FlowerFriday

 

The Beginning of Always

I will not be sorry to say goodbye to the June theme on The Documented Life Project 2016 that was: Unravelling the Past - embracing new beginnings. It hit much too close to the bone, specially in the past week or so. I was pretty determined not to make another dark and depressing spread. So I dug around for a more uplifting quotation to use for these pages done in the 8 x 8" Dylusions art journal. I came up with Dante's one: "Remember tonight .....for it is the beginning of always".  

Here is the full text:

"Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always. A promise, like a reward for persisting through life so long alone. A belief in each other and the possibility of love. A decision to ignore, simply rise above the pain of the past. A covenant, which at once binds two souls and yet severs prior ties. A celebration of the chance taken and the challenge that lies ahead. For two will always be stronger than one, like a team braced against the tempest civil world. And love will always be the guiding force in our lives. For tonight is mere formality. Only an announcement to the world of the feelings long held. Promises made long ago. In the sacred spaces of our hearts" - Dante Alighieri

Wise words and still they too are very unnervingly applicable to the present situation. Our art challenge was to use watercolour. And I did, honestly! Only I completely forgot about that bit till the very end so the only watercolour used is the pink around the white circles and the pink lines at top middle.

There is collage underneath the paint, mainly consisting of vintage maps of France (that was no accident!) as well as the left over bits of tissue wrap (by Tim Holtz) that were fluttering on my work table. I stamped on the black dots and then started with the paint and the L402 Floral 2 stencil from Stencilgirl. The circles and the oxo come from the April 2016 Stencilgirl Club large stencil.

The image of the embracing couple is from a rubber stamp that I think I bought from Lenna when she moved from Connecticut to Florida and had a stamp sale.I would tell you who made it but I seem to have lost it temporarily in the chaos of my studio. I stamped it onto copy paper and then collaged it on and integrated it into the page with paint. There is a lot of fluorescent paint on these pages and they don't photograph too well but this is a very bright and happy looking spread. I'm aiming to reach the same result for my mind set.

Passionate about Art

Wanderlust 2016 provides us with 2 prompts each month for our "Wanderlust Book". In my case that book is a Vintage Vanity Art Journal in which each page is sized 5 x 7". It has those large rings to bind it. I mentioned here before that at first I couldn't get to grips with either the small size or those rings but I have since changed my mind. I love how those rings are starting to look now that they are covered with paint and the small size seems to encourage me to experiment more.

The first prompt for June was: "What I am passionate about". Not a question I had to think too long about because of course I'm passionate about my art. And all art.

So I grabbed some paints as well as some Stencilgirl stencils (S376 Hash marks and S372 Brick Factory) and  and started to play. I added Tim Holtz tissue wrap to the mix as well as some pieces of one of my underpapers.

I also used rubber stamps. The big art word comes from a stamp from ARTspecially, whereas the "I am my art" was found on an old stamp sheet produced by Lenna Andrews, back in the days! I'm not quite sure were the Ars Longa Vita Brevis originated. The heart came from a paper napkin.

As per usual I went mad with the various layers and I love the end result. And I'm also loving the way this little art journal is starting to look now that the pages are filling up. I have already done the spread for the next June prompt and I hope to share it with you very soon.

It's a good complaint to have but I'm having trouble keeping up with the art I'm making here on the blog.

Creativity

The Documented Life Project 2016 had one more week to go of the February theme: Love without Hesitation - taking the leap, while the art challenge for this week was to: add a tiny photo or magazine picture. Somehow I got a bit confused and also had the Add Circles from Colour Me Positive still in my head so circles it was once again.

The background was done with acrylic paint  ( I used my recently acquired Sennelier Abstracts) and The Crafter's Workshop stencil  TCW491. To this I added the ruffled shapes from papers out of my stash (I think it originally came from the magazine Mollie Makes) and on top of the large ones I added circles cut from my own art, printed by Social Print Studio.

The same place also printed the picture of my work desk (in an unusually tidy state).

I managed to get the leap bit of the theme onto the pages in the shape of a rubber stamp (from a rubber stamp set designed by Lenna Andrews). Other rubber stamps (from Invoke Arts and Donna Downey) were also added to the spread.

The pages were enhanced with some gold mica powder which I just about managed to capture on some of the photographs. Then I glued on the quotation by Maya Angelou: "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have". 

Le Rouge

I'm continuing to make spreads for The Documented Life Project 2016 in my 8 x 8" Dylusions journal. I want to try and keep up as much as possible as long as I can find pockets of time to do so. I haven't made any resolutions for this year but as the weeks are passing I'm beginning to feel that 2016 is the year in which I want to learn as much as possible about art journalling and I detect my own desire to have a paintbrush in my hand as well as a needle (although not at the same time!).

