I have lost the Plot

We have reached the end of The Documented Life Project 2015 and are staying with the December theme of: Storytelling with the written word. Our last art challenge is: Storytelling, and the journalling prompt: storytelling as an underlying fabric.  I honestly had a vague sort of idea of where this might lead me but I was wrong! The spread took me by the hand and lead me nowhere.

It started well enough as I glued on two pages from a vintage book on the facing pages of my Dylusions journal. I covered the pages with watered down gesso and used paints and all the stencils from our December club by Stencilgirl. You might get a glimpse of some of that. But as it happens I wasn't very happy with the result so went over the entire spread with gesso again,  and then wiped some of it away again with a baby wipe.

I added a lot of rubberstamping with text stamps  to provided that "underlying fabric" of storytelling. One of the stamps I used is an absolute favourite, Romantic Text designed by France Papillon for Stampotique. The stamp itself tells a story and I love the cursive font.

What to do next? I opened my box of vintage images and picked up two I like very much and had wanted to use before but they never made it to the page. Do they tell a story? I was meant to be storytelling, after all! I came up with: frightened maiden rescued by Amazonian warrior princess. But in all honesty by this time I had lost the plot, so that became the story. It was: Destination Unknown.

This of course was pure serendipity and by wonderful synchronicity the definition of "serendipity" was staring me in the face on the back of the envelope in which my good friend Lenna send me her seasonal card. That was glued on as shown together with some Dutch postage stamps that matched the spread colour wise. I have no idea what part they play in the story!

I added the text using letters cut from a variety of magazines. The very elaborate ones come from Flow Magazine, a new favourite discovered during 2015. I am looking forward to reading it in 2016 too!

There are lots of new things happening in the way of online classes including the new 2016 edition of The Documented Life Project. It will be completely different from this year and it will now cost $12, which is a snip! That does however mean that I will be able to say less about the themes and lessons here because of copyright issues. However for that price you can oh so easily sign up yourself. The link is here.

I have loved working in my Dylusions journal this year and will be loath to leave it behind so whatever happens I will continue working in art journals. I have signed up for various other projects next year (they are in the sidebar on the right) and will be picking and mixing them all up, doing what I fancy and leaving those lessons that don't speak to me.  In a way I'm sort of making up my own year of art activities. So exciting.

The Book of Life

The December theme on The Documented Life Project 2015 is: story telling with the written word. Our art challenge this week is: Words Front and Center, and the journalling prompt: "Life is a book. We fill the page". Words are right up my street and I had a wonderful time putting as many of them as possible on the page. I used virtually all word stencils designed by Carolyn Dube for Stencilgirl although you only get little glimpses of them (mainly the Wall of Words one)  peeking through the many layers. I also added 4 different text stamps to the background. I wanted the background to look like a dilapidated and weathered poster board on which many posters had come and gone, leaving fragments behind. I literally scraped the paint across the pages.

I also collaged vintage text to the background from a variety of sources and then placed the main focal figure on the page. He comes from a painting by Watteau and is Pierrot although he was previously known as Gilles. He came from an old art book that is in pieces as I have removed so many images from it. As I was putting it away I noticed one of my old Ex Libris stickers (featuring my maiden name, now no longer visible, but it told me I have had that book for a very long time indeed) in the front and that seemed the perfect addition to make the spread more personal.

I started thinking of quotations I could use. The first one that came to mind is now written along Pierrot's side. I just love it. It reads: "Once you learn to read you will be forever free".  How very, very true. It's a quotation by Frederick Douglass, a African-American abolitionist and writer.

For the main focal point, however, I went for a quote by Charlie Brown: "In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back". As someone who is guilty of always turning to the last page of any book or magazine first this has real meaning for me! Some of the letters were stamped on and the main ones are stickers coming from Tim Holtz's Salvage Stickers Seasonal. I outlined them with a black marker.

For the final image I therefore turned to the above one, of two contented people who have almost reached that last page of life. It's an engraving from a vintage French book in my possession, dating back to the beginning of the 19th Century. I printed the image on vellum and if you are familiar with my work you will have seen it before. There is something about it that I deeply appreciate. The vellum proved temperamental to stick down so I used a washi tape with more lettering. And then couldn't resist adding it in other places on the spread too, and loo and behold, a fountain pen was part of that particular washi tape. It was meant to be.

And of course there had to be a postage stamp!

