52 Weeks Art Journal - Week 48 - Roots

Hello Everyone.

Here is my week 48 page for Michelle/RaspberryBlueSky's 52 Weeks Art Journal Challenge. The theme for this page is 'Roots'.

 I started with a layer of collage and a light application of white acrylic paint, then I used a PaperArtsy Mini stamp 'La Porte Bleue' for my door, and sketched and painted the house and roots around it. It looks a tiny bit spooky, but that wasn't my intention.

I'm linking my page to Valerie's When one door closes, another one opens theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for visiting.

Alison

A Mixed Bag of LifeBook Art

 Hello All. 

The thing that I love about the LifeBook course is the different types of art that is on offer. Here are 3 totally different styles, with different mediums.

Tiare Smith - Colourful Posca paint pen flowers on a black background. Tiare used blackboard paint, but I only had black gesso, which worked perfectly.

The quote reads...'May you always be the one who notices the little things that make this life pour through, and may they always remind you there is more to life, and there is more to you.'

Jenny Manno - We masked off the circles and some strips at the bottom, then used water soluble crayons and white gesso to activate them. Then we took the masks off and used watercolour paint, then added white gel pen writing and soft black pencil outlines and marks. Interesting techniques.

Rachel Kentish - Mindful Watercolours. The little packs of cards are colour coded prompts for colour, shape, and line & pattern. I picked out monochromatic colour, but I used the circles and line patterns that Rachel used. We added small circles of metallic watercolour (I used gold), smudged soft black pencil outlines, and white paint pen dots.

Thanks so much for coming to see my art. There'll be some more tomorrow, as I catch up with the many lessons.

Alison

LifeBook 2022 Taster Sessions - A few More Pieces

 Hello Everyone.

Here are a few more pieces from Tamara Laporte's LifeBook Taster Sessions.

A Quirky Lady with Toni Burt. Graphite pencil sketch with watercolour paint.

Altered playing cards with Shay Michelle. Collage and inspirational quotes with Tim Holtz phrase stickers.

Creating perfectly imperfect flowers with Francisca Nunes. Using dead flowers as inspiration, and using water soluble pencils, charcoal, and black ink. I added washes of diluted coffee, and some splashes of coffee and ink.

We ripped up the pages to create collage fodder.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

More LifeBook Taster Classes

 Hello Everyone! I hope you're all having a good weekend. It hasn't stopped raining here today, and we got very wet walking down for our annual flu jabs.

I have some more LifeBook art to share with you today.

A colourful watercolour cow with Cinnamon Cooney. I used Cinnamon's template and traced the cow onto my paper, then went over it with a black waterproof ink pen. Then I went mad with the watercolour paint. Of course I had to add some of my signature paint splashes.

Kim Dellow had us making lots of marks and doodles on two pages with paint, pencils and pens. We had to keep to one colour on the sheets. Then we made templates to place over the pages to find a cohesive design, and cut out a postcard, bookmark and heart. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo before I cut my pages up.

Melanie Rivers' class 'Between The Boundaries' showed us how to create a face with a white side and black side. I really enjoyed this one!

And finally for today, Iris Fritschi-Cussons showed us how to create some worry stones with polymer clay, acrylic paint, and paint pens. I love how these turned out.

I hope to be back tomorrow with my October calendar pages. It was dark by the time I finished them today, and to be honest today's heavy rain has made it so dark all flipping day!

Thanks for dropping by,

Alison

Artful August Day 13 - Rainbow

 Hello All.

Here's my day 13 page for Rachel Greig's Artful August, with the theme Rainbow. I think this was just a 10 minute page.

There's some 'type' on the collage in the background, and some asemic writing, a different type of text, so I'm linking to Neet's Type theme at Art Journal Journey. There's also different types of colours, cool and warm.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

Artful August - Day 9 - Water

 Hello All.

Here's my water themed page for Artful August. I used watercolour paints.

I'm linking my page to Neet's Type theme at Art Journal Journey. I used different types of marks and shapes on my page.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison

Cards for Mothers and Daughters

 Hello All.

I have a couple of cards to share with you today, the first is a Mother's Day card. I used the same techniques as on this art journal page a few days ago, with watercolour paint and a black pen sketched flower.

And the second is a new job card for my daughter. Beth has taken a secondment post for a year, on a government based project for sustainable aerospace. I'm very proud of my talented girl! She's very excited by the nature of the project.

I sketched the plane, created a stencil, and after stencilling with black paint on a mono-printed background, I used a white paint pen to add details. I finished with some suitable Tim Holtz phrase stickers.

Thanks for dropping by today,

Alison xox

Creative JumpStart with Caylee Grey

Caylee Grey's 'Story of an ordinary day' class was the final class in the CJS course. There were a few that I missed out, and I might go back to those. But here's my page inspired by Caylee's class.

 I used magazine images to represent myself, my Husband and son, and my Mum. I had some sort of contact with them all in my day. I used colours from my day too, colours from my garden and the colour of my favourite chair. Music paper represents the music on the radio. 

I used staples to assemble my collage, so I'm linking this page to Valerie's Heavy Metal theme at Art Journal Journey.

I hope you're all having a good week,

Thanks for visiting,

Alison xox

Creative JumpStart with Danny Gregory

 Hello All.

Danny Gregory's class at CJS was titled Every Day Matters. We sketched, watercoloured and journalled everyday occurrences.

I used some copper metallic watercolour paint on my plate and mug, and silver on my crochet hook, so I'm linking up to Valerie's Heavy Metal theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for visiting me today, I hope you have a great new week.