The January theme for The Documented Life Project 2016 remains: Go our on a limb and try something new. Our prompt this week is: Use text from a flyer or magazine.

I did something new by using Catalyst tools to add the paint to the background and discovered I enjoyed that very much. The other new thing I tried was to use glitter pens for outlining. They give a subtle sparkle to the pages (lost entirely on the pictures, alas). Inspired by my friend Lenna I also wanted to use some glimmering Javana paint. The turquoise colour pot I grabbed was very old (perhaps more than 20 years) but after a lot of very vigorous shaking it proved to be fine. Now I want more of them!

I used 3 Stencilgirl stencils to make the background: the large stencil from the January 2015 club, the Timeless stencil designed by Seth Apter and the Entangling Threads one by Terri Stegmiller. The background ended up being mainly pink and red with some turquoise and blue thrown in for good measure. I remembered I had a reddish image (from a fashion magazine) in my box of cuttings and was surprised to find that she was holding on to s scull. It must be my week of working with them!

The required text from a magazine is a quote from the book A Room with View by E.M. Forster. It reads:
"It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal".  We all have our memories of those whom we have loved and they are surprisingly strong, specially when we discover they have died.

I found the Seek Le Rouge words, also from magazines. That left a large empty place on the left hand page and I couldn't help myself. It simply had to be filled by postage stamps in matching colours. A few of the stamps also have meaning connected to the quotation, at least for me.

I am already in love with the 8 x 8" journal and the work I have done in it so far. I always feel guilty when I like my own work. I know that is ridiculous and wrong and I'm trying to get over it but secretly I leaf through my art journals when I need cheering up. It works!

Amitié Page

A new week brings a new challenge on The Documented Life 2015 (DLP15) site. It's still January so the theme is still about facing the blank page. The art challenge is: Writing and the Journal Prompt: Words with Friends. 

It's never difficult for me to use words (and the writing is hidden under the photograph)  but I had to think a bit about the friends part of it. Eventually I rummaged through my stash of gelli plate printed papers and retrieved one that I made while Lenna was here back in September when we spend a morning playing in my painting shed. Keeping that in mind I did some more searching and found the photo album Lenna had send me after she returned to Florida with photographs she had taken while here and found one of me taking photographs when we visited Dawyck Botanical Gardens on the first day Lenna was here.

All this came together but it needed a bit more so I used rubber stamps (from Dylusions) to add the swirls in the background. They were coloured in with my new Tomboy Brush Pens and I also outlined things with white and black markers. For the writing (words) I added the definition of the word friendship in French (amitié) from a vintage dictionary and glued that on too. More words came from a washi tape featuring vintage text, which I brushed with red). I will also use the same washi tape to add this page to the planner I'm using this year: Michel Designs Country Diary 2015. That planner also dictates the size of my pages this year. They are 7.1/4 x 8".

Don't Fear the Trees Journal Quilt

It's always quite hard to get back into the swing of things after an exhibition but in this case I was helped by the fact that a new theme for October was announced on the Sketchbook Challenge site not long before the show was over. This meant I could start thinking about what I wanted to do for that theme which was Trees. In fact last month's Journal Quilt would also have covered that theme but I wanted to do something completely different for this month both in execution and colour.

Photo taken by Lenna Andrews

I then remembered this photograph taken by Lenna when she was here, during our visit to Jupiter Artland. John and I had been several times before but had never noticed that we had missed out on seeing one particular piece of art. Lenna did notice and we then hunted it out. She deserves all the credit for discovering where to get to it. The art is called Coppice Wood and is by Andy Goldsworthy. It consists of: "Limbs coppiced from Badger Wood suspended together in a room". A very dark room! Above you can see how I ventured inside where it was almost impossible to see anything. A strange sensation although not a bad one.

I set to interpreting this in fabric. I used a autumn coloured fabric with leaves, for the background fabric which was layered up with a transparent fabric, also with leaves and machine stitched in straight lines with a variety of threads. Then I made the trees for the background using a dark coloured batik fabric which was layered with wadding and hand stitched, then cut to strips and machine appliquéd onto the background. The large tree in the foreground was also made separately using another batik fabric and a hand dyed turban cotton, layered with wadding and seed stitched by hand. I also added gold foiling. This piece was made into a tube and stuffed with filler. I needed someone in among the trees,  and although I thought about adding myself I decided I wanted to see more of the person I put in there. So I used an image from a Alphastamps collage sheet.

You can see just how 3 dimensional the large tree is above.  The title of the piece comes from a quotation by Richelle E. Goodrich. It reads as follows: "Life is a walk through the forest. Don't fear the trees; fear what lurks behind them".

