Art Journal Diary Spread 2

The second spread in my unused 4 x 6” 2020 diary. All stencils used are by StencilGirl Product

A New Beginning

The July theme on The Documented Life Project 2016 continues as: vote yes, saying yes to new experiences. The art challenge was to start with a black background. I had recently started to work in the 8 x 8" Dylusions journal with black pages (look out for my next project as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products this coming Wednesday!) so I grabbed the journal again and began by making a multi coloured background using paints and the S191 Open Buildings stencil. I usually don't have any specific aim at the start of the pages so simply use a stencil that catches my attention when looking through my stencil stash.

After that I glued on some handmade paper with black imagery which looked quite graphic and that led me to grab the medium stencil from March 2014 Stencilgirl Club to add more geometric images using white paint.

Still following the theme I grabbed some under paper on which I had been trying out a stamp. It's a foam one bought quite some years ago from the Aftrican Fabric shop, made by Trapsuutjies Textielverf. It apparently symbolizes friendship and interdependence. I found two quotations (both from  Flow Magazine calendars) and glued them on, together with the image of the woman walking towards her new beginning.

The page needed more and finally I realized I wanted to write on the pages.  I used the text of the song Make a New Beginning by Tracy Chapman. I hadn't realized till I started to write them down just how appropriate they are for the world at the moment.

The Memories we've made

The new prompt for Week 17 on Colour Me Positive is: friendship, and our art challenge: to make your own stamp and use it.  This made me think about what friendship is, and to me it's not just close friends but also the people you only meet fleetingly but to whom you feel some sort of connection as fellow human beings.

I felt that when I saw this woman  with her little dog from the window of our tour bus in New York. The bus was stationary waiting for a traffic light while she was standing on the corner of the street staring into space. It was of course the dog that first drew my attention, wrapped up warmly in pink, but then I looked at her and I felt a sort of link. I wondered what her life was like and what she was doing there. At first I didn't want to take her picture as she was staring straight ahead and I felt it would be an intrusion but when she looked away I snapped a quick shot. I don't think she even noticed me but I can't help thinking about what brought the two of us together there at the same time and almost in the same place on a random day in both our lives. She will be one of my treasured memories of the trip to New York so I decided to use her image on this journal page.

The background of the page was done with paint and stencilling. I first used the large stencil from the December 2015 Stencilgirl Club, followed by stencil S314 Entangling Threads for the circular shapes and finally the small and medium stencils from the April 2016 Stencilgirl Club in black and turquoise.

For the required stamp I made one featuring long rectangular shapes which I put to use to provide a pavement for her to walk on. She herself was printed onto cream coloured paper , cut out and collaged onto the page as shown together with one of my  photographs of the cherry blossom in Central Park, also from the NY trip.

I found a quotation I really liked and that sums up my feelings perfectly. It reads: "The best things in life are the people we love, the places we've been and the memories we've made along the way". 

Solitude Journal Quilt

It was a real autumn morning covered in cobwebs and mist. A new month has begun as has a new season. And it's also time to share my new journal quilt for September. These monthly journal quilts are part of a challenge set by the Contemporary Quilt Group. They also dictated the size as 6 x 12". I choose to use the horizontal orientation and to dedicate all my journal quilts this year to words.

As you can see I have left the word (Solitude) smaller than on my other journal quilts so far, because I liked my background so much that I didn't want to cover most of it up. This background was made using the smallest size gelli plate (3 x 5") as a stamp to get the different coloured areas while at the same time using wooden carved blocks (from Textile Traders) in the paint first.

Afterwards I stamped on the trees (also from a wooden carved stamp). The piece was then extensively hand quilted using running and back stitch as well as embellished with seed and bugle beads as well as sequins. The binding fabric was painted on the gelli plate too.

The word SOLITUDE was stamped onto a separate piece of fabric and hand appliquéd on. I'm now thinking about my next word!

