Focus

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A word of warning! This is going to be a long post so perhaps you want to get yourself a cup of tea. Or a glass of wine! It is New Year's Day after all. The start of many new things and I'm beginning by showing you my word for this year which will be: FOCUS.  After choosing COURAGE last year I was a bit more careful in selecting my word for 2016 so that I would not be tempting the universe to test me on the subject. I know it's superstitious, but still! Better to be safe than sorry. 

I choose FOCUS because I want to live even more mindful, paying attention not just to the special moments in the coming year but to all moments, however mundane they might be. Also to the moments that maybe would be better forgotten in the hope of finding something worthwhile even in them. I want to FOCUS on learning more (that's a perennial resolution!), enjoying working in my journals, making my art, stitching my quilts, walking the dog, reading books, enjoying the sunshine (hope there will be lots!), being in New York, working in the garden and posting this blog, as well as on anything else that comes along. I also want to FOCUS with my camera, more about that later. 

This 9 x 12" page was done on heavy duty watercolour paper and will probably be part of Life Book 2016 in due course. It's fairly sure we will be asked to choose our word for 2016 there. It's a collage made by tearing up parts of my gelli plate printed papers. I have a huge pile of these and most of them also use Stencilgirl stencils. Don't ask me which ones though, these pages were made ages ago. The only additional paper I used was the sparkly black wrapping paper.

After I was happy with the composition on the page I added the circles that were made using 3 different sizes of circle punches and more gelli plate printed papers. They were outlined with a black marker.  The page is also covered in sparkles to imitate the fireworks for a New Year. So much for how I made the page. 

Here is a detail of it with the word BLIP added to the mix. No digital wizardry was used, just a piece of folded masking tape to hold the extra circle I made with the word BLIP stamped on it, onto the page! The whole Blip site has been asked to feature the word BLIP on their blips. Here is the reason why:

as most of you will know I have been posting a daily photograph on the Blipfoto site for more than 5 years now. The only "rule" of the site is that the picture has to be posted to the day it was taken. I love the site and am an enthousiastic user, not just because it's fascinating to see how all those pictures add up to my life but also to see what I was doing on any given day for those 5 years. I love getting a glimpse into other blippers' lives on a daily basis too. I have met many wonderful people on the site and have gone on to meet many of them in person too. However the Blip site has been in trouble for more than a year now, financially speaking. .

The good news is that the Blip community itself has come up with a solution. We, the users, could buy and run the site. In order to do this we need to raise at least £180.000 by investing  ourselves and becoming shareholders of the Blipfuture Community Interest Company.Today we have been urged by Blipfuture (the name of the new Company to be) to spread the word far and wide and I'm doing it here on my blog.  I have pledged my bit and now the waiting and fingers crossing is on! Let's hope for a fabulous new beginning for Blipfoto in 2016!

I am also spreading the word on Blip itself today using the word Blip in my picture for the day. All Blippers have been asked to do this and you can see the resulting pictures all together here. 

Deja Vu

Following in the footsteps of yesterday here is another spread in my art journal. This one was done even longer ago and dated 8th July. I thought I might as well get on with showing it to you rather than postpone it even longer (wish I had the same spirit about writing Xmas cards but alas!). It's a quite personal spread about the phenomenon of "Deja Vu".

I experienced my first Deja Vu moment way back when I was about 15 or 16 during a school trip to Trier. As we arrived by bus at the youth hostel I found myself walking right up the steps on the girl's side (there was strict separation between the sexes in those days!) to our allocated room. Because I knew the way. I had never been to Trier before let alone this youth hostel. It was a deeply unnerving experience and hard to understand at that age so I kept it to myself. It has happened numerous times since, sometimes at important events, and at other times during utterly mundane moments, when I am just stitching away in my studio listening to a talking book and feeling I have lived that moment before and heard those words.

There are of course explanations for the Deja Vue experience and I'm far from unique. Personally I like to think of it as a parallel universe where we briefly slip through a curtain between times. As Einstein said: "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once".

