Life Book week 9 - overpainting

I missed out the week 9 class which was due a few weeks ago as I was struggling with it. I'm the type of person who either 'feels' it or doesn't and for quite a while I really wasn't feeling it.
The technique for the class was to take a magazine photo of a face and to gesso over it. You then paint over the faint image to create something that has a more pop-art feel to it. I don't buy fashion magazines so that was my first problem so I had to find something online and print it on a laser printer so it could be altered. The printed image wrinkled like mad when it was adhered to the watercolour paper and so that's when I stopped again! I finally forced myself to sit and finish this in one last push and it was surprisingly easy. I struggle with drawing realistic faces so having a reference image to work off made it very much easier. I could follow the placement of features and use the shadows that were there already. It was simple to create a natural real looking face.
If you find faces hard to draw and/or paint then you might want to give this technique a go. It's very simple and a good starting point for drawing. I'm pleased now I've finished mine, now on to this week's class!

Storing loose journal pages

All of the classes for the Life Book class are created on a single sheet of watercolour paper which will be bound together to make a journal later in the year.  The downside of this is that I had a rapidly growing pile of art that had nowhere to live and it was making me uncomfortable.  I came across this birdcage a few weeks ago and it has been sitting on the side in the lounge just looking prettily empty.  For some reason the Life Book ages came to mind yesterday and I had a flash of inspiration that had me running to see if they would fit.  It was as if they had been designed to go together!!  Its so lovely that they have a proper place to live for the time being and that they can been seen - the colourful pages are quite intriguing and draw people in to have a closer look!  This loveliness now sits in pride of place on our sideboard in the lounge and I have to say it looks pretty gorgeous.
So the moral of this story is that I don't need to buy fancy storage specifically designed for your projects all the time, taking a look around what we already had meant that I found something that suited my needs perfectly and cost me nothing!

Whimsy angel

One of the things I'm enjoying at the moment is creating these whimsy girls in my art journal. They come fairly easy and are a great way for me to warm up into creating. They are also a way for me to express myself, get things down onto paper and enjoy making stuff.
While all of this art journaling malarkey is a bit different from scrapbooking at first glance, it's still 'cutting and sticking', playing with colour and design principles. I think that's why I'm also in my element here, it's coming from the same place. I also think its making me a better scrapbooker, it's inspiring me to create differently using different mediums and materials and that's exciting. So please indulge me through these art journal posts, there's so much fun to be had!!

Life Book week 10 - Heart Connection

This week on the Life Book art journaling course we celebrated the connections of our hearts - everything and everyone that we love and treasure in our lives.  Its hard to see but the background is made up of at least eight different layers and processes.  Within these layers is some really meaningful writing that you can just catch glimpses of is you look carefully.  I played with alcohol and acrylic paint to create amazing interactions, collaged with vintage book pages and sheet music, stamped, dripped, gessoed, stamped some more, added tapes, painted, sprayed - basically you name it, I did a little bit of it.  If you stop and look closely at the background in real life you can see each process but its so subtle it all works together as one.
The key technique for this class was creating little rolled love letters which were then formed into a heart shape.  As usual, I approached mine in a different way to Tam's sample in my construction and was really happy with the result.  Each one of those rolls contains a love letter to someone really special to me, they will never read them but that's not important here, its the intention behind this process that really matters to me.  I loved creating this and each step of the way gave real pleasure.  I added the gorgeous wide May Arts ribbon to tie my heart together - we have this in the shop in both the black/cream and the green/white versions (yummy!!).
Those of you who are eagle-eyed may have noticed that I've missed posting about the week 9 class.  This is because I'm struggling with it a little and haven't really got to grips with the idea behind the techniques.  I'll be working on it over the next few days I'm sure!

Life book 2013 - week 3

This week's lesson was by Christy Tomlinson of 'SheArt' fame and continued the theme of new beginnings that seems to have run through the projects so far. She showed us how she creates a collaged background and I had great fun sticking down scraps of patterned paper, stickers, diecuts and ephemera including my Asda shopping receipt. It a great way to recycle stuff and I'm looking at junk mail in a whole new light!
The key to bringing everything together into one cohesive background is to scrape gesso over the whole page. This highlights the layers, mutes colours and adds texture. Once the gesso was dry I added smears acrylic paints, shimmer mediums and inks using my fingers. It felt really great to get my hands messy but I couldn't quite use my palm as a palette as Christy does! I stamped words and added swirls of alcohol ink and splotches of Glimmer Glam, anything goes with art journaling and its incredibly free. I just decided to keep my colour palette limited to yellow/orange/red with touches of green.
The main focus of this week was 'new blooms', creating new growth to take us into the new year. Christy talked about taking lessons we have learned over the past year into the new year to help us grow but become something slightly different. Like a dandelion sends its seeds out with all it's genetic code from its past but it still grows into something slightly different and unique. I don't tend to dwell on all of the personal growth aspects of the classes but I thought that this was a cool concept and so I wanted to incorporate a dandelion into my page somehow.
The video showed us how to create flowers using tissue paper and foil plus a few paints, sprays, stamps and stencils. The result was a fabulous sheet of foil covered with layers of colour and texture that we could use to die cut, mould or tear flowers from. I created shapes that evoked dandelion seeds to me and added fluffy fibres to add lightness. I made a main flower at the bottom of the page and then added three seeds blowing away in the wind and taking my dreams with them. It was so easy and fun to make these flowers and I can definitely see me making more in a range of shapes and sizes - I have three more sheets of foil ready to use! This week's class was refreshing and what's more, I'm still keeping up!

