The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 20

As you can tell below, our latest prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal told us to us office supplies to embellish our pages. I used little round tags as well as washi tape. All my spreads for #thestencilfiedjournal are done in a 9 x 14cm art journal.

I started by making the background, using acrylic paint with the large stencil from the September Stencilgirl®Club set and I added rubber stamping as well as collage with tissue wrap and vintage text. I stencilled on top of the previous layers using blue acrylic paint and  Stencilgirl® L471 Hamburg, designed by Nathalie Kalbach.

The little round tags were coloured on a gelli plate, rubber stamped and then stencilled with white paint using stencil L606 Soulful Scribbles Flourishes, also by Stencilgirl®. The pattern was outlined and then I added words to each tag. The tags were adhered to the background using the string they come with and washi tape.

Art Cards 107 - 115

Here is the latest batch of nine artcards. They are part of my #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed.

Most of these cards were also part of the project I did as monthly Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products. You can therefore find a step-by-step tutorial for these on the Stencilgirl Talk website.

The above card (no. 111) has attracted quite a bit of attention on Instagram due to the use of the word Cholera. I found it in an 18th Century Apothecary's Notebook that I picked up very cheaply during a book sale. It was already falling apart so I didn't feel bad about using it for collage. I love the hand writing! The book is also a reminder that cholera was (and in some places still is) a very serious disease and many remedies were tried over the centuries to find a cure.

Those were the Days

The prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week was: to include song lyrics or title. I could have chosen from so many favourite songs but the choice was made for me before I started this spread in an A5 sized journal. I am in the process of destashing my "stuff" and have found many items that I had totally forgotten about. The vintage image I used in this spread was one of them. As soon as I saw her I knew she had to be my focal point this week and the song Those were the Days by Mary Hopkin seemed to suit her melancholic and sad look. I love this song from way back when and as I am growing older I understand it better and better.

The background was made using stencil L605 Soulful Scribbles Dots Dash stencil from Stencilgirl Products as well as L606 Soulful Scribbles Flourishes, both designed by Traci Bautista. I added stamping with an art foamie designed by Nathalie Kalbach

The text was added by the same rubber stamping method I mentioned in the post a few days ago using a mix of alphabet stamp sets and a piece of scrapbook paper.

I found text that to me related to the lyrics of the song on a rub on sheet from Tim Holtz and tried to rub it on, not perfectly but so that remnants of text can be seen. The vintage image was glued on and outlined with a black Stabilo All pencil.

This too shall pass

Surprisingly we have already reached the second month of the year and it's time to share my next Stencilgirl Project with you. No idea what happened to January but it felt like being in a snow drift.

February is such a non-descript month. All the festivities from January are safely behind us and spring is still some distance away. Here in the Scottish Borders February tends to be a grey and wet month with the occasional white (snow) highlight. I have to say that it started white this year in the shape of both snow and ice! And there is more on the way apparently.

I usually feel melancholy and sad during this month, and as a reaction my art becomes more colourful because I long for brightness. That’s how this project originated with the faces looking both ways, back towards winter and forwards to spring.

As usual when I am Stencilgirl's Guest Designer you can find a full step-by-step tutorial for this spread (in a 9 x 9" journal) on their Stencilgirl Talk site, together with information about all the stencils I used.

I stamped on the text as you can see and was forced to use a variety of alphabet stamp sets I have, because not a single one seemed to be complete. HoweverI have taken to this mixed alphabet look a lot, so you will see more of it.

If you are a regular reader of this blog (Thank You!) you may realise that I have used face images before but always from magazines. It's such a treat to now have a stencil that gives you the face silhouette ready to use. No tedious cutting out involved! It is from the large stencil of the December 2017 Stencilgirl Club. That means it's an exclusive stencil for Club members only. But you can still acquire it by joining the Club (and get monthly issues of gorgeous stencils, not available in the Stencilgirl shop but only to members) and ordering from the back catalogue!

Art Cards 24 - 27

Here is the next lot of art cards. I'm aiming to catch up with the cards so that I upload one to Instagram every day till the end of the year. Because I made a late start I'm slightly behind. The cards are done to date but uploading them takes a bit longer as I don't want to overload my Instagram feed.

