All posts filed under: Let’s make stuff

Weekly Photos 14/52

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So far I think we are having a chilly spring compared to recent years.  I am sure it is usually warmer than this here in the mid-west by the middle of April.  No complaints though, you never know, the summer might not be so brutal. I don’t know what any of these flowers are, but they are pretty and all over the park floor.  I got to stand among them for a while as the dog had a sniff about. I borrowed the paper cutter in the library to chop up my new coloring postcards this week. Some trees are still blooming, this pink one at the park is a stunner. I finished ‘A Man Called Ove’, and I love love loved it.  It is such a good read, Ove is a wonderful character.  It is funny, thoughtful and a great story. I got some clay to play with and I made some beads and pendants, fingers crossed that they all turn out, or at least most of them!  I will be sure to update …

Get Messy Art Journal. The Season of Lists.

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I am happy to report I am managing to do some work in my art journal almost every day which is something I have been trying to do since I joined the Get Messy community at the beginning of the year. I rarely start and finish a page in one sitting, mainly because each layer has to dry before I add anything else.  This is another reason that I usually have more than one sketchbook on the go. This first page is one I started over a week ago when I saw the fabulous crane in an old National Geographic magazine.  I added a little gold craft paint to the gesso and glued down my bird.  Then I left it.  For ages. I added the triangle doodles and left it again.  Today I finished the page with one of the list prompts from Get Messy Lists – ‘Mysteries to Explore’.  I jotted down a few mysteries and I am not sure that my bewildered crane has any answers! The top spread started as a watercolor …

The 100 Day Project 2016

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What could you make/create/invent for one hundred days straight?  What do you want one hundred of? Pages in a novel (it would be a great start to a book!). Learn a foreign word. Make a pattern every day. Use one colour in a photo or a sketch. Sketch a face. Photograph the same scene – see how and if it changes. Make an altered playing card collection. Design an alphabet. Run a mile (100 miles would be an impressive achievement). Invent a recipe (another book in the making). All kinds of things you could do and by one hundred of them you would be pretty good I think. I did the 100 day project last year and I drew/made or photographed a mandala a day and it was a very good project.  Over one hundred days, you really get into it and turn out some wonderful things and some rather terrible things, but the main thing is to keep doing these things until you have achieved that one hundred day point. My mandalas are all …

Weekly Photos 13/52

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This week saw a fifth grade field trip, new perfumes, cleaning up the local woods and park and a sunny hike on Sunday.  Not bad! 1. I helped out with the fifth grade field trip to ‘Junior Achievement BizTown’ on Monday.  The kids all had jobs and ran a ‘business’ for the day.  My team at Ameren/Peabody were great, they had a good day and worked hard. 2 & 3. I am working on some new scents for solid perfumes which is always super fun.  I really like the orange blossom and basil one. These solid scents are great to chuck in your gym bag for a quick uplift and they are perfect for travel because they are not liquid, and they are home made so I can mix up my own scent combination. 4. It was a lovely sunny morning on Saturday for the REI and Brentwood Parks annual clean up. We all got started with a coffee and a doughnut, grabbed a massive trash bag and off we went.  The woods and creek …

‘I like’ Friday. Art Journaling Supplies.

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I have been reading a lot lately about the supplies people like to use in their art journaling. These posts are inspiring and helpful all at once, so I thought I would add my two pennies worth and write a post about what I like to use. As I have only been art journaling deliberately for a couple of months, I suspect the supplies I rely on will change and develop over the next months.  I look forward to how my supplies evolve. Of course the first thing we need to journal is a sketchbook.  I have filled a Strathmore 500 series book which has very nice heavy paper and I have just started a Ranger Dylusions sketchbook which has heavy paper too, but is a little thicker.  I can’t wait to fill it up! These are both larger books, 8″x 11″ give or take a quarter of an inch. I like to have lots of space to play with, so I like this size. Pens pens pens.  I use Micron pens in almost everything …

Mini Watercolour set in a tin.

