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.

Walk in Spirit

Recently I heard about an art journal produced by the Bee Paper Company so I thought I would get one and try it out for myself. I bought the 9 x 9" (22.9 x 22.9cm) journal and will be working mainly on one page at a time although a two page spread will no doubt creep in now and again. This journal will be just for me, and won't contain any work inspired by prompts and themes on the various groups I'm taking part in. I already like the fact that the journal is ring bound so I can fold the rest of the pages out of the way. This is a great advance for a messy artist! I will tag all posts about this journal with the Bee Paper Journal label.

The other thing I plan on doing is to photograph the backgrounds of the pages before I start to add focal points and outlining. This will offer me the opportunity to print such imagery on fabric if I want to. Above is that picture for this first page.

There will be less description of techniques etc because that's not what this journal is about. It's entirely personal and although I will have a list of materials and tools at the end of the post, it's the end result that matters to me.

I used collage with an oriental themed paper napkin, and an image from an old calendar from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, featuring a Native American image. Other techniques used are stencilling and rubber stamping.

The stencils came mainly from Stencilgirl. They are: S372 Brick Factory and M071 Nonsensical Bloom in Stencil  in the background. The shell stencil was included in the Jane Davenport Acrylic Paint Set 2.
The rubber stamp of the little Japanese figure was a free gift but I have no idea any longer where it came from.

The quotation comes from a vintage book.

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.

Dream La Dolce Vita

Working on this spread in the A4 Dylusions art journal and following the prompt from Colour Me Positive last week which was about Dreaming, I came to the realization that yes, dreams are good and yes, I would love to revisit Venice at some stage, but it is much more important to concentrate on making the day to day living as good as it can get, rather than put lots of effort (and money) into achieving a  travel dream. Both of us have been lucky enough to do lots of travelling in the past and I'm grateful for all I have seen and done but in the end you always have to come home. We know now that for us a house is not a home without a dog. Specially as there are so many dogs out there who need a kind and loving place to call their own. That is the kind of dream that we want to make come true.

All this to say that yes, a dog will be arriving here before too long and you'll hear and see all about her before too much longer.

In the meantime I didn't need any more encouragement to dedicate these pages to Venice, city of dreams, not just mine but lots of other people's dreams too. I count myself very fortunate to have been there more than once and at a time when there were fewer tourists than nowadays. I made the very most of every moment there and I can return there in my dreams any time I fancy. That is the joy of dreaming.

I used colours I associate with Venezia as well as a gold spray which you may just be able to spot on the picture above..

Techniques used: collage, stencilling, rubber stamping, spray painting
Materials used: paper napkin featuring butterflies, images of Venice from the travel supplement of the newspaper, rubber stamp plate #39 Venezia by Cherry Pie Art Stamps, flower stencil from The Crafter's Worlshop, sequin waste,  Italian postage stamps.

I am lagging behind with my Colour Me Positive spreads and I will probably give this week's prompt a miss in order to catch up. Still quite a lot to do in my indoor studio!

There's a bright future ahead

When I read the new prompt on Friday morning for Colour Me Positive which said: The Future is Bright, I almost took a physical step backwards. It was the day after we lost Rueben and the future looked very dark indeed as far as I was concerned, and I decided not to do a spread for CMP this time.

However after thinking about it for some time it dawned on me that all the uplifting quotes I put in my art journals are all too easy to use when times are good but that are meant to carry us through those impossibly difficult moments life also throws at us regularly.

This is indeed the right time to consider the quote I used that reads: "Holding on is like believing that there's only a past; letting go and moving on is knowing in your heart that there's a bright future ahead". 

I'm far from letting go yet so these pages also contain a memory of when our two dogs were still with us. The picture shows them laying head to head as they used to do back before the summer of 2015 which is when we lost the greyhound. I used that symbol of metamorphosis: a butterfly, and also grabbed my favourite hot colours combined with turquoise to portray that far away (at the moment) bright future.

I used collage (with the pet photograph, a paper napkin featuring doors with fruit trees, tissue wrap Melange by Tim Holtz, and deli paper previously stencilling with circles), rubber stamping and stencilling.

The rubber stamp came from a sheet by ImpressMeNow, and I used the following stencils, all from Stencilgirl Products: L301 Circles Circles (on the deli paper), S428 Screw Heads Small and L348 Doodle It Borders.

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.