 

Posted with Blogsy

To Be Alive

 I have been doing the Woman Unleashed online retreat over the last few weeks. It's organized by Amber Kuileimailani Bonnici and consisted of a series of videos  by different tutors on a wide variety of subjects. One of my favourites was Lesley Riley's one on quotations and it inspired me to make this page (9 x 12") on heavy duty watercolour paper. I illustrated a quote by Haruki Murakami. I've used only part of it. The full quotation reads as follows:

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

You might have noticed it in the sidebar of this blog some weeks ago. I left it up there for ages as there is so much to think about in it.  Part of it (Store Those Memories) was added to my latest spread for The Documented Life Project 2015 as you can see here. 

The page started with a background of paint and stencilling (using Circles, Circles stancil as well as Picasso's Words one by Stencilgirl). I added collage with vintage images and paper napkins. I then stamped on the ART word (using a stamp from ARTspecially). It's a way to remember this quotation which at first reading seems quite negative but is in fact spurring us on to make sure we treasure our memories, good or bad. Of course there had to be a postage stamp too. That has almost become a signature for my art journalling pages.

I keep a lot of my memories not just in my heart but also on my camera card and external hard drive,  and I wanted to post these pictures from the garden even though they were taken a few days ago when the sun was out. Every moment is so fleeting and I wander around the garden daily trying to capture each new development.

clematis

ligularia with campanula in the background

Gelli Print Delight

 I spend the morning making a wide variety of papers and fabrics using a variety of gelli plates.I used Stencilgirl stencils for all of them, some the special monthly ones we receive exclusively as a member of the Stencilgirl Club. Every month it's a surprise what will be coming our way and so far I've never been disappointed. First I'm showing you a variety of the papers I made.

And underneath are some of the fabrics. They all started life as plain white cotton. The stamps I have used are some of those lovely wooden blocks that I bought recently from Textile Traders.

Wood blocks

I was at a meeting of Thistle Quilters this morning where there was a very thought provoking talk by Textile Traders about the future of ethnic fabrics in an age where the makers of such fabrics are under much pressure from the outside world. Hopefully the art of making ikats, batiks, and hand embroidered costumes won't be entirely lost and there will be help for those artists who pass on the old traditions.

Textile Traders also brought their collection to sell with them and it was almost guaranteed before I even arrived, that I would buy! As you can see 4 beautiful carved wood blocks came home with me to be used for stamping with, and to use on my gelli plate (so watch this space).

As for the blue indigo dyed fabric in the background, for once this is a jacket rather than fabric to use in my work, but in all honesty that is because I will meet up with Textile Traders again very soon on the 20th June when it's World Textile Day in Bridge of Allen.

Courage Page

One of the new ventures this year will the Life Book 2015 classes I hope to be doing on a weekly base. I had been looking at this project for a few years now and always decided I had too much else on. I realized that would always be the case and the only way to go was to simply buy the class and do the best I can with it. It started yesterday and I'm loving it already. The videos are great and I thoroughly enjoyed the Meditation one. There will be more of these throughout the year although if they make you uncomfortable you can of course leave them and concentrate on learning new art techniques. The first video was a warm up exercise using our word for the year. After the meditation that word came bubbling up for me and it is: COURAGE.

There will be no explanations from me about how the pages for this project were put together as that would be against copyright. If you are interested you can sign up for the class yourself here.And I must just mention that the background text stamp I used is from Anna Griffin. I love both the font and the fact that it is in French.

Inside this envelope that I stitched rather than glued on are my intentions for 2015, one of which is to relax more. Playing with my paints, stamps and stencils is a great way to do that and if that means I make less quilts than usual this year then so be it. There are 10 intentions in all hidden inside the envelope, and at the end of the year I will open the envelope (only closed with washi tape so that should be easy), read what I wrote today and make up the score of how well I did! Should be interesting!

Use a Stamp

I spied the new challenge for The Documented Life Project on the blog of one of the organizers first thing this morning. Normally it isn't revealed till Saturday evening here in the UK so this was a treat. It meant I could start on it around midday. The task read: Use a Stamp in a new Way. Now I think there is no such thing as a new way. Even when you think you have discovered something entirely original there is usually someone who got there before you! But as luck would have it I had been playing with stamps for the May Journal Quilt challenge (I'll reveal this later in the coming week) and decided that I would use the stamp off sheet for my planner. This is the sheet on which I try out the stamps to see if they are stamped up properly.