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This is one of those projects that made me immediately think ‘why on earth didn’t I think of this before?’.  There are lots of travel watercolor sets to buy and I nearly did buy one, until I saw this DIY version on Julie Balzar’s fab blog. I popped out and bought a tin of Altoids (I bought the blue one because I liked the colour and I don’t intend covering the outside of the tin) and a pack of gum which was sold in the tray style packet. The only problem I had was deciding which sixteen colours I was going to squeeze into my trays to tote about with me and my watercolour sketchbook.  I managed to choose a selection and then I arranged them into a pleasing palette. I did make a note in my sketchbook of which colours went where. I also want to get another pack of the gum so that I have an empty tray to use for mixing colours. This is such a great way to make you own …

Get Messy Art Journal ‘Happy’ Season.

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The weather today is pretty grey but I like to think of this page as grey sparkle rather than dull weather grey. As I splattered the background I managed to cover myself in black ink as well as the page and the floor.  Don’t worry I did the splatting outside! I did have a very nice time with my gelli plate and some pages from an old dictionary.  I used a used gift card and feathers as texture creators in the paint. I mixed some paints, but stuck to the grey theme. I also did some prints using dry deli paper for a lovely see through effect when I stick  them on my final page. It really is wonderful how many effects can be created using lots of different techniques and tools.  I am so pleased with the gelli prints on this page. All of this journal fun was inspired by the week six prompts over at the Get Messy Art Journal website. The idea was to cover the background with the same colour, so I chose …

Paper tube heart stamps.

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Make your own fabulous Valentine greeting with these easy peasy stamps which you can make with a paper roll from a toilet roll or kitchen paper towel roll.  I used a kitchen towel roll and cut it into three to make three heart stamps. The paint I used is from Target’s Hand Made Modern acrylic paint range. It is inexpensive but with a great range of colours to choose from. To get the heart shape you have to gently squeeze the tube so that the top folds in slightly and the bottom forms a point.  Squeeze the point to make a sharper shape and ease the rounded top into a heart shape. Once you have your heart/hearts grab some paint and brush some around the end of the tube, coating the whole heart in paint.  If you prefer, you can stomp the heart into the paint to load it, like a traditional stamp.  I like to brush the paint to control how much goes on to the stamp. I started with single colours and then …

New year stuff to do, want to do, should do, resolutions?

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I don’t like to make ‘resolutions’, but then I do like to give myself a list of things I would like to do in the year, so I suppose I do like to make resolutions.  Maybe it is the concept of the whole new year resolution/setting yourself up to fail thing that I have the problem with. Lose weight, stop drinking booze, eat healthy, exercise, blah blah blah.  I try and do all of these things all of the time, well except the stopping booze thing because that is just ridiculous.  Let’s try and drink more water and call that one quits. I need more ‘doing’ resolutions in my life, so this year I have a few ideas of things I want to do, achieve, create.  Things I want to look back on and declare a new skill learnt or an old one improved on. Here are a few of my ideas – 1. Daily sketch of the same thing, all drawn on the same page. Eventually making 12 spreads of fish/faces/shoes/necklaces/whatever else I come …

Hand Made Card Swap

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In April I joined in a Spring Card Swap hosted by Kerry at Handmade Success. The deal was, make a card or buy a handmade card and send it snail mail to your allotted partner. Done and done. This was a nice change for me as I don’t usually make cards, I have printed photos onto cards, but I don’t paint or write or paint and write on cards.  I do now!  I had such fun using the brush script technique to paint on lots of cards.  Firstly painting and writing through a pile of paper to warm up my brush and brain. My partner was Kerry from Handmade Success (no pressure then) and I made her a brush script card. Or rather I made lots with various words and phrases and picked the one I liked best. I ruined one by trying to be cute with washi tape. Fail. Keep it simple stupid was the lesson learnt there methinks. I sent the middle card to Kerry and I received the beauty above.  It is …