This too shall pass

Surprisingly we have already reached the second month of the year and it's time to share my next Stencilgirl Project with you. No idea what happened to January but it felt like being in a snow drift.

February is such a non-descript month. All the festivities from January are safely behind us and spring is still some distance away. Here in the Scottish Borders February tends to be a grey and wet month with the occasional white (snow) highlight. I have to say that it started white this year in the shape of both snow and ice! And there is more on the way apparently.

I usually feel melancholy and sad during this month, and as a reaction my art becomes more colourful because I long for brightness. That’s how this project originated with the faces looking both ways, back towards winter and forwards to spring.

As usual when I am Stencilgirl's Guest Designer you can find a full step-by-step tutorial for this spread (in a 9 x 9" journal) on their Stencilgirl Talk site, together with information about all the stencils I used.

I stamped on the text as you can see and was forced to use a variety of alphabet stamp sets I have, because not a single one seemed to be complete. HoweverI have taken to this mixed alphabet look a lot, so you will see more of it.

If you are a regular reader of this blog (Thank You!) you may realise that I have used face images before but always from magazines. It's such a treat to now have a stencil that gives you the face silhouette ready to use. No tedious cutting out involved! It is from the large stencil of the December 2017 Stencilgirl Club. That means it's an exclusive stencil for Club members only. But you can still acquire it by joining the Club (and get monthly issues of gorgeous stencils, not available in the Stencilgirl shop but only to members) and ordering from the back catalogue!

Art Card 1

The idea was to just make backgrounds for my 3 x 3" square art cards at the moment for the #365somethings2018 project but the temptation to finish at least one proved to be too great so here is the first card of 2018. Only 364 more to go!

 This one involved ink drippings, mark making with graphic sticks and white markers, glueing on tissue paper with text as well as adhering actual vintage text. And of course a postage stamp. I think stamps might figure large on the cards!

It's satisfying to have one done, but now it will be back to backgrounds! And by the way for those of you who want to know, I have photographed the card on a Alison Glass designed fabric (see top picture).

Here comes the Sun

If only the sun was coming! I could really do with it but instead it's a damp and grey day so I will have to content myself with these sunny pages. They were inspired by the latest prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures that read: "Here comes the Sun".  This spread is also heavy influenced again by MaryBeth Shaw's lesson on Creative Jumpstart 2017. I'm working in the notebook I mentioned in earlier posts and to which I now refer as the Peacock journal because it features sparkling peacocks on the cover. To make the pages sturdier I'm gluing them together as well as added a hefty dose of gesso before I begin to work on them.

I used collage with vintage papers, tissue wrap, paper napkins, scrapbook paper, a postage stamp, and vintage  textured wallpaper. Then Distress markers and paint were added with stencil S314 Entangling Threads from Stencilgirl Products, as well as S191 Open Buildings. The sun was cut from that textural wallpaper and I added some gold accents as well as sparkles (sadly you will not be able to see this on the pictures).

 I also used a mica spray in red such as on the left hand side of the picture above. 

 Some of the stencilled images were outlined in white. 

It's in the Detail

This is a small detail of a background I made as a teaching sample. Collage with a piece of Tim Holtz's tissue wrap was used as well as stencilling with a variety of stencils. I aslo collaged on pieces from vintage books.

Transform the World

Today is my 6th anniversary of blipping which means that for six years I have posted a daily picture on the Blipfoto site without interruptions. Not just that but I have enjoyed every minute of my blip adventure. Finding a picture was easier on some days than others but it has never been difficult. I love having a camera in my hand, both to take pictures of the garden, where we live, where I go and there is always my art too. What I am finding more and more difficult is keeping up with all my friends on blip, leaving comments etc. even though I love looking at all the pictures. So I'm going to scale that back, and if by chance I miss posting a daily blip I will accept that it simply wasn't meant to be on that day.

By amazing coincidence the theme on Colour Me Positive this week is: Community. The universe was definitely smiling down on me!

As there wasn't much time to make a completely new spread from scratch, what with being away teaching and the arrival of Flora I decided to use some pages I did to show my students on Tuesday. I thought it would be a good idea to demonstrate that you didn't have to use a dedicated art journal such as the Dylusions one but instead used the sketchbook they were already working in as part of the Creative Sketchbook course which was an ring bound A4 sized one from SeaWhite.

