Art Journal Calendar - September 2024

 Hello All.

I've been busy with my crochet hook lately, making poppies for Remembrance, hats and scarves for charity, and now I'm getting started on projects for my daughter's wedding in 2026! She's requested crocheted place mats for all the guests (possibly 160 or more), crocheted potted plants, and crocheted flowers to go in coloured glass vases. It's lucky that I crochet fairly quickly.

Anyway, I did manage to make my September art journal calendar, and here it is.

That transparent red iron oxide acrylic against the PaperArtsy Seaglass acrylic is making my heart sing!

I'm linking my calendar to Art Journal Journey, where Aimeslee's theme is Anything Goes.

And before I go, here is my completed August calendar.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

August 2024 Art Journal Calendar

 Hello Friends.

Here's my August art journal calendar. 

I'm linking it to Jo's Wonderfully Wild theme at Art Journal Journey. I went wild with colourful collage and wild birds.

And here's my completed July calendar.

Hope you have a wonderfully creative August.

Alison xox

ICADs Days 57-61

 Hello all from a wet and windy UK. 

I have my final 5 ICADs to share with you today. I've really enjoyed the challenge of following Tammy's prompts this year.

Day 57 - Bird. An easy one, I used one of my watercolour birds that I painted a while back.

Day 58 - Illustration.

Day 59 - Peaceful. Watching the bees and butterflies in my garden. They love the lavender and marjoram. I painted the lavender with watercolour, and added bees and butterfy images cut from a magazine. You may recognise this as the icad I used on a junk journal page.

Day 60 - Filigree. Painted with gold watercolour. It has a beautiful shimmer.

Day 61 - Mosaic. Definitely the most fiddly one. I cut pieces of patterned papers to look like broken pieces of china.

Thank you so much for your lovely comments on my ICADs this year, they've all been great appreciated.

Have a lovely weekend.

Alison xox

Nomad and Rain/Bow

 Hi Everyone.

Here are another couple of pages for Elle's EOTCJournalAugust challenge.

Day 27 - Nomad.

Collage, sketches with blue Stabilo All pencil, and the bird is my hand-carved stamp. I'm linking this page to Neet's Fur or Feathers theme at Art Journal Journey.

Day 28 - Rain/Bow. 

Just a bit of collage fodder, stencilling, magazine words, and a watercolour rainbow. Finished with some white ink splashes.

Thanks for dropping by today,

Alison

Green/Blue and a Forest

 Hello All.

It was a busy Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, and I am slowly catching up with Elle's prompts for her EOTCJournalAugust challenge.

Day 25 - Green or Blue. I couldn't decide, so I used both colours.

The stencilled birds were outlined with a blue Stabilo All pencil, then I used a waterbrush to activate the ink and watercolour the birds. 

I'm linking this page to Neet's Fur or Feathers theme at Art Journal Journey.

Day 26 - Forest. I found a photo on Pinterest, and tried to re-create it with paint. Then I found a quote. and wrote it with a white Posca paint pen.

Thanks for visiting me today, have a great September.

Alison

Catherine Rains' Collage Kickstart Course

 Hello All.

I recently took Catherine Rains' wonderful free 5 Day Collage Kickstart course. I can highly recommend this course if you love making collage as much as I do. And Catherine is an excellent teacher.

On Day One we collected up all the supplies we needed, finding items from around the house to make marks with.

Day Two was about creating light, medium and dark collage papers with a limited palette. I chose to use my favourite blues.

 

Day Three we created some tissue paper collage fodder with stencils, paint and molding paste.

Day 4 we created collage papers with circles.

And finally, on Day 5 we created some mini 3x3" collages, using our collage papers, adding in some pieces of magazine text for contrast.

You might recognise some of these collage papers in some of my recent and also future projects, I have loads left over!

You can also find Catherine over on Instagram, as @catrains.artist. Every Tuesday she posts a video of a collage material technique.