Life Book 2013 - catching up week 1

I'm quite surprised at how compelling I am finding the Life Book class.  I came to a bit of an impasse with the second project for week 1 which was about creating a journal page about your journey into 2013.  It was to include your hopes and aspirations for the coming year and also celebrate your current blessings.  Tam drew a road with herself in a car and her hair blowing free in the wind and she drove towards the sun.  The concept made sense to me but I really didn't 'feel' the whole road idea!  It stopped me in my tracks and so I decided to skip past it and carry on with the week 2 project.

While I was stuck I got on with creating a background for the page using the fabulous vintage sheet music my wonderful father-in-law found for me at an auction.  I covered the page with the sheet music torn into pieces and then scrape gesso over the surface to soften and blend the pieces together.  I played then by adding smears of shimmery paints in white, gold, red and green.  I rubbed peach and cream acrylic paints on with my fingers which was very therapeutic!  In the meantime I kept ruminating on the whole journey idea and was drawn to a ladder or a staircase but also wanted it to have a natural feel.  This evolved into a tree with a spiral staircase leading up into its branches.

I cut leaves from watercolour paper, painted them and then wrote my hopes and dreams onto them.  To make them less prominent on the page I smeared shimmer paint over each leaf to create a cloudy shimmery group of leaves.  I found a Tim Holtz 'journey' stamp in my stash (another one I didn't know that I had!) and stamped it onto a scrap of painted watercolour paper which I cut freehand into a heart.  I punched flowers out of the remaining scrap paper and wrote my blessings onto them.  I added these to the bottom of the page, grounded at the start of my journey into this new year.  A bit of doodling and I was done, as soon as I was in the zone I couldn't stop and I'm so pleased with the finished piece.

The new lesson was released yesterday and I'm already itching to get going on it!  I have a feeling that this is going to be a very creative year!!

Life Book - week 2 project

The second week's lesson in the Life Book course was about creating an art doll symbolising our true intentions for the coming year.  The video for the lesson was fun and easy to follow and it encouraged us to use our stamps and combine them in different ways to create a doll.

I have never created anything like this before because quite frankly I have never had the time or seen the point! However, going through the process made me realise a few things - I have waaaaay more stamps than I had realised, I have some pretty cool stamps that I have NEVER used and I tend to use the same stamps over and over but in the same way!  Creating this art doll made me stop and think about what I want for the year and part of that is to just enjoy the process of being creative.  When craft is your work there is a real danger of the fun being sucked out of it and I really don't want that to happen.  I find it hard to find the time to craft for myself and something like this would usually be way outside of my comfort zone but thats exactly why I need to do it.  So I am celebrating the process of being arty and creative as my intention for the year.

I broke out my Dylusions sprays for the background in yellow and red but they were so intense they dominated everything and so I decided to add gesso over the top.  One of the cool attributes of these sprays is that they reactivate when wet so adding the gesso meant that they blended into it to become a much softer version of the initial colours.  I much preferred the soft background and the gesso gave a great 'tooth' for other mediums later on.  I stamped my images onto plain copy paper and cut out each one.  I then had loads of fun combining things, turning them upside down and coming up with something that I liked.  I glued them with Matte Medium and when they were dry I added colour with watercolour pencils and crayons.  I printed a couple of quotes out and added the cut-out words around the edges of the page - the theme of the quotes was 'change' which is my word of the year and it felt apt to add that here.  The final touches were made with fine pens to add little details that made the design my own and then I had to stop or I would have tinkered for ages as I was having so much fun!

If you just want to have some fun, play freely with your supplies or want a warm-up exercise to get your mojo going, I can highly recommend that you give creating an art doll a go!  It doesn't need to take very long and its so satisfying, no need to be Da Vinci or Damien Hirst!!

Art Journaling

I have decided to treat myself to something very special - a year long art journaling class!! It feels very indulgent to do something that is entirely for me, not work but I decided that I needed to treat myself. When I say treat myself I don't mean anything wildly expensive, the entire year of weekly classes was just £60 - talk about a bargain!!
I've been attracted by the world of art journaling for quite some time for both its the fabulous range io techniques used and for its therapeutic aspects. There's been a lot going on in my life and it will be good to have a place to vent. Think old school diary meets art class and you'll get an idea of what it's all about.
There are masses of online courses available right now, some of them are free. If you are looking for a free course try 'Creative Jump Start 2013' hosted by Natalie Kalbach. Running throughout January this course offers daily classes to kick off your creativity. Obviously it's already running but you can access all of the previous classes at any time and the group of designers involved is really great.
If you're up for something longer term then you really can't go wrong with 'Life Book 2013' run by Tamara Laporte at www.willowing.ning.com  The weekly classes are created by a terrific collection of designers - over 20 in total! There's a great mix of styles and techniques with videos and PDFs supporting each class. There's also a forum, a Facebook group and a Flickr group for the course - all this for £60, now that really is a great deal!!
Our first class was to create a 'fairy art mother', someone to watch over you and support you while you create. The key was to make her look kind and compassionate which is not easy when you flunked art classes at school!! I pushed through the pain of drawing a face that I could tolerate and ended up with something I really like. Here she is...... be gentle with me, it's the first class!! Lol x