Believe in Yourself

This week's prompt on Colour Me Positive is: expanding yourself, and the art challenge was to put some wings on your page. 

I started with the background which was done with acrylic paints and the Line Waves stencil from Stencilgirl Products. On that background I glued pieces from 2 different paper napkins; one of flowers and the other of gold ornamental scroll patterns.  I took my inspiration from the colours of the background  to go and look for imagery.

I found a golden angel (with wings!) that came from a painting by Simone Martini (dated 1333) of the Annunciation. Originally I was going to add Mary too but I decided that would take the expanding theme a step too far (or maybe several steps!). She also looked rather miserable and that didn't fit the golden theme the pages were taking on.

Instead I found a themed box of rubber stamps by Anna Griffon, called Bees & Dragonflies and stamped on the dragonflies in golden and the bees and diamond shapes in black. I then discovered another dragonfly image in my collection and glued that on too.

The words of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling to me encapsulated the "expanding yourself" theme and I knew I had cut it from a newspaper some time ago. The words I liked best were added to the page.

The final rubber stamping and the one that provided the title of this spread (done in my A4 Dylusions journal) came from a rubber stamp from Donna Downey and it says:

"Trust in

your potential,

enjoy the process,

try

something new,

explore

possibilities, 

but most of all 

believe"

I added to that at the bottom: in yourself..

I did some outlining with black and white markers and added a further quotation written in: "If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. 

Feel the Fear

This week's prompt on the Colour Me Positive site is: Fearless, and the art challenge: cut out words to use on your page. Because my word for last year was Courageous, I have already made many spreads about being brave, having courage etc. The first thing that came to mind when reading the prompt was the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. Originally published in 1987 (my copy is a paperback from 1991) this is an early self-help book and judging by the state of it I must have read it several times. It's also adorned by highlighters and it was interesting to see what exactly I had been particularly interested in at that time.

Fear was a dominant factor during my youth. I thought for quite some time it was my fear but realised eventually that wasn't the case. It was someone else's and once it became clear how much that affected the quality of life of the person involved  (as well as others!) I realized my life shouldn't go that way. In reaction I  have done many things during the course of my life that were pretty reckless. Not so much physically speaking (although I have done my fair share of those too) but more like cheerfully entering into situations and adventures without considering the potential consequences. Fortunately for me, my instincts seem to be reasonably sound and I have never come to any serious harm.

This book was a reinforcement of my own thinking back then,  and even now, many years later and hopefully a bit wiser, whenever I feel a twitching of fear or even panic inside, I simply tell myself to take a deep breath and get on with it. So it seems like I have learnt my Fearless lesson and it was time to put the book to other use!

I started by tearing out pages and collaging them to the background of the spread. These were covered in paint and stencilled using the Scribbled Scratch Handwriting stencil by Stencilgirl (I'm getting more fond of that one by the day!). I used quite a bit of gold paint but sadly the pictures don't reflect that.

I used spray paint (from Liquitex) to add the face (Dia de Los Muertos stencil by Stencilgirl) to the left hand side (using white) and then also sprayed it (using gold) to a vintage dictionary page. I cut that in half and glued it on the right hand side of the face. I coloured in the face with water soluble oil pastels.I added various rubber stamps with fear and courage related sayings that you will have seen before in my art journal spreads. I also used my handwriting to note the most meaningful words for me: "Fate loves the fearless".

Then it was time to take the cover of the book and cut out the title and add it to the right hand page. Circles were added, cut from one of my gelli plate printed deli papers. More water soluble oil pastels were used to ourline them. Finally I went through what was left of the book and tore out some text that caught my attention and I glued them on as shown.

Of course I still couldn't bring myself to throw the book out completely and it will become part of my stash of collage materials. There is no need to read it again. I have got the message!

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".

Seek Other Thoughts

This spread is a combination of many different strands  but started life as my contribution for The Documented Life Project 2016. As the challenge was set last Saturday when it was still January the theme remains: Going out on a Limb and Try Something New. The art challenge was to: let someone else draw or make marks on your art piece. I did indeed do new things but no one else drew on my pages. Instead I added postage stamps (designed by someone else!), made a poem with found text,  and used a technique I saw during an online class. I know it's not the same but it will have to do.

The technique I used came from the owner of Stencilgirl Products, MaryBeth Shaw. She was one of the teachers of the online class Creative Jumpstart 2016 (highly recommend!) and she used oil sticks in her project. This rang a dim bell somewhere in my mind. I used to teach a class using Shiva paint-sticks on fabric way back (10 or so years!) and I knew they had to be about somewhere. I finally located them and used them for this spread. Quite revolutionary as I had only used them on fabric thus far. But they are definitely oil paint sticks and I have fallen in love with them all over again.

