All posts tagged: Get Messy Art Journal

Get Messy Season of Connections. Week 2.

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I have been exploring connections of all kinds in my art journal this past two weeks since the Season of Connections started over at Get Messy. Once I started thinking about it, connections are everywhere, physical and abstract. I have a strong connection to nature, so there is usually a botanical theme to my journal somewhere.  It may be flower shapes or organic leaves or a landscape or two. So far in this journal I have printed leaves with my gelli plate onto dry wax paper and stuck them in, I have stitched leaves and painted them with watered down sumi ink. A completely random connection appeared when I printed a leave on a page from an old dictionary and when I tore it up to stick down, I noticed that I had printed on a page which had ‘folk dance’ at the top. This is an immediate connection to my maternal grandparents who used to take me folk dancing when I was a kid.  I loved it and have very fond memories of folk …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections Week 1.

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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 Art Journal Season of Fairytales. Week Three.

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Week three of the season of fairytales and I am still enjoying filling my little handmade journal.  What I have learnt is that I like to work bigger, this journal was dictated by the size of the book covers I chose, but every time I open it, I wish it was bigger.  We live and lean don’t we?! I did buy a big fat old book this weekend from the local YMCA book fair, which I want to make into a sketchbook full of watercolor paper, but that is another story which I will share when I make it. At the same book fair I also bought a couple of fairytale books which I am using for collage material.  I seem to have landed on The Frog Prince as my fairytale of choice so I am keeping all my book pages from that story. I have been following the daily prompts on Creative Bug this month and today’s was to make a poem from found words. So I pulled a couple of pages from The …

Get Messy Art Journal Season of Fairy Tales. Week 2.

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I really got stuck into the season of fairy tales this week, and I have made a good start in my hand made journal as well as some off-shoot ideas in my giant Moleskine. Rather than follow any fairy tale in particular, I am making my pages with the general theme in mind and as a guide rather than a director. I have lots of golden circles reflecting the golden ball from The Frog Prince and this week I have painted castles and trees which I see more of in this journal as they were lovely to paint and sparked many more ideas as I created them. I made a falling triangle stencil and painted it in a bright opera pink on a vellum page in my journal.  I like this simple but striking page over the watery trees and inky castle. I may draw in some details to my castle but for now, I like it as it is. Castles and forests and golden balls. My week in fairy tale art journaling. Happy Thursday …

Get Messy Season of Colour/Color Week 5

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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 Colour

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You know when you have a fancy box of chocolates and you want to just dive in and try them all, but you know you need to use restraint and savor each one.  Well, this is how I am feeling this week in the Get Messy Season of Colour.  Firstly there are some great prompts which I want to try out, then I looked at the website last night and there are three new tutorials I have not looked at yet. Yikes! I want to quickly zip into each one and see what it is about, but I also want to allow myself the time to read and look at each one and of course have a go at the artistic wonders that lie within! Before I take a run up and jump off the high board, here is my season of colour journal so far. I have taken a different approach this season, not deliberately, it just happened as do all good things in my art journals. One evening on holiday, the boys all …

Painted paper collage

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My new favourite thing is paining block colours onto plain or old book paper, cutting out random shapes and making a collage from them. I don’t use purples very much so I decided to paint some blocks of colour onto some slightly textured paper (This is Sumi-E painting and sketch paper) overlapping the colours slightly but not particularly deliberately.  Of course I had to throw in some gold and paynes grey. Once they were super dry, I cut them into shapes and strips of paper. I really love how the overlap and edges of the colour look so effective once they are in shapes. Then the fun part, sticking the shapes down on a page (in this case, my daily Moleskine). I try and keep a balance of white space and shapes as well as a balance of colour placement. I had swashed some gold over the page already so I stuck the shapes over the gold. I can’t wait to do this again as I have lots of paper and shapes left.  Maybe next …

The Grey Journal is about to travel the world.

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I have never participated in a traveling journal before, so I did what anyone would and I joined two groups! This is the first journal and my colour is grey.  How it works is I make a journal and art a couple of spreads inside using greys only.  Then I send it onto the next person in the group and so it continues until eventually it comes back to me full of grey goodness. We have five artists and we each have a different colour, so I wonder which journal I will get first and what colour it will be?  I like the restriction of only using one colour, it allows me to concentrate on other areas without having to plan a colour palette. I have used Paynes Grey in the book and it looks blue to me, but I am getting away with it because it is officially called ‘grey’ and it is one of my most favorite colours. Also silver counts as grey right!? I can’t wait to paint and draw in everyones …