I used this for the background and put a sun ray stencil (from Heidi Swapp) on top and over sprayed the stamping with Dylusions inks in a variety of colours, moving the stencil slightly for every go. This ink is transparent and you can thus see the stamping through it. The areas still left white were painting with Silks Acrylic Glaze in gold and turquoise. Again this is a tranparent paint.

I added the text as shown above and then set to work with a large variety of watercolour oil pastels, watercolour markers and black and white pens.

On the circle I added a piece of hand painted paper and then added markings to it as seen above. The piece ended up a bit darker than I had originally intended but the stamping can still be seen and that's the main thing. I made the decision not to spend too long on these challenges at the outset of the project in January, as I simply don't have the time so they are what they are. During the week when I see these pages every day I sometimes add more to it but for the moment this will do.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

We have reached week 16 of 2014 and the challenge on The Documented Life Group is: Add a cardboard food box in a creative way. This provided a bit of a problem living where I do. There are no take-away food shops here in West Linton. That's right, none at all! And even had there be, food boxes are not necessarily provided in take-aways here in Scotland. Specially not ones with patterns or images on it. You're more likely to be handed your food in a newspaper. I ruled out a visit to McDonalds as it seemed just a bit mad to drive about 10 miles to the nearest one to buy food I don't want to eat, merely so I could use the carton it comes in. Instead I looked around and yesterday was the day I gave my hair a new lease of blondness. That comes in a carton so I decided to put this to good use.

I must have been mulling it over during the night as I woke up this morning with the words "Gentlemen prefer blondes" ringing in my ears and knowing exactly which of my rubber stamps would be put to good use. I used a previously circle painted paper for the background, stitched on the elements of the hair dye packaging and added the 3 gentlemen, who were stamped onto gelli plate printed deli paper.

I added more details with markers and watercolour pens and have now tipped the page into my 2014 Moleskine planner. It might not respond exactly to the brief but this is my planner after all and I'm pleased with it.

Timeless Stencil Play

I have received my February delivery of the Stencilgirl Club and they were just as gorgeous as the January ones. One in particular, the smallest stencil, attracted my attention and I immediately wanted to play with it. And guess what I came up with? A very quilt-like design in my sketchbook, surprise, surprise.

I divided the A4 page into more or less equal parts using diamond patterned narrow washi tape and painted the resulting rectangles with craft acrylics. Once dry I stencilled the seed head shape on top, again using the acrylics.

That looked quite good but not quite finished. The next step was stamping the words at the top of each rectangle.

Still not completely done in my opinion and suddenly my vintage postage stamp collection came to mind. I found a collection of Indian stamps with the same design but different colours and hey-ho, that did the trick!

Add a flap to the flap

The challenge of adding a flap to our flap in The Documented Life Project might sound a bit mystifying to those not participating in it. But it's really quite simple. Every week we tip in a page (or flap) into the current week in our 2014 Moleskine journal and decorate it. This week we were asked to attach an additional flap to that original tip in page. 

I started off by making the large tip-in page for which I used what I call my stamping off sheet. When I'm using rubber stamps I always make a try-out stamp on a spare sheet of paper, just to test it's stamping okay and inked up properly. Eventually that stamped and overstamped page starts to look quite interesting. So I cut it to 5 x 8" (to fit the Moleskine journal) and coloured it in with watercolour pencil and used a waterbrush to activate the colours. 

I then found a lovely card shape with a vintage image from Collage Stuff on the back (on the underside and not visible above) and decorated the top side of the card (seen above) with a piece of my painted drop sheet (used underneath whenever I'm using acrylics and spray inks). I glued it onto the card and added a flower rub-on, an eye stamp and a left over cut ring which was stitched on.

I added additional embellishing with white and black pens. I'm pleased that yet again I'm sticking to my resolution not to spend too much time on this project and still come up with something I'm happy with, and even better that helps get rid of all those piles of stuff hanging around this house! It remains to be seen how well the planner will cope with all the additional pieces of paper added to it. I might have to reinforce my spine at some stage!