Of course I used them with Stencilgirl stencils (the Deconstructed Floral Bouquet one again and the Verdant Moon). To my delight I discovered that one of my oil sticks was sparkling gold! And of course that had to appear. I was so happy to discover that despite their age my paint sticks worked perfectly once I removed their skin. There is only one slight problem with the oil paint. It takes a very long time to dry, specially in a damp and cold Scotland. Even after 48 hours they remained slightly damp.They were eventually heat set using my iron and baking parchment. If it works on fabric it works on paper, right!

That gave me time to write a poem. I was so taken with the background that I didn't want to distract from it with imagery so words took it's place. The poem was written by going through my most favourite vintage book (Proverbial Philosophy, published in the late 1800s), cutting out parts of sentences that spoke to me, and then putting them together in a new way. Here is the full text:

Write often for thy secret eye

For to write is to speak beyond hearing

It is a theme for tears

The tears that we forgat to note

the secret depths

seek other thoughts

mysteries by mysteries

the secret of the soul

the silent music of the heart

so shalt thou grow wiser.

After glueing them on, all the spread required were postage stamps in matching colours. They are Indian and all have the same design of three lions. 

I am so pleased to have rediscovered my oil sticks and you can expect to see them again! Dare I admit I also indulged in some Windsor & Newton oil sticks as used by MaryBeth. Can't wait for their arrival.

Play your Conflict Card

Layering seems to be my motif du jour at the moment and while in the process it's very easy to loose control of just what is added to the background. At one stage it looked such a mess that I gessoed over it and started again with only little bits of the previous background peeping through. But the next layers made it quite confusing again.  All I know for sure is that it involved the use of only one stencil: the small one from the August 2014 Stencilgirl Club.

One of the reasons I was a bit mixed up about what to do is that there was no clear theme for The Documented Life Project 2016 this week. We were still working with the January Going Out on a Limb theme and the prompt was to add a piece of a receipt from the previous week.

That in itself was a bit problematic as I hadn't been anywhere but I eventually rustled up a receipt of sending a recorded letter at the Post Office. I tore it into three strips and added it as columns to the page. They made me think of trees and that led to the addition of the triangles (from the Row of Triangles stencil by Stencilgirl).  I then added the words (Wonder, Inspire etc. from the Now is the Time stencil

At this stage I wasn't very happy with the spread and wondered how I could bring it back from the brink. I started by adding the leaf shape (from a foam stamp) just to get larger shapes on the page to balance all the small details.

Then I went to my box of cuttings with no clear idea in mind of what else to add. The first thing that caught my eye was an eye! As soon as that was collaged on, the page immediately felt a lot improved. I rifled some more and the text How to Play your Conflict Card felt like the right words for that angry eye as well my conflicted feeling about the spead, done in the 8 x 8" Dylusions journal.

Outlining was done with black and white markers as well as with a blue glitter pen and water soluble oil pastels.

Gratitude

The Documented Life Project 2016 is now under way and reading about it before hand I thought it was going to concentrate more on making and decorating a planner. I have a gorgeous diary (Michel Designs Garden Diary) and wasn't really that interested. So I looked for alternatives to continue working in art journals and I found it in the shape of Colour Me Positive, a year long project with weekly themes. You can find it here (the website is based in Australia). It has now been revealed that DLP16 will also have themes which I can use to art journal. Not sure I have the time to do both each week, but I will simply do what I can and what inspires me. The first spread I have done in my new large Dylusions journal is for Colour Me Positive's first theme of Gratitude. You will be able to see all my contributions for CMP by clicking on the new label (underneath this post, and in the sidebar) of Colour Me Positive.

I used a different Gratitude quotation than the one we were given as I wanted to use a flowery theme on the page to lift the greyness of the weather outside.  It reads: "Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul" (Henry Ward Beecher). The background colours are garden inspired and I used Stencilgirl's August 2015 stencils.

I added images of pot plants by glueing on paper napkins (using only the top layer). The circular flower images on the right came from photographs I took last summer and which were featured on Instagram. I had them printed by Social Print Studio and punched out the circles. They also fulfil the challenge set on Colour Me Positive this week of using something from 2015.

 The stamped flowers and flower texts come from the Full Bloom 2 stamp set by Darkroom Door.