When I found text about a Deja Vu experience in a vintage book (Proverbial Philosophy, 1867) I decided to celebrate this phenomenon rather than treat it as something to keep to myself as I had done thus far. This is the resulting spread. The background was done with Inktense blocks and activated with water. I used the Circles, Circles stencil from Stencilgirl to achieve the circles in the sky.

I added postage stamps along the bottom edge of the spread as well as half way up the sides and collaged vintage images and text onto the pages too. I also used rubber stamps (Dark Room Door Full Bloom stamp) to add interest. The next step was to use Stencilgirl's Windswept Tree mask and Liquitex black permanent ink spray to grow the two trees on either side.

By then an injection of colour was required and I used Stencilgirl's Flowers, Pomegranates and Leaves stencil and more permanent spray ink in various colours. I used permanent paint markers to add more colour and also to outline the various elements. The vintage text that had started it all was glued on in the sky. It reads:

" Have ye not confessed to a feeling,

a consciousness strange and vague,

That ye have gone this way before,

and walk again your daily life."

 

Posted with Blogsy

An Overarching Experience

I'm back as a Guest Designer for Stencilgirl today and that means that you can find a step-by-step tutorial of this spread in my Dylusions art journal here.  I used only two of their stencils but what an effect can be achieved with those minimal supplies. They were the Arched Aqueduct one, as well as the Tropical Floral stencil. This last one is one of my all out favourites as it has so much variety of different textures and that makes it very versatile.

What I've done on these journal pages is make a paper quilt, at least that what it looks like to me. It's definitely putting ideas in my head for something more fabric orientated.

 You will see there is a quotation positioned in some of the arches. It's from Tennyson's Ulysses and reads:

"Yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untravelled world, whose margins fade for ever and ever, when I move".

Give It a Go

I'm returning to showing you pages from my Dylusions art journal that were completed quite some time ago but that I haven't shown on this blog yet. Sometimes I need a bit of time to consider if I want to show them at all or I feel it is necessary to put some distance between me and the spread till I am ready to show it in public. This particular spread was done on 9th July this year.

The background was done with collage using vintage pieces of image and text. I also glued on pieces of a paper napkin featuring flowers. I used a variety of colours (the three primaries) and two different stencils (one of shapes and the other one of leaves). To this mix were added pieces of washi tape.

Then I added the faces. The large one is from a magazine and as you can see I have painted, stencilled etc. over parts of it, while the face in silhouette on the left was done by using a mask and brushing white paint outwards from it. By one of those marvellous coincidences I'm so fond of, I found the text exactly as it is on the spread,  and just what I wanted while leaving through magazines to find the faces.It captured what this page was all about perfectly.  It's such a satisfying feeling, almost like the universe knows what you need, and gives it to you.

The postage stamps echo the words on the spread. 

And yet again imagery started to emerge once the pages were done that was a complete surprise to me, such as the butterfly wings coming from the head and the words looming up from the background that belong to the vintage text I glued on for the very first layers. I was, and still am, hugely pleased with how this turned out.

Life Begins

Outside the world is foggy, grey and wet so what better time to return to a sunny day in July when I made this spread in my Dylusions art journal. I'm slowly featuring all the pages I made during those halcyon days of summer that I haven't blogged yet and hopefully one day I will catch up completely. The first thing I did on these pages was to add the black/white patterned tape as my journal was coming apart at the seams a bit. The next step was the same as for so many of my spreads, done with gesso and acrylic paint in colours that I fancied on that particular day. I used a variety of Stencilgirl stencils in the background, the main one being one of the July 2014 Stencilgirl Club. I also glued on pieces of a musical note themed paper napkin as well as a variety of vintage images and text.

The main focal point is formed by another Stencilgirl stencil, this time the Pretty as a Peacock face one. I spray painted it onto a vintage text page, cut it out and glued it onto the spread. I added transparent fish and butterflies (from PaperWhimsy) as well as that transparency door (sorry, no idea where that one originated!).

