All posts tagged: catseatdogs get messy

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections Week 1.

Published by

The new season over at the Get Messy Art Journal community has just started and I have gracefully dived in headfirst. Today I have had nothing but ideas pouring out of my brain. I am not kidding when I say I am surrounded by index cards and scraps of paper with notes on them! I had no intentions of gathering a pile of supplies together, but it organically happened so I didn’t argue. I may stick with them to make the first pages only, or I may use this base ‘kit’ through the whole season. I have some vintage threads to sew photos and other ephemra into my journal along with some needles which are equally vintage. I like the idea of sewing stuff down and I have already done some machine stitching in my book, inspired by the wonderful Vanessa at Dans Mon Crâne. I love vintage thread spools for the thread and the graphics on top of the wooden spool! I made a new journal for this season and this one is a …

Get Messy Season of Colour/Color Week 5

Published by

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 …

Get Messy Season of Contrast, Week 3.

Published by

I let this page guide me as I made it and I love how it turned out.  Almost the opposite to last week where I layered and layered, this page has lots of white space left which I like. I started by making some plain gelli plate prints using the colours I had chosen.  I printed blocks of colour on dry wax paper and old book pages.  Once I had my pages I cut out some shapes as neatly as I could and I tore some shapes to contrast. I wove the green and aqua torn strips, both of which were on wax paper to make the grid on the right page above. The aqua circles are torn out and also printed on dry wax paper. The copper and gold shapes are cut with scissors and were printed on the book paper. I like to see the pages close up, the gelli plate gives an interesting print even with one or two colours. Thanks to Get Messy Art Journal and Jules Tea for the inspiration! …

Intuitive Painting – what a process!

Published by

Today I tried a new thing in my giant Moleskine art journal which is A3 size and perfect for something like intuitive painting which I haven’t really done before.  I don’t often know where a page is heading when I start and I rarely make layers and layers of paint and techniques. I am a single layer painting kinda girl, I might draw or collage on top of that layer, but that is more than likely going to be it. The end. Finished page. So of course I was keen to try some intuitive painting as featured in this week’s Get Messy tutorial. The main aim is to use lots of colour and supplies and equipment and make layers, all of the layers. Random is not my top skill, I always end up making things balance or matching the colours or following a pattern even when I think I am not going to. Part way through the layers for my ‘intuitive’ art journal painting, I thought that maybe I could do a layer of images …

Art Journaling. Get Messy Season of Gifts Week 5.

Published by

I have been playing in my Season of Gifts journal and it is filling up nicely.  I am doing a horrible job at following any prompts, so the gift I am appreciating is the gift of being able to create these pages and share them with you. Because the journal is all kinds of different papers, not many spreads have the same paper on both sides.  This one has water colour paper on one side which I painted a galaxy using the Liquitex ‘muted’ inks and a white ink as contrast. The other side is the back of the red pattern paper which is really crinkly.  I added my lady and gave her a gold border then I drew with white pen and inadvertently ended up with a cat/owl creature on her headscarf. I have a feeling this character will show up some more now I have ‘invented’ her, I love the idea of an owl/cat creature! This spread is a magazine cutting of a landscape with a gelli print on dry wax paper glued …

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

Published by

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.

Published by

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 …

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

Published by

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 …

Art Journal pages. Season of Dreams week 4.

Published by

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    

Get Messy Art Journal Season of Music week 6.

Published by

We are at the final week of the Season of Music in the art journaling community of Get Messy. I really connected with just listening to songs and writing down on index cards some sketchbook page ideas. Colours, shapes, images and a line from the song usually. So I decided to randomly listen to some songs and see what I could make from them. For these pages I used credit cards to add colour, gelli plate prints I had already made, images from a bird book and some sketching. They are super simple, only two or three layers and I am happy with how they have turned out. Creative Every Day! Happy Thursday x