The final step was to go back to the transparent fabric with the leaves, add Bondaweb to the back and cut out individual leaves and add them to the journal quilt and  then hand stitch the veins. And there you have my contribution for this monthe. Unusually dark for me but it still has sparkle!

Fungi Hunting in Dawyck

It seemed like ages since I had a walk in the fresh autumn air and in fact the last time was when Lenna was here and that's already 2 weeks ago. So today we went to Dawyck to admire the autumn colours as well as to hunt for fungi pictures. There was plenty of both to be found. 

This was the richest treasure trove of fungi, all located around the base of one tree. I'm almost completely ignorant about fungi and have no idea what these are called but they were really beauties.

 Specially this grouping seen above.

 These were a bit pale for my taste but I love that cinnamon splattering on top.

Even in those two weeks since the last visit more and more trees have started to turn or have turned colour completely due to the much colder nights we're having.

 I know I have photographed scenes like the one above many times before but that is because I just can't get enough of that beautiful laciness woods get when the tops of the trees reach for the sky and the leaves seem to concentrate at the top, leaving the lower halves almost bare. Throw in a bit of bright colour and I'm even happier with the resulting photographs.

 The rowan trees are full of berries.

And there is a wonderful mix of green and rich yellow, orange and brown about. Autumn is definitely here in all it's glory.

Splatters and Drips Page

I'm quite amazed that I managed to produce my page for The Documented Life Project this week. It helped that the theme this week (no. 39) was Splatters and Drips. And the fact that Lenna wanted to play in my painting shed yesterday was also an incentive to start spattering and dripping.

We played with my collection of gelli plates and above you can see Lenna having fun. I did the same and used a collection of stencils from the Stencilgirl Club on my gelli plate together with acrylic paints. Below are some of the results.

This morning I cut up one of the pages to the size of the Moleskine planner I'm using for The Documented Life Project (4.3/4" x 8"). I knew which one to cut up as it had to tone in with a marvellous quotation I discovered in one of the Sunday papers this weekend. It's from Lady GaGa and reads: "Just trying to change the world one sequin at a time". I couldn't have put it any better myself!

I then went to work with pens, markers and watercolour brushes to further adorn the page. I outlined some of the spatters I made. They were produced by using watered down Lumiere metallic paints. I also used some orange mica spray paints for the dripping part of the challenge as seen below.

I couldn't resist another quotation (from Shakespeare) close to my heart: "I'll give my jewels for a set of beads".

Sadly Lenna left this morning and we made our way to Edinburgh airport at 6am this morning. Her flight left just after 9am and she is now on her way on the British Airways shuttle to Gatwick airport where she has just over an hour to kill before her flight to Tampa, Florida leaves. She will arrive there late afternoon their time so a very long day for her. I will probably make my way to the 52 Journals exhibition later on today after I have woken up properly with the aid of a couple of double espressos!

Update on the phone/broadband: please don't phone our landline as the problems continue and so does the number of different engineers that visit us. Our broadband through the phone comes and goes at intermittent intervals but incoming calls tend to have a very detrimental effect. If you need me, please use e-mail and I will endeavour to get back to you, mostly on the same day!

 

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Drive in the Scottish Borders

Finally we had a wonderfully sunny day to show Lenna that the mist and haar occasionally lift here in the Scottish Borders and when it does that most beautiful land emerges in all her glory. This morning we spend arting together in my painting shed playing with my gelli plates and while Lenna did her own thing I made a piece for The Documented Life Project of which you will see more, probably tomorrow. After lunch in the nearby Whitmuir organic farm we set off on a round trip starting at Talla Reservoir, where this Victorian little building can be found.

As you can tell there was hardly any wind and the reflections were just picture perfect.

Endless pictures were taken, specially by Lenna but I too couldn't help myself and kept pressing that button. I think I have never seen Talla look better!

Sonetimes just capturing the reflections in the water produced a mysterious looking image, as seen above.

Just how perfect can it get? Well, I think the above image provides a pretty comprehensive answer.

And it wasn't lost on any of us!

After Talla we made our way along Megget Reservoir to end up at Tillie Shiels Inn on the edge of St Mary's Loch where we enjoyed a cup of tea sitting in the sunshine and where I could not resist sitting on the above little jetty with my legs dangling in the water. Sometimes the simple pleasures in life are the very best!

Here too the reflections were stunning with a bit more of a gentle ripple in the water.

And lots of fresh green was still on show.

It was the perfect way to spend what sadly will be Lenna's last day here in Scotland. She is departing tomorrow morning to return to Florida via Gatwick. I was so pleased we had such a beautiful weather day for the occasion.

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