All posts filed under: The 100 Day Project

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 …

100 Days of Creative Ideas 41-50.

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41. Tear a piece of cardboard from a box. Paint a forest of birch trees with white gesso or paint. Add details with a black pen when the white paint is completely dry. 42. Want to try a new technique? Improve on an existing skill? Hop over to the inter-webs and find a video via an artist’s blog or YouTube channel. 43. Look in some books or magazines and find pictures or photographs of buildings. Copy them into your sketchbook. Draw a street or a landmark or a village on a mountainside. 44. What is your favorite colour? Make a sketchbook or a single using only that colour and shades of it. A blue series, how pretty would that be? 45. Make a little single signature sketchbook/notebook. Use some lovely paper and keep it small enough to staple the pages in down the spine.  How about a tiny book? 46. Make a quick (up to a minute) sketch of someone in movement. Maybe a walking figure, how about a yoga pose or a dancer? 47. …

100 Days of Creative Ideas 31-40

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Firstly, a confession.  I must forget some of these cards once I have made them.  On the positive side this makes it a joy to see them together, even ten at a time, I look at them and I think, that’s a good idea! Nearly half way through the 100 day project and here are ideas 31 – 40. 31. Be on the lookout for images you like in magazines. Cut them out and save for future collage projects or keep them all together in a scrapbook.  Your own look-book. 32.Drop or splatter some plain water onto your page. Mix some watery watercolors and splatter those over the page. It may take a while to dry but the effects can be pretty or dramatic or pretty dramatic!! 33. Paint a black area or the whole page black. Grab a white pen and doodle patterns over the black. If there is any white left, doodle with a black pen for contrast. 34. Find a picture in a magazine and tear or cut it in half. Stick …

100 days of Creative Ideas 21-30

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21. Choose a page from a magazine and cover part of it with white paint or gesso. Cover half the page or just make a circle in the middle. When the white is completely dry, get a black pen-Posca pens are my choice-and make a pattern in the newly painted area. 22. Find an old used book at a thrift store or a yard sale.  Use it as a sketchbook! Draw and paint in it as you would a regular sketchbook. 23. Pick an object. Set a timer for 1 minute. Draw! 24. Very loosely paint a group of trees along a riverbank on one side of the paper. Fold over the other side to get the ‘reflection’. I used coloured inks to make mine. Remember to work quickly before the ink or paint dries before you get the fold done. 25. Use dashes across the page to create wave-like movement. I used coloured pencils in a close colour palette. 26. Cut a photograph out of an old book, use an original vintage photo, or …

100 Days of Creative Ideas 11 – 20

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The 100 day project started on April 4 and I am still going strong!  My little library of vintage cards with ideas on them is growing nicely.  Here are cards 11-20 11. Go to the library and find a picture book in the children’s section. Pick one with illustrations you love. Sketch some ideas from this book – patterns, creatures, lettering, anything. Pick another book and repeat. Some of my favorite children’s books for the illustrations are by Lauren Child, Oliver Jeffers, Chris Riddell, ‘Gaston’ by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Christian Robinson and ‘A lion in Paris’ by Beatrice Alemagna. I just discovered the Welcome to the Museum series and ‘Botanicum’ is just gorgeous, so don’t forget to check out the non fiction books too. 12. Take yourself for a walk around your neighbourhood or favorite place.  As you go, notice all the circles and make a note, a sketch or take a photo. How many circles did you spot? Did you notice anything new about your neighbourhood? 13. Give yourself permission, allow yourself …

100 Days of Creative Ideas. Days 1-10

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This year will be my third time at participating in The 100 Day Project and we are at day sixteen already. Having said that, sixteen seems very ‘still at the beginning’. I am keeping up which is a marvelous thing, I have a little list of ideas which I jot down as they come to me, so that if nothing pops into my mind, I can refer to my idea bank. If you want to see my project as it emerges day by day, you can follow along on Instagram at 100daysofcreativeideas. Here are my first ten days of ideas – 1. Take up challenge. A monthly or a daily challenge. Search Instagram, it is full of them. Don’t be discouraged if a ‘challenge’ has finished or is part way through, do it anyway.  The 100 Day Project is a great one.  Other challenges I have done are Tinkersketch drawing challenge, Rae Missingan‘s mark making challenge, Fat Mum Slim hosts a daily photo challenge and Susannah Conway also has lovely photo challenges. 2. Go to the …

The 100 Day Project 2017. 100 Days of Creative Ideas.

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The 100 Day Project is almost upon us for 2017 and I am looking forward to participating again this year. To achieve a hundred days of anything in a straight line is a marvelous thing and it is a proud moment when you are done and you have the body of work finished. In previous years I have made 100 mandalas and 100 altered cards and thoroughly enjoyed them both. This year I am going to write and sketch 100 creative ideas and I will be logging them onto Instagram under the hashtag #100daysofcreativeideas. I had to deliberate over how to present the ideas (when I come up with them!).  Options were – a sketchbook with 100 pages to work on, a handmade book which I could make with 100 pages or individual cards of some description. In the end I decided to use 100 vintage book order cards I found at an estate sale in an old school here in St Louis.  I counted to make sure there were 100 cards and they are now …

100 Days of Altered Cards 81-100

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All done. Finished. Hurrah! 100 days of drawing, painting, inking, gluing, stenciling, printing and embellishing vintage playing cards. I am so pleased with my pile of one hundred little pieces of art. Never have I worked on such a small area and I have loved the tiny ‘canvas’ which a playing card presents. There were some cards I didn’t alter because there was only one of them and I wanted to keep them as they are.  I also kept one of each card I used in it’s original state. The ‘Wild West’ illustrations are so cool, I wish I had more of them and the girl in the checked trousers looks like she is equal parts innocence and mischief! Here are cards 81-100 – That’s a wrap! I think I will look for an album to store them in, maybe like one of these Project Life albums.  Or I could keep them in a nice box, but they might get damaged just loose in a box. If you completed The 100 Day Project, well done …

100 Days of Altered Cards 71-80.

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We are almost at the home straight of The 100 Day Project and I was thinking why I like it so much.  I like challenges with prompts and instructions which are usually a month long, but this is a different beast.  Over three months of the same (ish) project which you thought up yourself and only really have yourself accountable for. I post my cards on Instagram every day using the hashtag #100daysofalteredcardsbycatseatdogs and that is pretty much my accountability. I know, I know, it could have been shorter! So, here are ten reasons I like The 100 Day Project so much. 1. The time frame is huge but so satisfying (especially once I got into double digits). 2.The body of work you make is going to be fairly big and hopefully useful 3. You can’t help but land on a style or a way of working which you enjoy. 4. I have learnt to work small. 5. I have learnt to take off the pressure to create something amazing each time.  There is always another go …

100 days of altered cards 51-70

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Only 30 more days to go, one month of the 100 Day Project and all done.  I am enjoying seeing these little cards made into something new.  Now I have a collection of them I am wondering what to do with them when I am done. I think I will put them into a photo style album maybe using the Project Life pages and albums. Looking over them as a whole some have become mini art journal pages.  You can tell when we started to swim at the YMCA as part of our regular summer routine and when the poppies came into bloom in my garden. If you fancy a challenge which is not quite as long as the 100 days, Rachelle at Tinkerlab has a new Tinkersketch prompt list for July.  It is a fun thing to do for a month, the prompts are vague enough to allow you to do your art thing, but there is also enough guidance to keep you going. I think the ‘Swim’ card is my favorite, I just …