The Canvas Project

Sharing is part of art making and I have shown you several projects before that were part of The Sketchbook Project . Apart from sketchbooks this project also organizes other art events and The Canvas Project was one of these.

It was described as: "a visual encyclopedia compiled by creative people around the world, completed on mini canvases and crowd sourced by a global art community". What this means in fact was that you signed up, and were send a 4 x 4 canvas accompanied by a word. The task was to art on the canvas using that word as inspiration. Once finished the canvas is to be returned to the Brooklyn Art Library where it will be included in a book featuring all 2000 words. Afterwards each artist will receive another artist’s canvas back in a worldwide swap. That was the main attraction for me.

It sounded like fun and I signed up, not once but twice! Then I waited for my canvasses to arrive and discover what words would come my way. Sadly sign-ups are now closed (there were only 2000 word tickets available) but you could of course do the same by randomly opening a dictionary or encyclopedia with your eyes closed and put your finger down anywhere on the page and use that word as your starting point. 

I also used these 4 x 4" canvasses for my June project as guest designer for Stencilgirl® and that means you can find a step by step tutorial on the Stencilgirl®Talk website today where you will discover the two words I was given to use on my canvasses and how I interpreted them.

Boffo and Coxcomb anyone? It's going to be hard to part with this pair but as soon as this blog post is up today I'm going to pack up the two canvasses and send them off. Can't wait to hear where they will end up eventually. And of course which ones I will be receiving in return. I'll make sure to share them with you when they arrive!

The Witching Hour

It's a bit early but the prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures today was: Halloween. I'm not that keen but I love any excuse to throw in a skull into my artwork so that was what I did.  The skull itself was spray painted onto a newspaper page using stencil L253 Dia de los Muertos Mask by Stencilgirl Products with black spray ink (I used Liquitex).

The background started with painting the pages with black gesso. I then added pattern using Radiant Gel paints and stencils L456 Buenos Aires, L458 Toledo, both designed by Nathalie Kalbach, and the large stencil from the June 2017 Stencilgirl Club. The skull was glued to the pages (using matte medium) as shown and coloured in with water soluble oil pastels.

I found the three witches on a collage sheet (from Alpha Stamps) and they too were glued on (using a glue stick) as shown. The text was stamped onto vintage paper using a collection of alphabet stamp sets and added to the page.

Finally I spattered on some pink fluorescent paint.

A Fairy Tale or an Abyss

A new notebook/art journal was found (from Imagination Illustrated) just in time to do this spread for our prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week. Like the previous two I used for the Joggles prompts this one too is sized 5.3/4 x 8.1/4". I am using it as an art journal so I'm glueing pages together and start with a thick layer of gesso to make it all more sturdy.

Our prompt this week was to be inspired by mythology, fairy tales or folk stories. As you can see it had to be fairy tales for me and the image I used is from my favourite one: Sleeping Beauty.

The background was done entirely by using stencil L568 Crazy Quilts Bold and Beautiful by Stencilgirl Products. I added rubber stamping using a stamp set designed by Nathalie Kalbach, while the focal image, the circular sticker and the Once upon a Time text all came from Alpha Stamps.

The quotation is by Paulo Coelho and was stamped using a mixture of alphabet stamp sets unto vintage paper.

A Place called Elsewhere

 This week's prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures is: travel. My first impulse on reading it was to go to New York or Venice but there are so many other places I have been lucky enough to visit so this spread is focussing on Paris, mainly because I had a lovely paper napkin featuring the Eiffel Tower and was looking for an opportunity to use it. Of course you don even have to visit anywhere in person, you can go there any time you fancy in your mind and the quotation I used refers to it. It reads: "Forgive me for not being all there. My mind has found a place called elsewhere".

I'm working in a small (5.5 x 8") lined notebook/journal with peacocks on the cover and in order to make the pages a bit sturdier I'm glueing them together in pairs as well as applying a liberal helping of gesso before I start. The background uses the S374 Stone and Mortar Version 1 stencil by Stencilgirl Products. I also added words from S261 Fridge Poetry stencil.  I then collaged with Tim Holtz's tissue wrap Postale, as well as vintage map images and the paper napkin mentioned above. .

I added a tulip themed person from a collage sheet by Alpha Stamps and also added some travel related sayings from a rub-on sheet, also by Tim Holtz. The 2 postage stamps with ships on them seemed to suit the travel theme.

