Art Cards 324 - 332

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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

Art Cards 315 - 323

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 20

As you can tell below, our latest prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal told us to us office supplies to embellish our pages. I used little round tags as well as washi tape. All my spreads for #thestencilfiedjournal are done in a 9 x 14cm art journal.

I started by making the background, using acrylic paint with the large stencil from the September Stencilgirl®Club set and I added rubber stamping as well as collage with tissue wrap and vintage text. I stencilled on top of the previous layers using blue acrylic paint and  Stencilgirl® L471 Hamburg, designed by Nathalie Kalbach.

The little round tags were coloured on a gelli plate, rubber stamped and then stencilled with white paint using stencil L606 Soulful Scribbles Flourishes, also by Stencilgirl®. The pattern was outlined and then I added words to each tag. The tags were adhered to the background using the string they come with and washi tape.

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 15

Our latest prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal asked us to add an envelope to our pages, and stencil it.

I first made a background for the envelope and used a variety of paints, collage with tissue wrap (by Tim Holtz) as well as removing the paint again through the large stencil from the October 2016 Stencilgirl Club.

I then remembered I had some vintage envelopes and keeping my fingers crossed I hadn't destashed them, went looking for them. They were eventually located in one of my vintage postage stamp albums and I choose the one with the stamp that best matched the background colourwise.

 After glueing the envelope into my 9 x 14cm journal I added stencilling by using stencil L646 Floral Mandala Lace, also by Stencilgirl Products. Using their stencils is one of the conditions of #thestencilfiedjournal project. The project is an initiative by Tina Walker who also produced the beautiful tags with the prompts.

The quotation was done on transparent tape and a Dymo writer. It's by Byron and it says: "Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company".

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 14

You can see the latest prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal below. It was good to make a simply journal spread without bathing or stamping on the journal I'm working on (sized 9 x 14cm). So I grabbed the chance to use some of my favourite colours as well as my favourite quotation (from the painter Magritte).

The background was made using rubber stamping (stamp designed by France Papillon), collage with tissue wrap (by Tim Holtz) and a paper napkin, plus of course stencilling using the following stencils by Stencilgirl Products: L439 Stripes, L501 Letters on Box as well as the large stencil from the August 2015 Stencilgirl Club. 

I had already made this spread before the journal dived into the tea but fortunately it stood up very well to all the dampness! If you want to see all the spreads I've made so far, simply click on thestencilfiedjournal tag below this post or in the sidebar.

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 13

After dipping our journal in tea, it was a  relief to only be asked to step on it! I made a background using acrylic paints, the large stencil from the October 2016 Stencilgirl  Products®Club and some tissue wrap.

 Once I was happy with that I grabbed a pair of my crocs and covered the sole of one of them with white matte emulsion paint. I put stencil L566 Woodcut Blossoms Inverted on my journal and then stepped on it hard.

The result was quite satisfyingly textural as you can see above. The shape of the shoe was outlined with a black Stabilo All pencil.

I had already found the quotation (by Chief Seattle) and it was added by rubber stamping with a variety of alphabet stamps on vintage paper, tearing it and glueing it in.

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 9

We are past the half way point of #thestencilfiedjournal project and have reached Prompt 9. You can see it below.

This was a hard one for me but I found a more or less willing participant to stencil on the orange flowers after I had made the background of this spread (done in a 9 x 14cm journal). The background was done in green and pink, using all the stencils from the June 2018 Stencilgirl®Club, combined with tissue wrap and a postage stamp.

 After the orange flowers were added I found a quotation I liked and added that to the mix too.

It's probably fair to say I'm not totally sold on the colours on these pages (rather subdued for my taste) but they do suit the words very well. I just had to add that bit of turquoise into the flowers centres though (from a gelli plate printed paper).

Art Cards 197 - 205

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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.

Art Cards 143 - 151

 Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards 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.

You will have seen some of these cards before as they were part of the set of 9 that I made as my May Project for Stencilgirl® Products in my capacity as monthly Guest Designer. You can therefore find a step-by-step tutorial for theseon the Stencilgirl®Talk webpage. I am feeding all these cards gradually into my stream of numbered cards for each day of 2018.

Art Cards 134 - 142

Nine days seem to have past (where have they gone?!) and here is the next set of 9 art cards to keep them company. Remember these cards 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.

You will have seen some of these cards before as they were part of the set of 9 that I made as my May Project for Stencilgirl® Products in my capacity as monthly Guest Designer. You can therefore find a step-by-step tutorial for these on the Stencilgirl®Talk webpage. I am feeding all these cards gradually into my stream of numbered cards for each day of 2018.

In fact I tend to make them in sets as far as the backgrounds are concerned and then add details as and when I have time, trying to keep ahead of the day I need to upload them. It's fun!.

Art Cards 125 - 133

Here is the latest batch of nine art cards. 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.

Art Cards 50 - 61

Here is the latest batch of art cards done as part of the #365somethings2018 project. I'm pleased to say I have now caught up on my Instagram feed and am posting each card on a daily basis on the day of the year it is. I will only reveal them here in batches of 9 or as in this case 12.

They are all sized 3 x 3" and I'm doing something every day on the cards, such as making backgrounds, stencilling, rubber stamping, adding collage etc. At the end of the year I hope to have 365 finished cards! For pictures of each individual card please follow me on Instagram.

