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I made a giant book!

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I had a case of FOMO this week or keeping up with the Joneses or whatever you want to call it.

I saw two different Instagram friends post two books they had made, one was super chunky and amazing, the other was a small pamphlet stitched book made with kraft paper and what looked like old book pages.

Well, you know me, old books and bookbinding, I loved them both and wanted to make something similar to combine the chunky and the vintage paper.

As this is the beginning of the season of play in the Get Messy art journaling community, I decided to go for it and make a basic structure so I didn’t loose my mind but make it nice and full so I didn’t run out of pages (ha! no shortage of pages here).

I used a fancy paper bag as the cover which I reinforced with a cereal box and I cut and folded 17 signatures each with five sheets. The pages are from an old cookbook, an encyclopedia, an old National Geographic,  an atlas, a photography book, some music and pages from a 1952 ledger.

Thanks to Divyam and Alicia for their inspiration!

Happy Thursday x

 

How many projects can I spin at once?

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April is here and where I live spring missed the memo and winter is snickering in the corner as the weather is still freezing cold with a sprinkle of snow every so often.  I am sure someone will poke spring shortly and we will warm up a little. Not too much though, I don’t need ninety degrees and high humidity just yet.

Anyway, along with a new month and season I have decided to take on possibly too many projects!  Three of these are ongoing and the other three are shorter than the first in duration, but they still add to my daily quota.

My ongoings are the 365 day of random art in my Moleskine planner, make a colour swatch each day for 365 days and Get Messy Art Journal projects and community.  These are all going swimmingly and I am enjoying all of them.

The new kids on the block are as follows

The 100 day project – started on Tuesday April 3rd and consists of me drawing freeform mandalas every day for (you guessed it) 100 days until July.  I have done the project for the past three years now and it is a good amount of time to gather a body of work related to whatever you choose to do for 100 days. I am a grand two days in and doing well!

Creative Bug‘s daily sketch project for April is hosted by Pam Garrison who is teaching us  30 different ways to sketch flowers.  I am using my new Dina Wakely Media Journal which I am still learning to love but we are getting there.  So far I have used a mix of media and flowers and I am pleased with where it is all going.

The Brooklyn Art Museum‘s sketchbook project is a library filled with sketchbooks filled in by anyone and everyone. I have a sketchbook which I am going to refill with an accordion of faces which I have nearly finished painting.  I just need to get it finished and in the mail back to Brooklyn by the end of the month.

Phew!

I do enjoy making some art every day and challenges like these certainly keep me on track.  Hopefully by the end of April I will be triumphant and have completed the Creative Bug and Sketchbook project and I will be a month into the 100 day Project.

Are you doing The 100 day project or a 365 project or just a sketch when you feel like it?!

Happy Wednesday x

 

Weekend Finds

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My favourite antique shop here in St Louis opens each month from the 1st to the 7th only.  This month we made a trip this weekend and they didn’t disappoint.

I found a ledger which is smaller than the ones I usually see, the size is what drew me to it initially and when I saw that it was almost all filled in with ledger type stuff from the 1920’s I was sold. It contains information about mail deliveries, egg accounts and Jessie’s music expenses from 1928!

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I bought this fabulous chunk of vintage paper to paint on and put into art journals, but I am not sure I can.  The more I look through it, the more interesting it is!  For now, this is safe in my collection of old books.

I also found a People’s Cyclopedia from 1890 without its cover but so interesting.  It is the D-L volume and full of 1890’s information and illustrations.  It still has the wonderful marbled cover pages and the inside of the bindings is revealed as the cover is gone.  Each signature is there alongside the cording of the spine and the label and tape with would have been hidden under the cover.

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How fascinating is this graphic of ‘The World’ from 1890, from the population figures to the pie chart of races.

I also found the scissors which are pictured, they work well and just need the layer of rust removing!

I hope you had a lovely weekend and found time to be creative.

Happy Monday x

My Many Watercolour Paint Sets.

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How many watercolour sets does one person need?  Maybe not this many if I am honest, but this was an interesting little task I set myself.