Sadly you can't see the sparkle these pages have on the pictures but I recently indulged in some wonderful new paint by  Art Alchemy (Prima) called Acrylic Paint Sparks and oh, how it glitters and shines! I used the colour Fairy Wings on these pages which is a lime green colour.

With all my Heart

To my delight the Colour Me Positive prompt for this week was: "art feeds the soul". It was set by MaryBeth Shaw, the owner of Stencilgirl Products. The art challenge was to put a bird on your pages.

This gave me the opportunity to celebrate the fact that I saw Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night with my own eyes during our visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) while in New York.

The background  of the spread was painted to reflect the sky in his painting. I then added text about art with a variety of rubber stamps. I had my own photograph of the painting printed and then distressed the edges and roughed up the picture to that it merged in better on the page, and could take some paint.

More details of other Van Gogh paintings were added on the left hand page. They are from the bottom to the top: The Yellow House, Cafe-Terrace at Night, and one of his sunflower paintings. Everything was integrated by stencilling with the smallest stencil from the July 2014 Stencilgirl Club.

For the birds I wanted to add crows as Vincent featured them often in his paintings but the best I could come up with were a black raven (sitting on the right) and three black swallows (all from Alpha Stamps). A bit of artistic licence is allowed!

Finally I wanted to add Vincent himself to the equation and I found a postage stamp with one of his self-portraits. I also borrowed his own words for the quotation I used that reads: "I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart".  Who could ask for more? I try and follow his example.

Write Everything

Wanderlust 2016 is a yearly series of online classes for which you can still sign up here. So far I have been very impressed with what is on offer. As part of Wanderlust we are also working in a journal for which we receive a prompt twice a month and also an occasional illustrative video. We could work in whatever journal we wanted but I'm following the videos and am using Finnabair's Vintage Vanity Art Journal. I like how it looks from the outside but the small size (5 x 7") and more especially those metal rings that hold the journal together are quite a challenge!

The paper too is thinner than I would ideally like but as we're only going to do 26 spreads this year I think it will be possible to glue pages together to make a thicker substrate and still have enough pages left for the purpose so I'm working on alternate spreads.

I won't be saying much about how these pages were done as it's a class. The prompt is written on the pages. It was: "Write a lot. Write everything. Fill your page with writing". You may no longer be able to see it but I tore out pages from my written morning journal pages (as per Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way book) and glued them over both pages. I also used a lot of rubber stamping with text (by Donna Downey, as well as Alpha Stamps and Tim Holtz) and yes, I also actually wrote with both black and white markers. The stamp featuring measurements and tiny buttons, at the left hand side, comes from Collections (that's the only info on the packing plus the fact that it's made in Australia. After some online searching I think it's this company although I can't find the stamp in question). I came upon it in my rubber stamp collection and have no idea where I got it from. It's lovely and you may well see it appear elsewhere. Always a pleasure to discover new treasure in your own possessions!

No acrylics were used on the page, but instead I used watercolour paint and watercolour markers, as well as water soluble oil pastels.  The finishing touch was a postage stamp that, to me at least, refers to the stamped quotation in the circle that reads: "the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing".

Give Me Time

For our penultimate week of The Documented Life Project 2015 we are continuing with our theme of: Storytelling with the Written Word. Our art challenge this week is: hidden journalling, and the journalling prompt: the greatest gift I give myself.  It didn't take long for me to know what such a gift would be in my case: more time!  If you have been following my blog, you will know all about my time issues. I try to squeeze too much into my life with the inevitable result that I'm always short of time. No doubt 2016 won't be an exception to that rule. You only have to look in the sidebar to see that I have lots of activities already lined up for next year. As Stuart R Levine said it so well:

"We give our time away all day long, to emotions that gain us no advantages, to people who do not value our time, to inefficient habits. If you want to take back this time, you need to cut to the chase".

I will try! 

In the meantime I spend time making this page. I started by writing some journalling about time on the pages and then covered that up as per our challenge with 2 pages from a vintage encyclopaedia from the 19th century. These were gessoed and then painted over using Liquitex Glossies and a stencil from The Crafter's Workshop. I wanted the bars as a representation of how time keeps us prisoner all our lives and then kills us off in the end. The crosses (from the same stencil) also refer to that as does the skull.  Then I added the pink clocks (also a Crafter's Workshop stencil) with spray ink.  I found the face in a Sunday newspaper magazine and filled it with stop watches. They as well as the skull, the black birds and the wings all come from a Alpha Stamps collage sheet.