I added a self-portrait from 2015 as well and then added just some of the things I'm grateful for in the shape of words cut from a variety of magazines. Washi tape was added in various places as shown. The quotation was hand written on a fragment of a page removed from that old ledger I mentioned recently. I used Distress Ink to vintage it up.

It felt great to have that first spread in the journal. Can't wait to fill them all up over the course of 2016.

Wordless

We are still telling stories with the written word for The Documented Life Project 2015 December theme. Our art challenge this week is: use quote or lyrics as storytelling. And the journalling prompt is: "One of the hardest things is having words in your heart that you can't utter" (James Earl Jones).  Well in contrast to that, my words just spilled out onto the pages this week. I started with the background in various colours where I rubbed out the words using stencils and a baby wipe. All the stencils I used were word ones, mainly designed by Carolyn Dube for Stencilgirl. 

I stencilled on more words in the more conventional way, through the stencils. Finally words were collaged on. You could say I did all this randomly but to be honest I had by that stage already decided on the image I wanted to use as my focal point and the words I glued on have some relevance to Ophelia and her fate as I was after all, story telling! Pieces of a paper napkin with hearts were added to the pages (using only the top layer). I also rubber stamped on more text.

 Ophelia took centre stage. She comes from a painting by John Everett Millais, one of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Ophelia committed suicide as told in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The words I used all in some way echo that. But mere words can't describe such an act completely. It usually leaves us WORDLESS (added through a letter stencil, outlined in black and filled in with a white marker).

As per our art challenge I also added a further quotation that comes from an old French proverb. It reads:

La vie est à moitié finie avant que l’on sache en quoi elle consiste

This is usually translated into English as: Life is half spend before one knows what life is. I'm leaving the interpretation of the story I'm telling on this spread to whoever is reading this. I'm keeping my words in my heart and won't utter them!

There needed to be a connecting line across the pages for compositional purposes, so postage stamps featuring flowers and matching colours were added in the two opposite corners of the spread. If I had known when I started in what direction the pages would move, I might have used less happy looking colours but in a way that contrast too tells it's own story.

Permission to Play Journal

I have finished my art journal made from cardboard following Carolyn Dube's online,and entirely free class Permission to Play. You may remember that I showed you some of the pages in an early stage here and I have since progressed with the class, adding a lot of stencilling, rubber stamping and the like. Then the journal was put together following Carolyn's instructions. I love how solid it feels and of course, being cardboard, the journal can stand up by itself perfectly.

 I'm showing you all the pages here, in the order they occur in the journal. All the stencils I've used are from Stencilgirl Products. This was also a good excuses to rummage in my large rubber stamp collection and bring out some of the ones I haven't used in a while.

Some of the stencils I used were also designed by Carolyn such as the text ones and the above right Venetian image.

I'm not saying these pages are finished. I might well add more in the future (such as a postage stamp or two!) but they are bound together and I'm going to leave them be for the time being.

 Above is what is possibly my favourite spread as the pages work so well together.

Word Journal Quilts 2015

Here are all the Journal Quilts I made in 2015 together. As you probably know by now they are all sized 6 x 12". A size that was set by the Contemporary Quilt Group for their journal quilt challenge. I made the choice of using words for all my JQs and therefore orientated them horizontally.

Unlike the previous two years I didn't plan to put them all together at the end of the year and they look far too disparate to do so in any case. When the time comes from my next solo exhibition I might exhibit some of them individually and they will be up for sale.

If you are interested now in any of these you can of course buy them. These ones will be on sale for £100 plus postage costs to wherever you happen to be. I will only mail using Special Delivery (in the UK) or Internationally Signed For (everywhere else). Payment in the UK can be by cheque, for the rest of the world I can send you a Paypal invoice. You can contact me by using the email address in the sidebar.

If you want to read more about any individual piece you can do so by putting the word on it into the search engine at the top of the sidebar at the right.

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.

Texture Journal Quilt

This is my penultimate journal quilt for this year. I'm making them for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group and they set the size at 6 x 12". I choose to make mine horizontal and to dedicate each one to a different word. For November I selected TEXTURE as this is a word that has been used a lot to describe my textile art.

 I made the piece itself very textural by using a background of vintage laces which I then hand and machine quilter. The letters were cut out of a brown/gold fabric using the Brother Scan'nCut machine. They were machine appliquéd on by machine and using Bondaweb (WonderUnder in US speak). Vintage lace flowers were sewn on with a bead in the centre.

The final touches were vintage white buttons and size 11 seed beads on the letters itself as well as along the edges of the binding.