Peace Journal Quilt

Let's start by telling you that this last Journal Quilt I have made for this year is in no way a reflection of what is happening today in our Parliament, for either one side of the debate or the other. Our MPs (Members of Parliament) are voting later on today, on whether or not to send in war planes to bomb IS in Syria (we are already bombing in Iraq). It's pure chance that I'm uploading this quilt today. It was made back in October and in fact, the decision to use the word PEACE for December's Journal Quilt was taken back in January when I compiled a list of words I wanted to use on the 12 JQs for 2015.

That said, this is the final word quilt for this year. The journal quilts I made were all for a yearly challenge set by the Comtemporay Quilt Group who set the size for the quilts this year at 6 x 12". I decided to dedicate each one to a word and thus used a horizontal orientation for them all. There will be a new challenge for 2016 but the details haven't been revealed yet nor have I decided whether or not I will participate. But if you are interested you need to be a member of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles as well as of the Contemporary Quilt Group within that Guild.

Now for this particular journal quilt! It was made using bits of gelli plate printed (using stencils) fabrics that were raw edge appliquéd together and machine quilted. I added the circle which was made separately by putting snippets of transparent fabrics on a piece of background fabric, covering it with a transparent fabric and hand stitching the circle. It was machine appliquéd (using gold thread and a buttonhole stitch) onto the background and then beaded along the edges.

The letters for the word PEACE were cut from a sparkling, transparent fabric (with Bondaweb applied to the back). I used my Brother Scan'nCut machine to do this. They were machine stitched onto the background and also beaded as you can see on these detailed pictures. I used size 15 gold seed beads.

Finally I added my now usual signature in the form of size 11 seed beads around the edges of the binding. Sometime soon I will take a photograph of all the journal quilts I made this year.

Be Kind

The Documented Life Project 2015 is coming to a close. This is week 49 already, only another 3 challenges to go and my Dylusions Journal is nearing completion too. There will be a Documented Life Project 2016 but in a different form. I have signed up for it and this one won't be free but not to worry. It will cost a mere $12 so won't break the bank.  But I have caught the bug of working regularly in an art journal (2016 will be different in that respect) and for me that is the major benefit of this year's Project, as well as all those spreads I've made with much pleasure.

Our theme (set last Saturday) is still the November one of Stencils, Stamps & Masks, and the art challenge was to use all three. I must admit up front that I didn't use any masks. I had a flower one at the ready but when I had made most of the spread it simply didn't need anything else so I left it out! The journalling prompt was the quotation by Henry  James about the three things in human life that are important: Be kind, be kind and be kind.  Again I gave it my own interpretation which is to: Be Kind to Yourself.  This is sometimes so easy to forget but specially in this month of December it's very important not to lose sight of looking after yourself.

The background was made using acrylic paints and the large stencil from the August 2015 Stencilgirl Club. Then I used an image that has long been in my box of cuttings and magazine/book imagery. I have no idea where she originally came from but it looks like she could do with being kind to herself.

I added the flower image (from a 17th Century Dutch flower painting) and the owl. They are reputed to be wise creatures and I wrote the following words around him and the flowers:

"The only thing you need to do today is breathe. Everything else is optional".

This was taken from The Little Book of Daily Sunshine, by Clare Josa. I love opening it at random and taking a bite-sized inspiration for the day, specially when that day is very grey and soaking wet. 

I added rubber stamping in the shape of a text stamp designed by France Papillon for Stampotique. The letters for the title were cut from magazines. I dripped some acrylic inks down the page and at that stage the page looked complete. No need for flower masks or postage stamps this time. It's hard to explain why I come to such decisions. There is simply an inner voice that says: STOP. It's done. There is a feeling of completeness like the spread was always meant to look like this.

Write Your Own Story

 

The Documented Life Project 2015 is continuing with the November theme of: Stencils, Stamps and Masks. We are using Masks as our art challenge and "Mask"arade as the journalling prompt. I took my inspiration partly from a UnMasked themed sketchbook I did for the Sketchbook Project some years ago as well as a more recent one called Passioneyes.

Very conveniently just the right stencils arrived the day before I started this spread, as part of Stencilgirl Club. When you are a member of the Club there is another advantage every month. The designer of that month's stencils has a full tutorial in the form of a PDF or Video (or both!) specially for the members. November's stencils were designed by Seth Apter and I used his video as the base for this spread in my Dylusions journal. That means starting with a black gessoed background which was a new departure for me. Then I went to work adding textures following his instructions.

