom layer which is my under paper

Week 12 : Reverie. Inspired to create a pocketed tag like my recently finished book. I cut the small tag from the leftovers of my book cover, and the large tag from some gorgeous gelli printed gold and orange card that I thought complemented the smaller tag. A hint at Autumn colours.

Week 13 : Wonder. 

I adore Butterflies and I was inspired by new tissue supplies on my work table this week purchased from Ribbon Rose - very excited about what they have on offer. $5 postage and arrived at my door only 2 days after ordered. 

I share these Journal 52 responses weekly on my Instagram.You can get access to the prompts by joining Effy's Wilderhood group on FB or subscribe to her newsletter. See all my posts about this project here. I'll be posting soon about how they appear in my March monthly journal.