Capture the Moment

The prompt for last week on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was to feature something you either love or hate. As it was also Valentine's Day during the week I went with something I love and that is photography. The background was done with a heart stencil from The Crafters' Workshop combined with collage of a paper napkin that had hearts all over it. I added rubber stamping using a set of stamps from the Vintage Photography stamp set by Creative Expressions. The man and camera were stamped onto vintage paper and then glued on while the other stamps (text and film strip) were stamped straight onto the background.

I then glued on some preview film strips as you used to get when you had your film developed. They feature flowers in colours matching the spread.

In fact, when I looked at the finished pages, it reminded me of our theme last week in which I used the lyrics to Those were the Days by Mary Hopkin. Those were indeed the days when you had to have your film developed and received the negatives in the shape of a film strip. It brings it home when such nostalgia happened within your lifetime. The text at the top was cut from a pack of pictures developed by Kodak and the slogan Make the most of your Memories resonated with this spread, done in an A5 art journal.

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.

Opening Wide

This week's prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was: opening. The interpretation was left entirely to everyone individually. I like such prompts as it gives me a reason to start some research on suitable quotations and I was very lucky to find the one I used that reads: "By opening wide the doors of our hearts, we can broaden our horizons". 

The entire spread (in a small 6 x 8" journal) emerged from those words. First of all I made a horizon. Below it is water and the background for that was made with various blue paints, some blue marbled paper, and stencil S107 Zen Landscape stencil by Stencilgirl Products.  I also used some rubber stamping.  The sky was done with pastel acrylic paints and gelatos.

I wanted to have a heart on the page to relate to the quotation and I wanted that heart to open. I used a previously gelli plate printed piece of paper to cut the heart out from, and then adhered it to the pages using pieces of turquoise washi tape as hinges (see above). I wrote some more words inside also relating to opening.

The quotation itself was printed out onto white paper using the computer, and glued on (with a glue stick) and the words were outlined with a black Stabilo All pencil. I added blue to the edges of the heart as well as the pages with an ink pad.

I rather like how this one turned out and how the words gave me the inspiration for the entire look of the pages.

Celebrating the Marvellous

The new prompt on Colour Me Positive is announced on Friday mornings here in the UK but as I went to the Surreal exhibition that day I didn't see it till I returned home and to my dismay it was: Celebration.The art challenge was to write what we are grateful for today.  I must admit to feeling more like a wake than a celebration but after some thought I realized that there is always much in life that can be celebrated regardless of politics and the like, such as beauty, friendship, love, art and flowers. So I decided to use one piece hanging in the Surreal exhibition as my inspiration. 

This piece called Collage by Eduardo Paolozzi (from the Gallery's own collection) was made back in the fifties and contains things as entry tickets, cuttings from papers etc. as well as much glorious mark making. 

So I too started by collaging on my pages using the receipts for my entrance (and discovered that the ink on them is not permanent!), my entrance ticket itself, pieces of a paper bag with a red heart on it, a label send to me by a friend, pieces from a French encyclopaedia, an Italian phrase from a magazine, some scrapbooking paper with black dots and a vintage music sheet, as well as bits from my underpaper, including a piece on which I had tried out a face stamp. I also added pages from this year's Flow magazine calendar.

The next step was add a flower stamp in various places and  to add colour by painting. Then I did my own mark making using the smaller stencils from our June Stencilgirl Club. And the tear shaped image seemed specially appropriate. 

I wanted the page to be about my own feelings as it should be in an art journal so although I celebrated the marvellous (as per Andre Breton, see my precious post here) I also wanted it to be about the date that will now go down in history as the day the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. That is why I included the French and Italian text and why I also decided to enter the day (24/6) on the pages using the numbers on one of the December 2015 Club stencils. It was also stamped on my entrace ticket.

I wonder how I will look back on this spread and the day that it commemorates in the future. At the moment the after shocks are battering the country and that will continue for quite some time to come I'm guessing. What the future will bring remains a mystery.

However the pages will also remind me that there is much to be grateful for and to celebrate. 

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.

Your Heart and Soul

It's a Bank Holiday here in the UK today and of course that means it's wet and windy although with an occasional glimpse of the sun, Just as well I have loads to do in the studio. This is my contribution for week 18 of Colour Me Positive. Our prompt for this week was: Healing, and the art challenge to use a heart or hearts on your pages. 

This spread was done in my A4 Dylusions art journal and I started with a gessoed background to which I added acrylic paints and then removed some of it again using a babywipe and a stencil featuring different sizes of hearts. I was aiming for soft, dreamlike colours.

I then grabbed a doily and sprayed through it with a pink Dylusions ink spray. After that I had to be a bit more careful as these sprays are water soluble and in fact using any wet medium on top of them will make them move. I added the XOXO stencil (from the April 2016 Stencilgirl Club)  in the background.

I had just this week cut out the woman in the lovely rose dress from one of the Sunday paper supplements and she was just what I wanted for the page.  I gave her a large blue heart.

The heart shape came from a heart I bought for £1 at the Knitting & Stitching Show on Saturday just for this very purpose. It's thin wood and I used it to mark out the heart shape on a vintage book page. I cut it out and collaged it to the page.

I found a quotation that resonated with the theme of Healing. it reads: "One of the most courageous decisions you'll ever make, is to finally let go of what is hurting your heart and soul". by Brigitte Nicole. I printed it out onto vintage paper and glued that on as shown, antiquing it more with a black Stabilo All pencil and gold embossing paste.

The final touch was the postage stamp featuring a horse running free.

Go with all your Heart

It's a sparkling day outside with plenty of snow on the ground and with the sun high in the sky. It was a joy to walk the dog this morning even though it was very cold. The sunshine has managed to find it's way onto my journal pages too.

This spread was made for Colour Me Positive in my large (A4) Dylusions art journal. Our prompt this week was: "wherever you go, go with all your heart", and the art challenge: to collage one (or two or three) things onto your spread. I started with my sunshine background using the Scribble Scratch Handwriting stencil from Stencilgirl. I thought about the "going" aspect of the quotation as well as the heart one (hearts galore at the moment in all my online groups!) and found paper napkins with both the car image and another one with the small hearts and they were collaged on as shown.

I had to find someone to do the "going" and just a few days before I had received the perfect image to do this. I was super lucky to win one of the prizes at the Creative Jumpstart 2016 online course in the shape of Nathalie Kalbach's rubber stamp set Fashion Dame (produced by Stampendous). Nathalie is the organizer of Creative Jumpstart, a class I specially enjoyed this year as all the art was inspired by 4 great artists: Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, and Anselm Kiefer. The lessons can be downloaded to your own computer and although I have watched them all, I know I will return to them time and again.

The stamp is wonderful and very reminiscent of those books of paper dolls and their outfits I remember from my youth, so a lovely bit of nostalgia. She was positioned by the side of the car and dressed in an outfit made from my under paper (the paper I have on my worktable when I'm painting, to catch all the drips etc.).  The stamp package also had an additional stencil and I used that in the background too, with Dylusions spray ink.

The big hearts were drawn in and also filled with that under paper glued on (another bit of collage as per the challenge) and outlined with black and white markers. The text was stamped on using one of my many sets of alphabet stamps and another stamp reading: Journey of the Heart was added to the pages as well. Finally I added another mode of going or transportation in the shape of the postage stamp.