Art Cards 98 - 106

Here is the latest batch of nine artcards. They are part of my #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed.

I have to say those nine days seem to fly past. Every time nine cards are ready to be shared here it takes me by surprise. And we have passed the 100 mark too. I need to grab 2018 by the neck before it too vanishes without trace! 

New York, New York 2016

In a wonderful moment of synchronicity the prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week was to use the letter N and to include an animal. You should have seen me sitting behind my desk and almost shouting YES at the computer screen.

As it happens, it's exactly two years ago since the trip to New York and the most iconic image I have taken away from it is this view, taken from our tour bus, of the woman with her small dog standing on a street corner in Peter Cooper Village on the east side of Manhattan. I still find it hard to put my finger on why she made such an impression on me but she did (you will have seen her before on this blog if you are a regular reader), and consciously or not my little Flora bears a striking resemblance to her (at the time we still had our previous dog). It was one of those pivotal moments in life that remain in your memory forever.

You can also see her in this video of the trip.

 So I knew it had to be New York in my A5 journal this week and the background was done using the TCW729 City Buildings stencil from The Crafters Workshop. In the foreground I used the NY skyline mask from The Ink Pad shop, located in New York itself.  That was pretty much it, apart from the addition of some luminescent pink and the photo of the little dog and her owner printed from my own photograph by Social Print Studio, as well as a New York themed washi tape.

If this was a book (and it isn't!) perhaps I should go looking for her but I would rather she retained her air of mystique, and I will remain wondering about her, her life, and her little dog.

Art Cards 80 - 88

Here is the latest batch of nine artcards. They are part of my #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Finally some art on this blog again after a week of mainly photographs, and without many words. I have several deadlines that I need to meet and also 2 quilts to finish that have lingered in the studio so long that I'm getting fed up with the sight of them. I know that in order not to lose my momentum they need to be cleared of the table. I finished one yesterday, and photographed it this morning and the other one is getting the binding put on today and then needs some beading. The end is in sight!

Large slices of the day are taken up with dog walking and playing so it's only when Flora takes a nap that work gets done. I am loving our dog walks in Penicuik Estate and playing with her is a joy so I don't begrudge any of it and simply enjoy the moments.

It is also good though to cross some stuff of my To Do list (only to add something else!) and this is my contribution to the prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures that read: include curvy or round elements. I'm in my element when I use circles so the choice wasn't hard.

The background was done with the following stencils from The Crafters Workshop: TCW2024 Rubber Bands Frags, TCW278s Mini Circle Explosion (designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer), TCW2038 TinyRing Bits (also by Julie) and TCW426 Cut Circles.

|I then punched out circles from a pink previously gelli plate printed sheet of paper and collaged that into the centre of the circles, and outlined it with water soluble oil pastels. I stamped on the quotation: What goes around, comes around. It envelops the feeling of karma.

A Precious Priviledge

The prompt on Colour Me Positive 2017 this week was: Appreciate what you have. I used a quotation by Marcus Aurelius which encapsulates that for me. Those old Romans knew a thing or two!

I played with some of my stencil collection from various sources for this spread. The original background was achieved with the L449 Blooming Where Planted stencil by Stencilgirl Products. I added collage to that with Tim Holtz's Postale tissue wrap as well as some washi tape,  and then over sprayed the pages with text using Old French Script stencil by Americana Decor from DecorArt.  I stamped on leaves (from a rubber stamp, no idea where it came from) and also added some circles with the Ring Hopscotch art foamie designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

I then blocked out the areas I particularly liked, using the black Art Graphite Pencil from Global Art and darkened the surrounding areas with blue paint. The text was printed out, glued on,  and outlined with a gold marker that I also put to use edging the pages.

Finally I used white, gold and fluorescent paint to add marks with the TCW2030 Burlap Bits stencil from The Crafter's Workshop, also designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

I hope some of the pictures will give you an idea of the wonderful shine the gold paint (by Pebeo) provides.

Love Winter

The prompt for this week on Colour Me Positive 2017 was: Love. What else could it be on a week that contains Valentine's Day. I'm as fond of people (and dogs!) loving me as all human beings are,  but Valentine's Day leaves me kind of cold so I wanted to interpret the prompt a different way and instead I'm celebrating my love for winter. I used to intensely dislike this time of year, before spring and with cold and snow on offer, but over the years I have come to love it more and more. There is something very beautiful about a white world, in which the bare branches are clearly silhouetted against the sky, snowdrops and hellebores are starting to flower and a little dog is cavorting in the snow.

 As luck would have it I found the perfect quotation in a magazine. It reads:

"This secret beauty I have found

When morning sun came streaming down.

A golden glow like a celestial crown

in nature's winter garden"

(D. S. James, Nature's Winter Garden)

I started with collage using vintage images and text and some magazine imagery too. To that mix I added Distress Crayons and acrylic paints as well as acrylic inks. I used a lot of stencils to get the effect I wanted. Here is the list:

from Stencilgirl Products: S433 Amsterdam 6 designed by Nathalie Kalbach (on deli paper and then collaged), and M139 Diamonds and Triangles Mini, designed by Andrew Borloz and finally L464 Barb Wire, designed by MaryBeth Shaw herself, the owner of Stencilgirl.

from The Crafter's Workshop TCW2024 Rubber Bands Frags and TCW2038 TinyRingBits

I outlined with white and black markers before spraying with Perfect Pearls Turquoise mister. You can just about see the glittering effects on some of the pictures.

I hand wrote the words: Love Winter, onto the page. There is more going on on these pages than my love of winter and it's worth remembering that this is an art journal: stuff gets personal from time to time and there are things I prefer not to share. What is on the pages will remind me of what those things are without revealing them to you!

This is the very last spread in my 8 x 8" Dylusions journal although there is still one that I haven't shared with you yet. It's a project for Stencilgirl Products and you can expect to see it on the 27th Feb. As you can tell I don't use new journals for a new year but simply work in a journal till it is full and then grab another one from the shelves. Yes, I have a huge collection of as yet empty sketchbooks. Doesn't everyone? It makes me happy to look at them and anticipate what is going to materialize on those mostly white pages.