The texts came next. Then various images were outlined in black and white marker pens and I dripped yellow and green inks down the pages.

Like many of the spreads I did over the summer this one is an encouragement addressed to me, to take life one day at a time, to be mindful and live in the moment. Life begins in this moment, on this day, every day. The butterflies symbolize my head which is often in the clouds, while the fish are much more down to earth, being in the water. Every day offers us a new door to open into the rest of our lives. All we need to do is walk through that door and pay attention.

 

Posted with Blogsy

A Lightbulb Moment

This is the last spread this year done in the shed. I've spend most of yesterday moving all my paints, mediums etc. indoors as we have already had several night frosts and once frozen acrylic paints can't be rescued. There is still a bit of work to do clearing up the shed (just how do I manage to produce such chaos in a small space?) but all the important stuff is inside. I will have to endeavour to be tidier working indoors from now on till next spring!

The Documented Life Project 2015 is staying with the October theme of translucent paper. This week's art challenge is: Vellum, and the journallling prompt: Sheer Genius. The first thing I had to do was hunt for vellum. It's not a paper I use a lot as it doesn't work well with wet media and my pages tend to get very wet indeed. But I did remember I had some from the days I made lots of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and eventually I located bits and pieces.

The background was done with gesso and paints and just the one stencil to add texture: the Corrugated Lines stencil from Stencilgirl. I added rubber stamping (the man's face as well as my favourite French text) and washi tape with writing and numbers. Vintage papers and images were glued on using matte medium.

Those vintage papers weren't chosen randomly but with intent. The focal image is the Venus de Milo and she is surrounded by monks looking on in amazement at her, suddenly realizing what a genius she is, despite being a woman. The light bulbs come from the April 2014 Stencilgirl Club.

By this stage no vellum had entered the scene yet so I decided to add my title of the piece by stamping it on vellum, cutting it out and dry glueing it with a Xyron machine. The text reads: A Lightbulb Moment on the left hand page and She is Sheer Genius on the facing page. More interest was added by stencilling through circular and star shaped sequin waste.

Another piece of vellum I had discovered were the keys (seen above)  and these were added as shown with around them the hand written text: "finding the keys to my own thoughts". Outlining was done with a variety of black and blue pens as well as water soluble oil pastels. I had some vellum left over so punched flower shapes from that and glued those down, adding a little bit of pink and red sparkle (found during my search for the vellum) to the centre of the flowers.  And of course there just had to be a postage stamp.

This entire page was inspired by a quotation I found years ago (about 35!) written in a pub in Eton, near where I used to live,  on the wall of the ladies' toilet, of all places. There were no mobile phones to take pictures with,  in those far off days but there was no need. It has stayed with me anyway, stored in that amazing subconscious brain we all possess. Here it is: If God exists I hope she is safe in her heaven. Isn't it strange how such random things from the past,  suddenly pop up again in one's head, inspired by our journalling prompt of "Sheer Genius". This very feminist page is dedicated to a goddess from the classical past.

Like a Circle in a Spiral

The catch-up with my art journal goes on and I'm hoping to get to a stage where there are no more spreads in there that I haven't blogged about. There is still some way to go. These pages were made on the 11th June. They were inspired by the lyrics of The Windmill of Your Mind song. I was quite surprised that it came out way back in 1969! I can remember doing my homework accompanied by this music. Perhaps this is the origin of my love for circles and spirals.

I started with a painted and stencilled background onto which deli paper was collaged. The stencil I used is from Balzer Designs. Rubber stamps were added (from Art to the 5th). After the background was made I used circles in a variety of sizes as masks and blackened in the background. The circles were then outlined with a white marker, and I stamped around their perimeter using another stamp from the same Art to the 5th rubber stamp sheet.

 A silver pen was used to write some of the lyrics of the song around the edges of the circles. 

The song was, and still is, a great favourite of mine and it was going around my head at the time this spread was made as so much was whirling around in my own head. Putting it on the page helped remove some of it from there.