Alison xox

Creative Jumpstart Day 28

 Day 28 of CJS was Story Telling with Stamps by Kae Pea. She used watercolour paint to stamp with one of her Art Foamies stamps. I don't have any of her stamps, so I made my own with a foam sheet. 

I used both the inner and outer stamps for my piece, applying the watercolour paint to the outer stamp first and stamping with it, then adding contrasting colours to the inner heart, and stamping with that. I added some stamping with Dina Wakley stamps, and plenty of splatters.

Here's the first page I made. I used a cheap watercolour set for this, which didn't work as well as I wanted. It's a bit wishy washy. I also used a low quality watercolour paper. I painted on some plants and added some scribbly writing.

This second piece worked better. I used Reeve's watercolour tube paints, and better paper.

I really love that Imagination Crafts Pearl Gold watercolour paint!

I'm linking up to Valerie's Heavy Metal theme at Art Journal Journey, and Try It On Tuesday's Falling in Love theme again.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison xox

February 2021 Art Journal Calendar

 Hi Everyone!

I'm here today with my February calendar spread. 

I recently discovered stamping with watercolour paint, and I used this technique for my background, over collaged and gessoed music and book paper, with some Dina Wakley heart stamps, Reeves watercolour tube paint in phthalo blue, and some metallic gold pearl watercolour paint from Imagination Crafts. I added a splattering of the paints too :-)

For my journaling, I stamped another of Dina's hearts 28 times onto gesso music paper with black archival ink, cut them out, inked the edges, and glued them to my pages. I used the phthalo blue watercolour paint to colour in the Valentine's Day heart, to make it stand out. 

I used Darkroom Door alphabet and number stamps for my title.

I'm linking up to Valerie's Heavy Metal theme at Art Journal Journey, and also Try It On Tuesday's Falling In Love theme.

And finally, here's my January calendar all filled in...

Wishing you all a happy and healthy new month.

Thanks for visiting! 

Alison xox

Some Mini Journals For CJS 20, 21 & 24

 Hello All. I hope you're having a good weekend. I was thrilled today to get my first dose of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccination. I just hope Hubby will be able to get his soon too.

On Creative JumpStart, we learned some ways to create mini books, which will come in quite handy to use up gel prints.

On Day 20, Amanda Trought showed us some simple cuts and folds to create little doodle journals.

On Day 21, Andrea Chebeleu showed us how to create different watercolour meditative patterns and marks on both sides of paper, then to cut them up to make into a journal.

On Day 24, Diana Trout showed us a few techniques with watercolour, perfect pearls and stencils, creating patterns on both sides of a piece of paper, then folding and cutting to create a maze book.

Thanks for dropping by today,

Alison xox

Creative JumpStart Day 19

 Hello All.

Day 19 of CJS was Love The Person You've Become with Marlene Meijer-van Niekerk. She showed us how to create a watercolour background, then used collage to add a figure representing ourselves, surrounded by some things we love.

Here's my take on the class. 

I used some PaperArtsy stamps for the background and the art doll's face. I added teabags, collage circles and birds cut from a bird-watching magazine. After I finished, I noticed that the collage circles that I added to the art doll body looked like a bird's nest.

I'm linking up to Erika's Favourite Things theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you're having a good week so far.

Alison xox

Creative JumpStart Day 12

Hi Everyone!

Day 12 of CJS was Textural Watercolour with Nancy Curry. It was interesting to watch Nancy's process. I managed to create a painting with some texture, although my cheap watercolour paints didn't work as well as Nancy's artist quality ones. It might be time to invest in some better paints.

 The flower centres were made using fluid acrylic paint, and I used a black watercolour pencil for the flower stems. I added watercolour and acrylic paint splashes to give even more textural effect.

Finishing a page with paint splashes is one of my favourite things to do, so I'm linking up to Erika's Favourite Things theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for dropping by today,

Alison xox

Creative JumpStart Days 8 and 9

 Hello All. I'm so glad I signed up for the CJS course. It's been well worth the money so far, with a great diversity of projects and techniques.

On Day 8 we had Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's class, Story-telling with Symbols. This involved creating a paper stencil that was personal to us, and using it with Distress Inks and a Gelli Plate. I created a stencil similar to Julie's, with dots representing my family and curves being the hugs we are all missing.

Then on Day 9, Danielle Donaldson's project was an Illustrated Mermouse, using watercolour paint. I painted a Mouse Princess instead. 

Here's Princess Pansy...

I'm linking my page to Erika's Favourite Things theme at Art Journal Journey. Watercolour paint is quickly becoming one of my favourite things to use.

Happy Friday to you all,

Alison xox

Creative Jumpstart - Day 5

 Hello Everyone. I love sketching quirky birds, so Jodi Ohl's Whimsical Character Story-telling tutorial on Day 5 of Creative Jumpstart was right up my street. And using watercolour paint was a great way to practise using this medium that I'm still getting to grips with. Also, the idea was to use the eyes to give our character an interesting expression.

Here's Nervous Nell...

I'm linking this page with Erika's Favourite Things theme at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison xox

Gratitude Junk Journal Day 22

 Hi Everyone!

It's Day 27 of Leah's Art Every Day Month Challenge, and today I've got another art journal page to share with you. 

The theme for this page was gratitude for aspects of my personality.

I played with watercolour again on this page, and made marks with acrylic ink and a chopstick.

Thanks for visiting,

Alison xox