It all started when I began to think about getting or making a new travel set of watercolours for myself.  I wondered whether to buy a ready made set or make a new set with a small tin and some gum trays.  Any excuse to buy some new tubes of paint, right?  When I started to look at the price of the paints I was coveting – wrong!  I have so many watercolour sets as well as a good selection of tubes, I decided to get them out and see what I had and what colours were among the many many sets past and present.

My small collection consists of a vintage M. Grumbacher set from an estate sale which has great colours and pigments even now it has been around for a few decades.

Then there is my homemade travel set in an Altoids tin and the paints are Windsor and Newton tubes squeezed into empty gum trays.  See how I made it here and gasp at how clean and shiny it was when I made it!!  I love this tiny box because I filled it with colours I wanted and used a lot at the time.

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I have a stacking set which is a fine travel set as it is super compact with many colours, even if they are not top quality.

My other basic set by Artist’s Loft has a great colour selection and has lasted me well.

The Windsor and Newton travel set I have had since I was a teenager and the colours are a great selection and very nice quality.

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The colours in the Kuretake set are super vibrant and a great selection except for me it is missing a good pink.  This is one of the reasons making your own set is so good, so you can get the colours you want!

The little Koi travel watercolour set has a good variety of colours but they are so small and so close together is is awkward to use with anything except a teeny brush. I do like that it also has a removable mixing palette though.

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Now I have done swatch sheets of all my watercolour sets, I am going to look and see which colours I can do without in my new travel set and which I absolutely have to have – Paynes Grey and Opera Pink have to be in there, a million shades of brown I can live without.

The conclusion I never thought about until today and doing this funny exercise is that I will buy a couple of new colours and carefully co-ordiante a new travel set maybe using an Altoid tin or maybe I will get all fancy and buy an empty box with little pans for my colours.  Having said that I don’t see any bought boxes holding 24 colours in such a small space with room to maneuver.

I am off to buy some Altoids and a couple of packs of gum sold in trays!

Happy Monday x

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 7.

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I have been practicing my faces this week guided and encouraged by the talented Katie Smith from Studio Katie and Get Messy Art Journal in the run up to the new class called ‘Sketching Faces’ and hosted by Get Messy.

The top ladies are painted in black ink using a sumi brush and using a template provided by Katie which I put under my paper as a guide.  I like to put my own style on my faces and I am learning so much from this class and getting more confident at faces which are not straight on, like profiles and turned to one side slightly. I used my new favorite paper for these sketches which is ‘Tomoe River’ paper, it is lightweight but still stands up to ink without warping too much.

The middle faces are painted onto vintage ledger paper which has a nice rough texture and absorbs the ink giving an interesting look.

The last girl has painted botanicals in her hair and I used a stencil with ink in a mister to get the red background, finally I went in with my sumi brush to make some marks with blue/black ink.

Happy Thursday x

 

Old photos and why I think they are fabulous.

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I started collecting old photos one at a time, carefully selecting each one.  As I have carried on gathering other people’s family photos, my greatest finds are a box or an envelope full  of photos to explore.  An ancient album from the turn of the century to marvel at the fashions and cars of the time is a happy few minutes of browsing for me.

I just love to look at the characters in the photos and where the photos were taken, some photos I have are from the St Louis area and it is cool to see landmarks then and now.

This group is so full of characters, I wonder who or what they are all looking at. I feel like this picture is a novel waiting to be written.

“Don and me” written in biro on the front of the photo. I want those silver sandals!

I love the photos with the cars of the time and the way people took the photos to highlight the vehicles.

Two meals at the same table look like the staging for a painting! I think it is the same family, different decade.

“The three Dudes” are Uncle Sid, Owen-brother and Lance-cousin.

This cigarillo box contains photos from 1914-1935.  Most are written on the back with names and locations.

I like to use these photos as they are in my art journals, I will staple or stick them in and use them as part of a page.  I always think I want to draw or write on them, but I have not had much success with this.

To be honest I get equal pleasure from just browsing through the photos I have and wondering who these people were and what their lives were like.