For my masks I used two images cut from magazines, one a face and the other a figure. Both were put onto the page and I then feathered out from them with white paint to make the outlines. They were then coloured in with Silk Glazes which meant the background could still be seen vaguely but the colour was a contrast to the rest of the pages and the white.

I knew I had some cards featuring a mask and one of those was glued on to the left of the spread. Inks in various colours were dripped down the pages to add some cohesion and I stamped on the words: "Don't hide behind a mask". For the text on the facing page I used one of Seth's stencils this month from the Club, reading: "Write Your Own Story".

I outlined with Stabilo All black pencil, a black marker as well as a white one and added the postage stamps. Sometimes I spend more times selecting the stamps than on the entire spread. I usually have an idea of what I want from the stamps but it isn't always easy to find suitable ones, and usually I have to compromise, but these came close!

 

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The Tapestry of Life

The November theme for The Documented Life Project 2015 remains: Stencils, Stamps & Masks. Our art challenge this week is to use: hand carved stamps, and the journalling prompt: Tapestries". Somewhere at the back of my mind I remembered a quotation about tapestry and life but it took a bit of dedicated searching to retrieve it. It comes from Sherrilyn Kenyon's book Kiss of the Night and reads:

"Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make".

The past few days have taught all of us that the warp and weft of our lives are also deeply affected by the decisions made by other people. All we can do in the face of this is to continue to live our own lives as best we can, making our own choices and walking our own paths. The rest is, and will always be, out of our hands. I consciously made the choice to apply happy, bright colours to represent my tapestry.

 

I used the Cornish Petals stencil from Stencilgirl to give that impression of a tapestry. Yellow, orange, pink and turquoise Dylusions paints provided the background colours. I added tissue paper (of leaves) and pieces of a paper napkin (featuring pansies). I did use hand carved stamps as per our challenge, although the hands that carved the stamps weren't mine! Instead I used some of my small wooden flower stamps that I have collected over the years.

 

The letters of the quotation come from a Letters Sticker Book (American Crafts). They were white and I outlined them with a permanent black marker.

 

Finally I added one of my favourite art elements: postage stamps. They were primarily chosen for their colour and size and as you can see include a set making up one of Vincent van Gogh/s self-portraits, and also a painting by Manet, whose work I love.

 

In case you're wondering (as I did) about Udmurtia (where the Van Gogh stamps were issued) it's a region in the Upper Volga area of the old USSR, where both Russian and Udmurt are spoken. I had never heard of it till I Googled it and chillingly it's the birthplace of the AK47 Kalashnikov rifle. It's also one of the few regions in the world where shamanism is still actively practised. Sometimes you discover links you had much rather remained ignorant off. Even this remote and probably highly dangerous place now seems to be on the tourist map. I did wonder how Vincent made his way onto their postage stamps!

 

 

Some of the rest of the stamps are purely random but I did manage to also incorporate a Dutch stamp of Queen Wilhelmina. I was still a child when she died but remember images of her funeral very well, with all the main mourners dressed in white. It's funny how such memories drift back just by looking at a postage stamp. It's one of the reasons why I love them so much.

 

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Uncertainty

The new theme for November for The Documented Life Project 2015 is one close to my heart: Stencils, Stamps and Masks. I don't need any encouragement to use these as they are present on virtually every spread in my Dylusions art journal. The art challenge this week is: Stencils, and the journalling prompt: "On the edge of uncertainty - what are you afraid of?". 

I looked up two quotations about UNCERTAINTY and liked them both so combined them in this spread. The first one is by Blair Pascal and reads as follows:

"We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end"

This made me think of waves and the background was based on that idea. The only stencil I used was one from the October Stencilclub that had big and large dots. I also used a handmade wavy edge stencil to make wave shapes towards the bottom of the pages. I used one of those lines to collage pieces of vintage maps along the edge. The quotation was written along this. To represent the drifting from end to end I used postage stamps with images of ships and planes. 

I also stamped the background randomly using a text stamp  called Life Consists (by Hampton Art Stamps) as the contents seemed appropriate to the subject of the other quotation I decided to use (by William Congreve):

"Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life"

One thing however is certain in life and that is that it ends and the text on the stamp refers to that. 

The focal point is a detail from a Vincent van Gogh painting called L'Arlesienne. Her serious expression seemed to me to tone in with the quotation. What is she afraid of? Probably much the same things we all are. Uncertainty is not something that sits well with many of us and yet, we have little or no control over what happens nex,t so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. A lesson I'm still learning!

