All posts filed under: Creativity

Get Messy Art Journal Season of gifts week 3-4.

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This week I met a fellow Get Messy member and it was great!  I am in a couple of groups on Facebook and via the interwebs but I have never met any of them in real life. Now I have! We met at the local library who have a room we could use to art journal and paint and make a mess generally!  They even have drop cloths for the tables to catch our painty inky messes. The time flew by as we made ink galaxies and gelli plate printed backgrounds. I had plans to make journals and all kinds of things, but we ran out of time.  So I will be making some journals this week I think so that I can work in some mini sketchbooks in the new year. I took some dried seeds and botanicals which I had previously gathered on a dog walk through the woods, some printed better than others as is always the way with the gelli plate.  I printed on vintage book paper, kraft paper and dry …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Gifts, Week 2.

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We are in the second week of the Season of Gifts over at Get Messy Art Journal.  These are some of my pages from the week. The first two are in two separate journals and the second two are in the journal I made and showed you last week.  I like having the different papers to work over. For this page I scraped some background paint onto my sketchbook, I used gelli prints on dry wax paper to glue over each page.  The dancing swan went in and of course some gold splatters! These trees were finger painted, well the first was and then I squashed the opposite page over the first and made a twin print of the tree.  A gelli print was glued over the spread and I doodled decorations over one tree and things I am grateful for over the other. This spread is in my made journal and I used the same background as the swan page most likely to use up the paint I had on the scraper!  I painted …

How did 2016 go? A personal year review.

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I have precisely three memory cells in my brain, so I keep a daily Moleskine planner for each year. Not for artistic endeavors (although I plan to try this in 2017), not for meaningful goal setting, but for pure and simple remembering what the heck went on that day.  I have a collection of filled diaries and I like to look back and see what we were up to on this day in years past or check what presents were bought or received for a birthday or Christmas. Because no, my three memory cells can’t hold it all in.  I don’t record each day minute by minute, some days I miss altogether, but I do manage a few words or a sentence or two most days. So when I thought I little 2016 review post would be a good idea, the first thing I did was grab the Peanuts Moleskine from 2016.  I have immediately learnt that I need to be a little more specific in my diary entries – goal for 2017. Here is …

Hand Made Journal. Season of Gifts. Get Messy Art Journal.

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Do you make things but deep down think ‘this is not going to work’ ‘I won’t make it the way they do’ ‘this is going to fall apart’? I sometimes do and I did when I embarked on this book.  I was feeling the pressure from the lovely paper I had chosen which I didn’t even want to chop up! I picked up the book called ‘Make your own Ideabook’  by Arne and Carlos from the library and they make bookmaking look so easy.  This is a book with many signatures (books within the book) all sewn together which is something I wanted to have a go at. I have made simple books before which I have hand sewn, but Arne and Carlos use a sewing machine to fasten the pages in each signature.  I was convinced that I would end up perforating the pages and they would pull apart like toilet paper once I had sewn them. Never fear, all went well with the sewing, in fact I also did some random stitching on some …

A Christmas Colouring Page.

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Happy December!  Do you have your tree up? Outside lights? Mincepies in the oven? Or is it still a little early for all of that? I must admit that we wait until the first or even second weekend of December before decorating.  My son’s birthday is at the beginning of the month so we let him have his birthday before Christmas takes over his celebration! I am itching to get some mince pies made though and I need to get the Christmas cake baked this weekend. So before or during all of the Christmas decorating and planning I thought you might like a colouring sheet to relax for a few minutes with. Click here or on the above image for the printable sheet. Have fun colouring in my festive friend.  Feel free to share your finished sheets on Instagram and tag me @catseatdogsmakes. Happy Thursday!

Watercolor and ink Christmas card.

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I like to send out Christmas cards which I have made and this year was no exception. Here’s how I made them.  Watercolor paint in ‘permanent rose’ and white ink (I got mine from our local art store where they mix their own inks – South City Art Supply) is all I used to paint the circles to form the baubles.   I painted very wet circles and dropped on a single drop of ink when they were still wet. Once they were dry, I used a Pigma Micron black pen size 05 to draw in the details. Then I scanned the whole thing and cropped and added text in Photoshop.  You could also photo your decorations and use an app to add text.  Of course if you have lovely hand lettering skills, you can hand write the lettering. There is a little video here on my Instagram feed – catseatdogsmakes. Don’t forget to share if you have a go! Happy Painting and Happy Wednesday x  

Get Messy Live!

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“I don’t know anything, ever. I follow fate around” Dirk Gently. This week I went on Facebook ‘Live’ and made some art journal pages alongside and in front of the Get Messy community. It was equally terrifying and great fun! We chatted via comments and I made some pages in various journals, letting one part dry as I hopped to the next and so it went on for about an hour.  The time flew by and I made pages I never planned or expected to make.  Isn’t that the best thing when you start to create and don’t plan the outcome and it still turns out well! It could have gone so horribly wrong so easily! So here are my finished pages, I added very little after the ‘live’ event because I had finished most of them.  I wrote on a couple of the pages and added some doodles here and there. Black gesso and white paint pen over Germany in my ‘atlas’ journal. Neon, stencil and another ‘Dirk Gently’ (written by Douglas Adams) quote …

Art Journal pages. Season of Dreams week 4.

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Do you remember your dreams?  Any recurring dreams? I don’t remember them very well, but I do often dream about being late to catch a train/bus/plane or to an appointment.  In these dreams, I can never run fast or get my phone to work to let anyone know I am running late.  Panic ensues and I wake up feeling stressed. So I made a page with lots of clocks. Whenever I think of catching or recording dreams I immediately think of The BFG by Roald Dahl with his dream catching skills and wonderful language.  I will take a ‘phizzwizard’ please, maybe I will catch it in my net! Get Messy is an online art journaling community full of ideas, techniques and support. Happy Thursday x    

Art Journal Pages. Season of Dreams week 3.

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We are in the Season of Dreams in the Get Messy Art Journaling community and inspired by the wonderful Tanyalee of The Drawing Board, I created these two pages in my journals. I painted a watercolor wash over some vintage ‘onion skin paper’ which is very thin paper which is slightly wrinkly but I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t completely crinkle when I added the wet paint. Using this paper I cut out circles and butterfly shapes which I layered over the base pages I had created. The top page has a loosely painted self portrait with watercolor splashes which I glued the shapes over. The bottom page is  butterflies glued and layered  along the bottom ‘escaping’ from the darkness of the black gesso. I used a fine black pen to make some outlines and doodles. I have some sheets of watercolor wash left to play with, so I wonder what I will do with them! Happy Friday x