Flowers in her Hair

 It's time for my monthly contribution as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products, and this month I'm working with the Stencilgirl May Club stencils as the main focal point. This face (designed by Pam Carriker) is a stunning stencil, with amazing detail. The wild hair made me think of the psychedelic sixties (of the last century) and I took that as my theme for the spread in an A4 Dylusions art journal.

You can find a full step-by-step tutorial for these pages on the Stencilgirl Talk site today, together with a list of the stencils I used. I also added Hero Arts Layered Flowers Clear stamp set (CL496) for the flowers. But don't get hung up on the specific stamps, just use any flower stamps you have, but make sure you use a variety of sizes to make it more interesting.

 As you can tell from the picture below there is quite a bit of dimension on these pages. I used Golden Glass Bead Gel, simply because it was the first thing I laid my hands on when I wanted to added a bit of depth, but you could use any thick paste or gel for this step. However using the Bead Gel means you get that additional sparkle!

Many thanks to Stencilgirl for having faith in me and my work!

More Artmarks pages

geometric

 As it's a wet and miserable day outside I thought I would brighten it up with more pages for the #artmarks30daychallenge, organized by Rae Missigman. I am producing one page daily in a very small (3.5 x 5.5) journal following this challenge on Instagram. I have shown you the first 3 here and today it is time for the next four. I'm not telling you much about how they were done as I'm throwing stuff onto the pages so quickly that I no longer have  any idea on how the end result was achieved. All I can tell you is that most of the stencils I used came from Stencilgirl Products. 

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ruled

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Rape Field in the Rain

The Colour of Sea, Sun and Sand

Our monthly prompt on Wanderlust 2017 was to finish the following sentence: This morning was in the colour of .................. Inspired by my longing for the sea and the warm days earlier this month I added the words: sea, sun and sand. I wish the sea was a bit closer, the sun was out more often and I would love to feel the sand between my toes. Perhaps just looking at this spread will help.

I'm working in a Finnabair Mixed Media Journal sized 7 x 9". As you can see it's ring bound.

The background was collaged with a variety of tissue wrap, and I then used bright sunny colours and stencil L570 Crazy Quilt Crosses and Rounds by Stencilgirl Products to make the background. I added more texture by rubber stamping with the Stitched Mixed Media Background stamp from Carabelle Studio.

The imagery, all coming from the Flow Vakantieboek (Flow Vacation Book), was summer themed too, showing the lounger and toes. The sun itself came from the smallest stencil from the July 2017 Stencilgirl Club and was done with gold paste.

The words were cobbled together from magazine. I finished by outlining all the imagery and words with a black Stabilo All pencil.

Bullet List

The latest prompt this week on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was to do something with a Bullet List. This follows in the wake of a bullet journaling (BuJo for short) movement everywhere I look, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I seem to have been in the vanguard of this phenomenon, as I have done it as long as I have kept diaries, and that's many more years than I care to remember. 

Still, I'm interested in how it is done now and avidly read all about it but I'm not going to indulge in buying special BuJo journals, nor will I change the way I work. All my lists as well as my appointments diary and my written journaling about the day come together in my planner. This year I'm using The Quilter's Planner 2017 which I love because there is lots of room for every day. My only grumble is that the week starts on Sunday in this planner, whereas I like to finish my week there. No doubt I will eventually get used to it but we're already half way through the year, and it continues to be a bug bear. 

I followed the brief and made a bullet list of things I love. By request I left one item of the list (guess??!!) but you can see the rest of the list above and it is in no particular order. I knew however that Flora had to be next to the red heart. The hearts are all from a sticker sheet and the text was done on a Dymo writer.

The background was made with a wide selection of paints. I had fun using the brightest,  most summery colours I could find. They were combined with stencilling using stencils L541 Mandala Floral and M103 Bittersweet Mini stencils, both from Stencilgirl Products. I also collaged with vintage texts.

I was working on the pages for the #artmarks30daychallenge  (see yesterday's post) at the same time as this spread and that definitely influenced the way I worked here. The pages reflect my love list.

#artmarks30daychallenge

dense

There are always fun challenge to be add on Instagram and all too often I simply can't resist. Here are 3 little pages in a tiny (to me) art journal, sized 3.5 x 5.5". It's in fact a notebook but I have prepared it by glueing alternative pages together and added heavy gesso as the bottom layer on every page. The art challenge has the hashtag #artmarks30daychallenge and is organized by Rae Missigman. She is also one of the teachers in a lovely online class to make a mini journal just for the mark making challenge. I have bought the class but at the moment there wasn't the opportunity to make it in time for the challenge, hence the little notebook.

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I am also not aiming to do these challenges in 30 days, but at the moment I am managing to keep up.

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I did so many different things on the pages that it's impossible to let you know, mainly because I have already forgotten what I did. There is collage, stencilling, rubber stamping, vintage imagery, mark making and a lot more. I'll only show you some of the pages here with the prompt underneath. You can find the rest on my Instagram feed in due course.

Dog walk in the forest

Foxglove

Reflections in the fire pond

Flora having a drink