I added black/white tape to the pages and the final touch was to drip acrylic ink in magenta on them as well as blue and turqouise. They served to link it all together and the magenta in particular added that extra infusion of colour I felt was needed. 

Just Create

The theme and challenges for The Documented Life Project 2015 are set on Saturdays and as last Saturday was the final day of October we are continuing with the October theme of translucent papers. The art challenge this week is: Teabags, dryer sheets, fibrous papers, and the journalling prompt: Just Created. I used fibrous papers (not having any of the other two options) and found a fibrous paper bag in which my Tibetan prayer flags had been wrapped as well as some other fibrous papers. The light blue bits have vanished on the finished pages, at least on the pictures (the texture is still there but not visible) but you can detect the darker turquoise paper I also used. As for the journalling prompt I dropped the D from the end and used the words as a personal encouragement. 

Stencils from the Stencilgirl Club June 2015 were used in the background as well as  the Entangling Threads one of which you can see a lot more on the finished spread. Because the fibrous paper bag I used (see above) featured a Buddhist temple I started looking for a focal point to match it and found it in the form of a meditating figure from a magazine. I used her to cut out a similar figure from a gelli plate printed paper as you can see below. 

 Rubber stamping was done with a variety of stamps, including the one about Creativity which reads:

Creativity is an endless journey where

we should always take the scenic route.

It comes from the Tim Holtz Collection. The CREATE words were stencilled on using the Now is the Time stencil  from Stencilgirl designed by Carolyn Dube and I then utilized her Vintage Typewriter Alphabet stencil  to add CREATE on top of the meditating figure. 

I did a lot of outlining using markers in a variety of colours as well as water soluble oil pastels and of course postage stamps! In an ideal world I would have liked to have 3 of the Czechoslovakia stamp but alas that wasn't to be. Instead they were balanced by the Spanish stamp on the right hand side, chosen merely for the colour.

The page has lots of sparkle but you will have to take my word for that as it isn't visible on the pictures.

Seeing the Light

I must plead guilty to not sticking very closely to the brief making this spread for The Documented Life Project 2015 . We are staying with our October theme of Translucent Papers. The art challenge this week is: glassine, and the journalling prompt: Windows in my Mind.  Partly this was because I had only one tiny envelope made of glassine to play with, and even though I used it (on top of the windows) it virtually disappeared from view once I had glued it on. It also  covers the word light but again this is almost impossible to see.

I used some Golden acrylics which had been put into the wrong drawer during the summer and I discovered them when moving all my art supplies indoors. It seemed only right to add them to this spread in my Dylusions journal as they hadn't been used all summer. I love the magenta especially. I used the stencils from this month's Stencilgirl Club in the background.  The main windows come from their Church Window stencil.

 In the background there are many vintage images some of which you can just about still see such as the vintage angel images. I added rubber stamping including the eye stamp (The All Seeing Eye - Ornamentum from The Uptown Design Company which doesn't seem to exist any more).

 Then I added the other collage elements (the woman and the mask). 

As soon as I read that the journalling prompt was: Windows in my Mind, I thought of the following quotation that inspired the entire spread:

The eyes are the mirror of the soul

and reflect everything that seems

to be hidden, and like a mirror

they also reflect the person

looking into them. 

(Paulo Coelho)

Of course I couldn'leave the page alone before I had added some postage stamps in matching colours.

Postage Stamp Flowers

It's so wonderful to be back as a Guest Designer for Stencilgirl. Many thanks to them for inviting me. You can find the step by step tutorial to make this spread (done in my Dylusions journal) on Stencilgirl Talk.

These pages are inspired by my love for postage stamps. I love the history that can be found on these tiny pieces of art, full of countries that no longer exists or have a different name nowadays, and commemorating events that most of us have long forgotten. My love for postage stamps began in my youth. One of my grandfathers had a large collection, all carefully mounted in albums. It was such a treat when he let me help with them.

The stamps I use in my art are in no way precious. I buy them in bulk but I also indulge by buying old postage stamp albums on Ebay just because! On almost every page of my art journal (as well as on many of my Journal Quilts) you will find at least one carefully chosen stamp.

And I love flowers too, so what could be better than to make postage flowers using the wonderful flowers shapes on Stencilgirl's stencil L281 (Bold Flower).

I loved the randomness of where every stamp ended up! The vintage text I added, on the other hand, was carefully chosen from lines cut from a vintage book. It reads:

 "the broad green meadow is jewelled with wild flowers, 

A truant flower of Eden, 

the ecstasy of being".