A is for ART

The prompt this week on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was to : use the letter A. In my book A always stands for ART so that's the road I took in my A5 sized journal. I knew I had a rubber stamp with the word ART on it (from the ARTspecially for you magazine) and began by making a fitting background for that. 

I used stencil S501 Letters on Box Stencil by Stencilgirl Products as well as S526 Shape Shifter and a variety of acrylic paints. When I was happy with the spread I added collage with vintage text from old English and French dictionaries, as well as tissue wrap with a French themed paper (from 7Gypsies). The final collage was the face that came from a painting featuring Margaret of Austria by Jean Hay, also known as The Master of Moulins dating to approx. 1490 (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY).

Some mark making was added with a variety of markers as well as dripping acrylic paint (white and blue) down the pages. I also sprayed on some circles through sequin waste.

The Wing of Madness

Our prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week was to: Wing It. As often happens I already had a quotation in my notebook that suited this perfectly. It reads: "I have felt the wind on the wing of madness" (Charles Baudelaire). And yes, those flutterings are familiar!

The page was started by making the background using a variety of paints with the S264 Doodle It Tornado Flowers stencil from Stencilgirl Products. At the time of making I didn't yet know that tornado Irma was going to hit Florida today.

Once I was happy which how the background looked I collaged on pieces of tissue wrap (by Tim Holtz) featuring butterflies and music sheets. I then stamped on the face image  and other textural elements from the LPCO11 stampset by PaperArtsy, designed by Lynne Perrella. I coloured in some of the butterflies with watercolour pencils and then added an extra butterfly from a wrapping paper. I felt that butterfly needed a person in the middle of it to echo the stamped face and I found her in an advert in Vogue. Would you believe she was already in sticker form so I just had to adhere her.

The words of the quotation were also found in magazines and glued on as shown. They were outlined with a Stablilo All black pencil.

Illustrate the Light

This page in the 9 x 9" Bee Paper Company art journal was made some time ago but I had forgotten to share it here. In this journal I art journal just for me, without prompts or preconceived ideas. I simply start and see where it leads me. As a result some of the pages that result are deeply personal and I'm not going to share the back story to them. They are made for me, to keep in touch with how I'm feeling on any given day.

 I will share a bit about the techniques and materials use as far as I can still remember them. The page started with collage, using tissue wrap, vintage images and text, and some old scrapbook papers. To that mix I added rubber stamping using EEA02 rubber stamping set designed by Everything Art for PaperArtsy.

 The small circles were added using blue permanent spray ink and a small circular stencil from The Crafters Workshop.

The vintage text is put together cutting out separate sentences from an old vintage book that I use quite often for this purpose called Proverbial Philosophy by M. F. Tupper published back in the 19th Century. I cut out sentences that speak to me and then try and put them together into a meaningful whole. It's an intuitive process and it's in the words that I find the thoughts that preoccupy me at the time of making.

High Flyer

Online challenges sometimes spark off new ideas which is why I like participating. Some time ago one of the prompts was to use colours you don't usually apply in your work. For me they tend to be the dark ones. However once I had made a spread for that particular challenge I realized that I loved the result so I thought I would share a spread done in such colours today, in my capacity as monthly Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products. As always it is such a pleasure to be asked and I loved putting this spread together.

Occasionally it is hard to think up new ideas and at other times such as for this spread I just start and see where it gets me. The start here were the colours and a piece of treasured wrapping paper which just seemed to good to use for wrapping. It featured those gorgeous birds as well as geometrical patterns.

Towards the end I simply opened a magazine to find some suitable text and the words High Flyer were there right on the first page I opened. What a treat.

You can find a full step-by-step tutorial including a list of all the stencils I used (quite a few!) on the Stencilgirl Talk website today. This is the only online place where I share such instructions so I invite you to take a look. You should do so anyway as this website is full of entirely free tutorials on how to use stencils in all kinds of wonderfully inventive ways.

Wish You Were Here

Who was a lucky girl this month? I was asked to be a Stencilgirl Voice for August too (I was one in July) and that meant that I got to see the August Stencilgirl Club stencils well in advance and work with them. And what a treat that proved to be. The set this month not only included a gorgeous background stencil designed by MaryBeth Shaw (the owner of Stencilgirl Products) but the main set is dedicated to travel. It includes a large star stencil and also the stars itself that can be used as masks (which I did here), as well as a small stencil with a sun image (and again the sun itself as mask). The medium stencil was my favourite of all, featuring elements of a vintage postcard with the text: wish you were here. All these were designed by Mary Nasser with whom I share a taste for travel related art.

I had a wonderful time putting these pages together. I used MaryBeth's stencil for the background that started with lots of collage featuring my favourite destinations such as Venice, Paris, the US and even the UK. The collage came from travel brochures as well as from Tim Holtz's and 7Gypsies tissue wrap and a handmade paper with graphic imagery.

I then used the stars (that came in multiple sizes) as masks and rubbed paint off the edges of them to make them stand out. For that I applied Nuvo Embellishment Mousse, a new (to me) paint that truly looks good enough to eat (don't!). It has a subtle glimmer with is so good to look at.  I also used parts of the star stencil as a proper stencil and with gold paint added some of the smaller sized ones to the pages. I worked in a ringbound A4 sized art journal by Seawhite.

Then elements of the postcard themed stencil were used to add words as well as airmail stickers and post marks to the pages. Of course I had to add an Italian postage stamp too.

This turned out to be one of my own favourite spreads ever. I just love how the colours work together and the combination of all those exotic destinations. Makes me want to go and pack a suitcase!