This week I started to fill a book with patterns and doodles just to see how many ideas I can come up with. I want to fill pages with stripe ideas and then more with dot ideas until I can’t think of any more, then fill some extra pages.

For this I am using an old library book which I bought for 25 cents from our library’s sale cart. ‘The Shelf Book’ is my pattern sketchbook, I will try anything in it, it is not precious.  So if I don’t like a page, never mind, turn to the next page and carry on.  It is very freeing to be honest, I have only just started to fill the book and hopefully by the end I will have a nice collection of ideas for journal pages, backgrounds, colouring sheets and maybe a post card or two.

I started a new spread in a new sketchbook too which is a wonderful thing.  I am so happy to have filled one sketchbook and to be onto the next already.

For this page I started with my circle gelli plate and a mesh bag which lemons came in which  gave the texture to my gelli circles.  Once that had all dried, I painted simple stripes with watery gouache and a sumi brush over the whole page.  I think sumi brushes are one of my favorite things, I just love to paint and write with them.

Now I need to decide what else to add to this page.

 This new sketchbook is a Ranger Dylusions Creative Journal and it has nice card-stock  paper, lots of pages and a pocket for keeping important journal stuff in. It opens nice and flat so that double page spreads are easy to work on.  I usually work over two pages at a time so this is an important sketchbook feature for me. Yes, I am the one in the art store opening sketchbook pages wide to see if they stay or at least can be persuaded to stay open!

I hope you are having a creative time too! Happy Thursday x