The pages are great for sketching but not ideal to use with acrylic paint. So I started (as I usually do anyway!) by gessoing and I also made sure that the adjoining pages on both sides of the spread I'm working on are blank and after finishing the spread I glue the spread to those pages which makes them a lot more sturdy and also straightens them out.

The background of this spread was more or less done before class and for the challenge I outlined some of the elements and added the quotation that reads: "Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world" (Howard Zinn). It combines what Blipfoto stands for and also reflects the Community theme on Colour Me Positive.

 Techniques used: collage, rubber stamping, stencilling

Materials: for the collage I used old scrapbook paper featuring roses, wrapping paper, Tim Holtz tissue wrap and a handmade paper with a little flower pattern which can only just be seen. I also  collaged with deli paper onto which I had stencilled a pattern. For the rubber stamping I used a small detail from a stamping sheet from ImpressMeNow. I also used the following stencils, all from Stencilgirl Products: L435 Ancient Marks (on the collaged deli paper),  medium and small stencil from October 2014 Stencilgirl Club, small one from the October 2015 Club and also the small one from the August 2015 Club set.

I'm very grateful to have been a part of the Blip community for the last 6 years and it's good to know that together the members have ensured Blip's survival into the future. Having paid for a year's membership recently you will find my daily pictures there as well as here, hopefully for years to come.

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.

Determination

I'm once again lagging behind in posting the spreads done for Wanderlust 2016 (done in the Vintage Vanity Art Journal by Prima) even though the art itself has been made quite some time ago. These pages were done for the first prompt in August and it was: "What do you like the most about yourself?" Talk about an easy question!. I had a long and hard think about this one.

The answer I finally came up with is: Determination. My will power is both my best and my worst quality, if that makes any sense. My best because it makes me meet deadlines, complete quilts on schedule, finish any project I undertake. And my worst because it causes me to carry on with projects that would be much better abandoned or given up for better ways to use my time. I usually pursue such projects, once I take them on, to the bitter end, and believe me, some of those ends have been very bitter indeed. I have decided to do far less online classes and the like next year but of course what I should do is give up on them right this minute. Won't happen, though.

That said I will definitely carry on with Wanderlust.  They have been the classes that I feel have given me lots of new information and insights as well as being very well organized. I love that the video lessons can be downloaded and saved so that you can look at them at any time.The new series of classes for 2017 can now be bought at a reduced  early bird rate here.

 Techniques used for this spread are: collage, stencilling, rubber stamping

Materials used are: acrylic paints, vintage newspaper, Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap Melange,  Nathalie Kalbach's rubberstamp set Grunge Cling and I also used the free stencil enclosed with this set, the large stencil from the June 2015 Crop Circles set from Stencilgirl as well as the smallest stencil from April 2015 Feeling Groovy.

Finally I loved finding out this morning that I'm featured on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's September newsletter. You can see and read it here.

Begin Again

This page looks ominously topical but it was made last Saturday the 18th June for The Documented Life Project 2016. Our June theme remains: Unravelling the past - embracing new beginnings. The art challenge instructed us to use tissue paper. Did I subconsciously expect what the UK would do on Thursday? Yes, even on a conscious level I had a strong feeling it might happen. And now that it has, there is only one way to go: to begin again. Although to do it fearlessly would be extremely foolhardy.

There now, no more politics on this blog, I promise. And it will be an easy promise to keep as I myself will try and not pay any more attention to events in order to safeguard my sanity. Art, beauty and flowers will be the order of the day.

For this spread I started using L435 Ancient Marks from Stencilgirl, as well as S372 Brick Factory. This last one has become a favourite since it arrived about a week ago and you have seen it used in other spreads already.

Then I added the required tissue paper in the shape of Tim Holtz's tissue wrap. This one is called Postale.
The spread (in the 8 x 8" Dylusions art journal) needed a focal point and I found this on the S288 Pretty as a Peacock stencil. I used black Liquitex ink spray to apply her.

I wrote down some quotation about our new beginnings theme that seemed appropriate. Here they are: "Every day is a new beginning, take a deep breath and start again", "The obstacles of your past can become the gateways to new beginnings" ( Ralph Blum) and "Don't let your past dictate who you are but let it be a part of who you will become".  We can but hope!

Finally I stencilled on the large words as shown from L258 Uplifting Words stencil and outlined them with a white permanent marker. This spread is uploaded just in time as the new prompt will appear this afternoon although we will still be sticking with the June theme. Time to gesso a new spread in the journal so that I can start as soon as it is posted online.