I used my Time Flies stamp (it features heavily in my Dylusions art journal!), designed by Rebekka Erikson for StampWorld and the Life is not measured.... stamp by Stampers Anonymous. The clocks came from a newspaper. The Give Me Time letters were rub-ons.

There are several quotations handwritten on the spread. Along the head it says: "Time is what we want most, but what we use worst (William Penn) and by the right hand side it reads; "I hear the heartthrob of time in my veins" (Terri Guillemets).

I used quite a bit of glitter mica spray to make the pages sparkle and I've tried to capture it on the photographs. The effect is better than the picture! As for the answer to the question: Want to live for ever? No, definitely not. I simply want to make more of my time and fit in as much as possible. I'm cutting to the chase!

Heaven under our Feet Page

 A new month brings with it a new theme on The Documented Life Project 2015 and for April our theme will be: Exploring Inks and Prints. Our Art Challenge for this week is: watercolours, and the Journal Prompt: It's water under the bridge.

I started by adding watercolour to the page and making a blueish river running over it from bottom left to top right, surrounded by greenery and the colours of spring flowers. I I used a stencil from Stencilgirl's club (Januray 2014) to add wave like forms. I then took my inspiration from the bridge in Dawyck Botanical Gardens  that I photographed many times, including yesterday.

To build my bridge I used fabric circles that were left over from a quilt I'm working on. They were already Bondawebbed so I just ironed them on and then free machine stitched around them.

I felt that the page needed a human presence and I found just what I wanted in a fabric image from a collage sheet by Alpha Stamps. To my mind she represents Flora, the goddess of springtime.

The next step was to doodle the flowers and fill them in with colour using watercolour markers. The final addition was the quotation: "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads".

Joie de Vivre

Joie de Vivre is both the title of this piece and the feeling I enjoyed when working with a new product, called Craft Attitude. You can read about it on the Craft Attitude website as well as on their Facebook page. I was very honoured to be asked to test it out for them and of course fabric was my chosen medium. The Craft Attitude sheets are sold under many different names all ending in Attitude such as Jewellery, Decor, Flower, Magnet, Scrapbooking, Shoe, Wood and Quilt Attitude but they are all in fact the same product. The sheets come with full instructions and are meant for use with your inkjet printer. Once it has printed you let it dry for a couple of hours, remove it from the carrier sheet and what you have is a completely transparent image that takes on the texture of the background. And for me the biggest bonus is that it can be stitched by both machine and hand. It has a very soft handle and unlike other transfer methods hand stitching through it is a pure pleasure.

I got so carried away that I made quite a few items with the product, and they will be popping up here on my blog in the coming days and weeks. This is the one they liked best and joy of joys, it is also my favourite. Love it when that happens. I have written a tutorial about how to make this for them and also for you, the readers of this blog.

 Joie de Vivre

1. Cut a piece of grey/silver fabric to size (9.1/4” square)
2. Layer with batting (wadding in UK) and background fabric and free machine quilt using silver thread and lines radiating from the centre.
3. Sew on binding made from the same fabric.
   
4. Print out a painted piece of your art (I used the piece shown above which is part of one of my drop cloths) onto Craft Attitude and add adhesive with a Xyron Creatopia machine loaded with a fabric glue cartridge to the glossy side of Craft Attitude. Cut out to 8” square and adhere to the piece made in step 2.
5. Sew around the edges
6. Adhere the fabric images (from Alphastamps The Secrets and Clown Valentine collage sheets) as shown, again using the Xyron.
7. Emphasize some of the quilted background lines with size 11 seed beads matching the background colours
8. Print out text Joie de Vivre using a Dymo writer and adhere.
9. Sew on the 3 rings following the machine quilted line from the hand of the figure upwards.
10. Sew on sequins to the figure’s costume.
11. Sew on a hanging sleeve to the back

As you can see I used a Xyron Creatopia glue machine with a fabric glue cartridge on this piece which worked very well but on other trial pieces I also used Mistyfuse and Bondaweb (WonderUnder in US speak) to attach the Craft Attitude sheet to the background,  and they worked just as well. Just don't forget that ironing sheet or baking parchment!  Craft Attitude is a plastic containing product therefore:  NO touching it with a hot iron!!!

So as you can see this girl is not just filled with joie de vivre but she also has Attitude!