You Had Me At Hello

We have a new theme for October on The Documented Life Project 2015 and it is: Translucent Papers. For the art challenge this week we had to use: deli paper and our journalling prompt was: You had me at hello. I was not familiar with this quotation so I googled it and discovered the words come from a song that to be honest I wasn't much taken with. You can hear it here to judge for yourself. I left the song to it and simply used the prompt to do my own thing.

I applied multiple stencils and acrylic paint colours to make the background into which I also glued pieces of deli paper that were previously painted on the gelli plate. Other translucent papers were also added such as the black dot tissue paper and parts of transparent paper flowers are wrapped in, with a bird and flower pattern. I then spray painted (with Liquitex black spray paint) the figure that comes from a stencil taken from The Street Art Stencil Book. I've had this book for awhile but had never used any of the stencils. It contains a series of different ones all designed by different graffiti artists. This figure's stencil is by Btoy who are an artistic collective from Barcelona. I outlined the figure with white marker.

I added two pieces of mainly blue deli paper on the left hand side of the spread (painted on the gelli plate) and added the word HELLO on both of them with sticker letters. Again I felt this page needed something more and postage stamps were the answer. I loved the large Yemen one of a couple where the man seems to want to say hello although she isn't very interested. And that let directly to the addition of the love stamps.

I used quite a bit of gold on this spread in my Dylusions journal and as always it proved hard to capture in a picture but the above one gives you a hint of the glitter.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Lust for Life

It is high time I got on with catching up with myself and the spreads I did over the summer in my Dylusions art journal, so here is one, made on 8th June. For the background I used a wide range of acrylic paints with the main one being Paynes Grey which makes this a darker spread than my usual ones. However the fluorescent pink and yellow brighten it up considerably. I used stencils by Stencilgirl (the Tropical Floral stencil and the Cornish Petals one)

Some long treasured magazine images were added to the mix as well as washi tape featuring bird silhouettes. The title too came from a magazine and I further embellished the letters. A piece of vintage text seen above reads: "its memory is shrined in fragrance".

And I could not resist adding a cheeky vintage image too as shown. The flower postage stamps were the finishing touch. They were chosen because their colours went perfectly with the background.

Finally the shapes were outlined with black and white marker pens as well as water soluble oil pastels. And I did some flower doodling on the pages too.

My Art Life

The Documented Life Project 2015 is using the September theme of Journalling with Photos for the last time while our art challenge for the week is: StoryBoard, and the journalling prompt: A Week in the Life. I interpreted a bit wider and made it The Story of My Art Life.

I started by making a background in my Dylusions journal using paints and stencils. I used two of the stencils that were part of September's Stencilgirl Club and also one from February 2015.

Then I grabbed all the Instagram images that were printed for me by Prinstragram in both sticker and rectangular shapes and added to them to the page with glue. Then these were surrounded by appropriate film strip featuring washi tape.

 I thought of a title and came up with The Story of My Art Life which was stamped on as shown. 

Life is Beautiful

It is time to share another project I did for Stencilgirl today. I love working on projects and try to think up interesting spreads in which to use the stencils. This one was made during one of the very few sunny days we had during a particularly dismal summer here in Scotland. It was made in my Dylusions journal and apart from being one of my projects as Stencilgirl's Guest Designer it is also very much an art journalling page made for myself.

You can read a full description of how I made the page on the Stencilgirl Talk website and which of their many stencils I used. One in particular called Breathe, a Serene Goddess is amazingly versatile and within that one stencil there are many different patterns. It's a real treasure trove and I've mined it fully here without even using the stencil in it's entirety.

 he spread also features paper napkins, another art supply that's close to my heart. As a result I have an entire container filled with them. I do so wish they sold them in mixed packs. Instead I usually am forced to buy them in a pack of 20 but in the case of this bird/butterfly one I don't mind at all.

The napkin featuring vintage postcards is just as versatile and the part of it featured above (the little plane) is a very personal addition to what is one of my favourite pages so far in my journal.