Happy Monday and happy collecting whatever it is you gather!

A Year of Colour 2018. February.

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I am liking this project a lot, I love how just a blob of colour and a couple of words can convey a full day.

Some I remember exactly and some not at all!

My favorites are ‘Boe the Boa’ because that was the day that the nine foot boa constrictor escaped from the biology lab at school. She was found the same day under the floorboards and the kids got the afternoon off while they searched for her!

‘Favourite’ is a favorite because it is Paynes Grey which is my favourite. Ha.

I also like ‘rain clouds’ which is upside down for no reason and ‘raccoon hanging on’ because I saw a raccoon hanging onto a roof and this was the colour and feeling I saw!

Onwards to March!

Happy Thursday x

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Daily Moleskine Pages. February 2018.

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February pages went swimmingly!  I like almost all of them (which is frankly more than I can say for the January pages).  The beginning of my Moleskine daily planner is starting to get full and the pages are getting crinkly with arty stuff!

I haven’t improved on creating absolutely every day but I do make sure each page is filled even if I do two days at a time.  I accept this as I go through my 365 daily project and I will continue to not worry about it.

I have enjoyed using my Micron pen to get details in these pages.  There is also collage, old photos, mandalas and bugs!

Are you doing a 365 project of any kind?  How is it going?

Happy Monday x

 

 

 

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Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 4.

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This season of Get Messy Art Journaling I seem to have hit on a winner as far as my most enjoyable page goes – simple, simple, simple with an extra shake of simple.

I like a white background and I like colour but I am not good at layers or explosions of colour. Some people are amazing at both of these things, but through my journals and over time, I have come to realize that I am a simple art journaling soul!

This two pages were made using collage components cut from gelli prints of vintage doilies along with some humans from old National Geographic magazines.

I don’t often use red but I like it with the black here.

If you are interested in learning more about Get Messy, click here.

This post contains affiliate links which are at no cost to you my lovely reader.

Happy Thursday x

The 100 Day Project 2018.

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Are you participating in The 100 day project this year? Have you done it before?  With success or did you find something else to do instead?!

I did my first 100 day project in 2015 when I drew or made a mandala for 100 days , see those here. In 2016 I did 100 days of altered cards using old playing cards as my starting point every day.

Last year I admit that I didn’t love my project choice, of course I thought it was a good one when I chose to do it, but as the days progressed I wasn’t really enjoying the process. So 100 days of creative ideas was a good idea (irony is not lost) which turned out to be not so great! I finished though and I do like the pile of cards and ideas I have.

For this year’s project I thought about 100 days of altered photographs as I have a trillion vintage black and white photos.

How about 100 days of drawing botanicals? Honestly I am not sure I could stick to such a confined box for 100 days.  I love to draw botanicals but I don’t want to end up hating it!!

100 days of collage?  100 days of tiny collage?  Again, I think I need more room to move if I am doing this for 100 days.

The project I have landed on (unless I change my mind of course) is going to be 100 days of freeform mandalas.  Yes, I know I did mandalas three years ago, but I think I can do 100 more which won’t be the same.  I will incorporate botanicals and collage I am certain and maybe I will draw a mandala or two over a vintage photo.

I already have some ideas and mini themes to keep me going and I will keep a list of ideas for when I get stuck.  My list of ideas looks something like this – use only one colour, flowers, collage, watercolour, on a book page, on a scrap of paper, use various media like pens paint stickers or stamps,  botanicals, on an old photo, 3D with sticks or shells.  The possibilities are endless and I hope I can pull out 100!

I am deliberately not designating a sketchbook to this project because I want them to appear when and where I want them.  If I have no paper, I will draw on a receipt (my bag is always full of them!), I may incorporate one into an art journal page or an existing sketchbook I am working in or I may use chalk and draw one on the sidewalk!

My hashtag on Instagram will be #100daysoffreeformmandalas and the start date is April 3rd 2018.

What would you do for 100 days?  Are you doing the 100 day project?

Happy Wednesday x