All posts filed under: Creativity

Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge, my journal so far.

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I am joining Rae Missigman again this summer for her Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge which started on July 15th. Encouraged to work small for this adventure, I made a little sketchbook using kraft paper and textured paper with a Ray Bradbury paperback for the cover.  I put lots of pages in it so that I could do more pages as I feel inspired and hopefully fill it up. Well, I am nearly halfway through my book and only on day/prompt 12 out of 30, so I am excited that I will fill my little book up!  Yay. Day 1. Dense. Day 2 and 3. Scrawled and Curved. 4. Geometric. 5. Ruled. I had to use part of this vintage ledger page, it is ruled and someone has written Fish and Chips on it! 6. Wide. This wide washi tape was on an envelope my lovely friend send me, I peeled it off before I even opened the letter! 7. Interrupted. I interrupted this girl with a tree. 8. Blurred. Illustrations from a discarded …

Daily Creating April-June 2017

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The 100 day project overtook my posts on my daily Moleskine, but it didn’t overtake the actual project.  I have to say that creating little daily art spaces in my Moleskine diary has been a joy this year. I literally put anything in there that I want to. I may be learning a new technique and a page will be used for practice or I may find a sticker which will be added or someone will send me a postcard and that will be stapled onto that day. It is becoming a record of the year as well as a creative practice. April’s pages were all made using Rae Missigman’s prompts for her Mark Making Monthly challenge.  It is always nice to have a jumping off point for each day.   May was back to me and I made marks, stuck stuff down and splashed colour about! These ladies were in a discarded library book so I cut them out and gave them new accessories. There is always something to draw and paint, these vintage …

What did I do this weekend?

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It has been a hot and sunny weekend here in the deep mid-west!  It did rain last night and that was very welcome. I had a single ripe tomato on my plants and this morning when I went to pick it, it had gone, stolen, presumed eaten.  One of our furry long tailed garden friends I am sure is the guilty party.  I always try to grow lots of tomatoes to share with the squirrels but to take the very first ripe one, that was mean. Lesson learnt, when I see a ripe tomato, don’t leave it, pick it! Over the weekend  I bought a few new art supplies in the form of acrylic gouache and some basic kraft paper to make sketchbooks from.  I love the colours this gouache comes in and choosing a few was a difficult job. I bought this book from the library sale cart for a whole 25cents!  I don’t think I will use it for anything except sitting on my shelf because my grandad was a morris dancer and …

Get Messy Season of Colour/Color Week 5

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This season is flying by and has been one of my favorites which I think may be because I made my own sketchbook from paper bags and an old giant atlas and I have tried to not put any pressure on myself with any of the pages. This has sometimes worked and not always worked if I am honest. I don’t want a half full book, so I am working to fill it and I don’t want to turn over a page I don’t like without finishing it (I would totally do this in a bought sketchbook).  This has meant that on more than one occasion I have had to slog through a page which didn’t start at all well and keep working on it until it transforms. I am happy to say that I have ended up with successful pages in my eyes. I have been enjoying the prompts and the tutorials provided by the Get Messy team this season, to the extent that I haven’t done nearly as much as I have been …

100 Days of Creative Ideas 71-90

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Blimey we are into the final ten days of the 100 day project which seemed so far away back in April when we started. I don’t think I have repeated any ‘ideas’, but I might have done!  I don’t look back to see if I have made a copy.  Maybe I should! Here are ideas 71 – 90. 71. Draw a cat with your eyes closed! No peeking. 72. Cut out a picture and stick it down. Draw a frame around it. Make a gallery! 73. Watch a flower grow, draw each stage.  This would be a cool sketchbook once it is full! 74. Look in the mirror. Draw your face without looking at the paper. Keep your eyes on your face and your pen on the paper. 75. Take a page from a book and cross out all the words except a few to make a new sentence. 76. Make a pattern which looks like part of a map. Start with a small shape and use different line thicknesses and closeness to make your …

Get Messy – Season of Colour Week 4.

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Lots of colour play this week, using a few colours and using lots.  I learnt that I don’t love using yellow! I painted on these vintage library catalogue cards using a very marvelous tutorial and idea from Julia via the Get Messy members blog. What to do with the cards now? I added two of them to a page I started in my Season of Colour journal (made from paper bags and atlas pages).  This page was a fighter, I almost painted ‘I hate this page’ all over it at one point (I am not even a little bit joking!). But I persevered and after a slice of orange in my corner, I jumped back into the ring and finished the page. I am so pleased that I didn’t scribble all over the page in a tantrum! Happy Thursday x

‘I Like’ Fridays. The travel art journal and supplies edition.

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  Before I went on holiday to Cape Cod I used the covers of an old book called ‘Cape Cod Folks’ to make myself a journal filled with watercolor paper, handmade blue paper, kraft paper and some pages from an old dictionary. I am really enjoying using handmade journals because I get to choose the paper, the size of the pages and the overall size of the journal.  Full credit to the Get Messy Bookbinding class for teaching me all I know about making journals.  It really is a great class.  If you want a good book with clear instructions I recommend Esther K Smith’s book called How to Make Books. I have borrowed it many times from the library. Once I was on vacation, it honestly took me a couple of days to get going in my art journal. It would have been easy to leave it in the drawer. I am so glad I didn’t. The first spread I made was awful and again I could have left it in the drawer.  Then …

Get Messy Season of Colour

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You know when you have a fancy box of chocolates and you want to just dive in and try them all, but you know you need to use restraint and savor each one.  Well, this is how I am feeling this week in the Get Messy Season of Colour.  Firstly there are some great prompts which I want to try out, then I looked at the website last night and there are three new tutorials I have not looked at yet. Yikes! I want to quickly zip into each one and see what it is about, but I also want to allow myself the time to read and look at each one and of course have a go at the artistic wonders that lie within! Before I take a run up and jump off the high board, here is my season of colour journal so far. I have taken a different approach this season, not deliberately, it just happened as do all good things in my art journals. One evening on holiday, the boys all …

The Circle Zine.

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I have been zined! Mail is the very best thing when it is not bills or junk, it is the very very best thing when it is a mini book full to the lid with art made just for you. This is what the amazing Zine Squad do, they collaborate with each other and make a zine using their talents and generosity and it ends up with a lucky recipient, this time, it was me.  I was so excited to open my very own zine when it arrived in the mail, I had just got back from vacation and among the junk and adverts, this gem shone out at me! My heartfelt thanks goes to Jules, Vanessa, Ashley and Katie for thinking of me and creating this wonderful artwork. This mini art journal has zipped around the world and back again, gathering art and energy as it goes.  It almost shines with the joy bursting from it! Love love love my zine! Happy Tuesday x       SaveSave

100 Days of Creative Ideas 51-70

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51. Gather some lovely beads and some thread or beading wire. Make yourself a pretty necklace. 52. Let’s design some borders. Put them along the bottom of a page. Make your own stationery or a pretty card. 53. Paint some blocks of colour onto sheets of paper.  Cut out random shapes from the painted paper. Stick the shapes onto a blank page to make a stunning collage. 54. Find patterns. In the course of your day, be on the look out for patterns. As I was sitting on the plane heading to our vacation I found some shapes to make into a pattern. 55. Sketch your day. Make small sketches of things you come across in your day. A flower in bud or a ticket to  flea market. Have fun! 56. Use a funky phone app to alter a photograph. For this photo, I put it into the Diptic app and turned the colour all the way down.  Play around, see what happens! 57. Stitch in your sketchbook. Find some cotton or embroidery thread and …