All posts filed under: Art Journaling

The ‘Artist’ Zine.

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I have never collaborated in making a zine before, in fact I have only ever seen a zine on the inter webs, never in real life. I was thrilled when I was asked to join in with a zine being made by the Zine Squad who are a group of art journaling ninjas who leap over the rooftops in the dead of night to gather ideas and techniques for their next zine.  So to be included in this group was a real pleasure, even if I need to work on my ninja moves! What I really enjoyed about the zine was that it came to me from Vanessa and Julia who had already worked on some pages.  The idea is to make some new pages or work with other peoples pages while leaving room for the next artist to work her magic. It felt like I could very easily ruin the whole darn thing which took me a few days to get over.  I mean this zine was heading off for other people to work …

Get Messy Art Journal Season of Music week 6.

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We are at the final week of the Season of Music in the art journaling community of Get Messy. I really connected with just listening to songs and writing down on index cards some sketchbook page ideas. Colours, shapes, images and a line from the song usually. So I decided to randomly listen to some songs and see what I could make from them. For these pages I used credit cards to add colour, gelli plate prints I had already made, images from a bird book and some sketching. They are super simple, only two or three layers and I am happy with how they have turned out. Creative Every Day! Happy Thursday x

‘I Like’ Friday

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Welcome to September! Blimey didn’t August fly by. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are upon us and Halloween supplies are appearing in the shops. I though I would share a few things I have been liking lately – Creative Bug draw-a-day challenge was a success for me in August, I made at least part of an art journal page every day following prompts supplied by Dawn De Vries Sokol in a daily video on Creative Bug. Follow my progress at CatsEatDogsMakes on Instagram. September is a little different in that they have a competition running for a new instructor. So I am going to have a go and use prompts by Jennifer Orkin Lewis who is August Wren on Instagram and well worth following if you like gorgeous paintings. Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst is such a good read. If you are looking for a good book, I would recommend this highly. Very character driven and a great story so far (I am about three quarters through). I have had Art Inc by Lisa Congdon from the library for a couple of …

Weekly Photos 34/52

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1. I have been painting faces with my sumi brush and india ink lots lately, I like this lady. 2. This gaggle of daisies has followed the one from last week. 3-4. My gelli plate has seen lots of action this week too, I liked making these rainbows in non rainbow colours! 5. I spotted these sappy pinecones on the trail. 6. More gelli plate printing, this time I have transferred my painting faces obsession onto the gelli plate. 7. Discarded air fresheners. I don’t like the smell of a new car and certainly would not want a blue tree which smelled like one.  Not sure about Black Ice either to be honest. I hope you had a good week. Happy Monday x

Get Messy Art Journal. 10 songs, 10 minutes, 10 pages.

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Let me just clarify that I didn’t make 10 pages in 10 minutes although that sounds like a future challenge! What I did though is I loved this challenge. It was to listen to one minute each of ten songs which you have chosen (or  you could listen to random songs) and note down ideas and lyrics for a future art journal page. I used index cards for each song. As a non journaling art journaler, I don’t usually include quotes or lyrics in my pages, so I decided to embrace this challenge and listen for some lyrics to use from each song.  This is surprisingly difficult when you only have one minute of a song to draw from. So I have to admit that I cheated on a couple and had to go back and make sure I had got the lyrics correct, I mean if I am going to quote someone, I had better get the words in the right order! Some of the songs I could barely make out some of the …

Art Journaling Supplies I Can’t do Without.

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Art supplies might very well be my favorite thing to shop for.  They are always colorful, always useful, no worries that they won’t fit (they always fit somewhere!), always make me happy.  I literally (not really, that would be weird) skip home from the art shop.  Maybe I am skipping in my head though as I think about my new supplies and how I can introduce them to my existing supplies. Some of my essential supplies don’t even come from the art or craft store, they come from estate sales or thrift shops.  I am talking about the paper and even some of the sketchbooks I use. Oftentimes I will print on paper from an old book or music script, or I will use the whole book as a sketchbook. Another paper I adore is dry deli paper which is not from the art store either (I get mine from Amazon).  It is the paper which you pick out your pastries at the supermarket with or that your sandwich might be wrapped in.  I am …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Music. Week 2.

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I just realized how different these two pages are!  Both from the season of music and both influenced by a close time period.  However that time was the eighties and when I was a teen and my taste moved from trend to trend by the minute. Which I suppose is how it should be as a teenager, lots of different experiences in music, fashion, make up and all the things. The first page features lyrics (ha, I use the term loosely!) from the first single I bought for myself – Mickey by Toni Basil.  I loved that record and played it and played it while bouncing around the living room!!! I wrote the words on tracing paper which is between some pages in my handmade book.  I added crazy colour on top of some gesso on the original music pages. The second page I started last week when I glued the gelli plate print to the pages of my book and painted in some neon pops.  This week I painted the names of some of …

‘I Like’ Friday. The Get Messy Art Journal Edition.

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I have been having some great fun during this first week of the new Get Messy Art Journal season. ‘Get Messy’ is a community of art journalling ladies who hang out via the inter-webs and sometimes in real life.  If you are interested in creating art journals or are a seasoned art journaler, you may be interested in joining. For this ‘season of music’, I made a journal for the first time which was quite a leap, I thought I would not be into making a handmade journal at all. I make enough mess in my art journals and sketchbooks, what if I make the mess of all messes while making the darn book! I chose a small music script in the form of a book which was stapled together to unstaple and add my own pages as well as keeping all of the original music.  I used pamphlet stitch and added tracing paper, mixed media paper and watercolor paper. I soon ended up with a natty little handmade journal to fill. ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ is …

Gelli Plate printing with seed pods.

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Sometimes I find printing with my gelli plate very confusing. There I said it.  Like trying to direct something while looking in the mirror, it is just a skill I do not have.  I still love to play with it though, even when I am not sure whether I am going to get a print with negative or positive colour! I really think this is sometimes when I get my best prints, when I am not sure what is going to happen. I have seen some great prints lately using seed pods so I decided to use some dried honesty plant to make some pages of print and colour. Firstly I decide on my colour palette and  in my mind I wanted these prints to be all blues and blue/greens which as you can see I strayed from a little.  This often happens when I get my paints out and start to put them together, some get taken out and some get added. I will sometimes paint a few sample splotches to see what looks …

Get Messy Thursday. Season of Introspection Week 6.

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This was the last week of the Get Messy Season of Introspection and I am really happy with the final three spreads of my altered book.  I now have a book which started as a guide to growing avocados from the avocado stone and is now a full and splendid art journal. I made these three pages pretty much simultaneously once I had the back ground to the butterfly page. This background was a total experiment with a cardboard tube and cut up foam stickers to make a print roller.  I used my gelli plate as a palette to apply paint to the roller and it worked really well! As you can see in the pictures I ended up printing lots of things once I got started and once I had used the roller as much as I wanted, I pulled a few prints directly off the gelli plate. One of these prints is also used on the butterfly page at the edges.  I printed on dry deli paper because I like the translucent quality. …