Thanks for visiting me today. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

Alison

Hidden Faces

 Hello All.

I'm back today with my art journal calendar for January 2022. I've hidden a few Dina Wakley tissue and stencilled faces in my pages for Erika's Let's Face It theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Hugs,

Alison

Gratitude For Freedom Of Speech with Birgit Koopsen

 Hello All.

Gratitude Junk Journal Day 12's class was Gratitude For Freedom Of Speech with Birgit Koopsen.

I'm linking my page to Leah's Art Every Day Month challenge Day 17.

Thanks for visiting, and for all of the lovely comments you leave.

Alison

52 Weeks Art Journal Week 35 - Pattern or Play

 Hello All.

I had a good old play for week 35 of Raspberry Blue Sky's 52 Weeks Art Journal Challenge. There's some pattern in my page too, made with Crafter's Workshop stencils. And there's collage and teabags under all that paint.

I'm linking my mixed media page to Creative Artiste's Challenge No.75, where 'Anything Goes'.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

Artful August Day 20 - Pattern

 Hello All.

Here's my Day 20 page for Rachel Greig's Artful August Challenge. The prompt is Pattern.

A 15 minutes page with collaged gel printed squares, black paint stencilling, some pieces of collage fodder, a Tim Holtz word sticker, and white and neon pink ink splatters. I had a bit of time left, so I used the pink ink to colour the flowers, and a little green paint for the leaves. That little piece of tea-dyed fabric was stamped with one of my hand-carved stamps.

I have a pile of brown packing paper that I saved, and whenever I have some leftover black paint, I tear off a piece and paint some marks on it. It makes fabulous collage fodder.

I'm linking my page to Neet's Type theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks so much for visiting. I really appreciate the lovely comments you leave too 😘

Alison

Artful August - Day 4 - Circles

 Hello All. Here's my Circles page for Rachel Greig's Artful August.

Stamped circles, stencilled circles and collaged circles, plus some metal cogs. 

There's some alphabet stamping and phrase stickers to qualify my page for Neet's Type theme at Art Journal Journey. The page base is also from a music book cover, so you can just see the text through all the layers.

Happy Friday to you all, hope you have a grand weekend!

Alison

August Art Journal Calendar

 Hello All.

I have my August calendar spread to share with you today.

I began by covering my pages with torn collage papers, which were then covered with a layer of teabag papers. I did some stencilling with black acrylic, then stamped a PaperArtsy alphabet and numbers border.

I cut 31 journaling squares from a monoprint I made recently, glued them in place, then outlined them with a white Sharpie pen. I stamped the title with another PaperArtsy alphabet set, added some white pen highlights, and finished with white pen splatters.

I'm linking my spread to Neet's Type theme at Art Journal Journey.

Before I go, here's my July spread with its summer flowers all filled in with not very exciting things, apart from a lovely visit to RHS Wisley with a friend last week, and a trip to the seaside to see my SIL and family at the weekend.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

Washi Tape Class with Birgit Koopsen

 I signed up to a great online class with Birgit Koopsen this week. She showed us some wonderful techniques for creating our own washi tape. What a cool idea, to be able to make tape to match your projects.

Here are the tapes I made. I used masking tape as a base, with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylics, various stencils, and stamps by me, PaperArtsy, and Crafty Individuals.

I used some of my hand-carved stamps on these ones...

I love these ones, I think they look a bit like graffiti.

And these ones were fun to make. I love the colour blocks!

Look out for them appearing in a few projects 😀

Happy St. George's Day!

Alison xx

GelliArts March Printing Challenge - 18-23

Hello All.

I have a few more gel prints to share with you today. As usual, the daily themes are top left of each photo.

 

Those hand-carved stamps have been useful again. I carved the 'love is' right way round to work with my gel plate, and I need to do one wrong way round to stamp with.

Hope you're all having a good week. 

Thanks for visiting,

Alison xox