For techniques and materials used check out the labels below. All stencils used are by Stencilgirl Products.

Art Card 24

Art Card 25

Art Card 26

Art Card 27

Art Cards 4, 5 and 6

 Here are the next set of finished 3 x 3" art cards for the #365somethings2018.

4. So all is still again

 I am not going to enumerate all the techniques and materials used on these cards over the year,  apart from mentioning most of the rubber stamping on these 3 cards was done with stamps designed by Nathalie Kalbach. The stencils used in the background are all from Stencilgirl Products.

5. ce qui est beau est beau!

6. Follow the river of existence

Detail from card 5

More 365somethings2018 backgrounds

In the spirit of #365somethings2018 I made more backgrounds on my 3.5" art cards. You can read more about this project if you click on the 365somethings2018 tag below this post and over the year you can find all my posts on this subject there. Pictures can also be found on my Instagram feed with the same hashtag.

I'm still only making backgrounds on the cards at the moment and will continue adding more and more layers till I decide one of the cards may be close to the finishing line and then I will start to show you finished cards and hopefully there will be 365 of those at the end of the year.

For today's session I was inspired by a class by Carolyn Dube for Creative Jumpstart 2018. It involves using a gelli plate and I used a 3" square one. No more instructions but still plenty of time to join Creative Jumpstart, organized by Nathalie Kalbach, yourself. I can't recommend it highly enough. It makes the usually dreary month of January go with a bang!

The List

The prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week was: List. I like lists and always have a weekly To Do list on the go in my diary. As quilting takes a lot of time the list looks much the same from week to week but that makes the satisfaction all the greater when I can tick one activity off as done!
As I had no firm ideas yet about what to do with this spread (in an A5 sized journal) I started as I usually do: looking for something to collage onto the pages.

 As I was looking through my(by now much reduced stash of) vintage books I came across a very dilapidated Daily Journal; or The Annual Accompt-Book dating back to 1792. Don't worry, I only paid £1 for it as it was completely falling to bits. It was however full of lists. Some pages were empty but on other pages things were indeed listed in ancient handwriting and with an ink pen. I collaged random pages onto the background and covered everything with a thin layer of gesso.

 I then grabbed Distress Crayons and PaperArtsy Fresco paints as well as the S319 Scribble Bloom stencil and made a background full of texture.

I had also managed to discover a quotation about lists by Umberto Eco in his book The Name of the Rose. It reads as follows: "The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis". And in case you're wondering (I did!) what that last word means here it is: a vivid picturesque description of scenes or events.  I am now thinking of how I can use it in an everyday conversation! I hand wrote it onto another piece of a page from the above mentioned vintage book.

 After rubber stamping on some more texture with a stamp from Nathalie Kalbach's Kaffee Klatsch stamp set, I collaged on the focal image (from a Wrap catalogue) and then added more stencilling using M081 Rows of Triangles as well as M080 Repetition Stencil, both by Stencilgirl Products.

I sprayed on some gold through a piece of sequin waste and then outlined some images with black and white markers. I also doodled a bit on the figure and added some washi tape.

Don't fence me in

There has been no series of monthly Journal Quilts this year but nevertheless a few of them have been made. This is one of them, made for the upcoming (early 2018) exhibition of Thistle Quilters. We were all asked to make an A4 landscape orientated one for a specific week this year. My week was the one starting the 28th May. The theme was to be: News, and we could interpret that as we wished.

Truth be told I have been avoiding the "big" news as much as possible for the last few years, zapping away from any news programmes as if my life depended on it. Maybe because it had started to affect my mental well-being. So no world issues but instead I found my news much closer to home.

This year has been all about Flora, after she arrived with us in November last year (1st anniversary coming up soon!) so she had to feature. During that week of the 28th May I was participating in the Artful Adventures, Stroll through my Hood project (organized by Nathalie Kalbach) where we were to look at our neighbourhood with new eyes and take photographs based on prompts she gave us. One of the pictures I took at that time was of a very old gate in the Penicuik Estate. I have re-pictured it below although this one was taken yesterday.

I combined Flora with the gate and that formed the base of my journal quilt.

The quilt was made using a combination of hand dyed fabrics (the pink and the green) as well as a backing cloth that had been used to sop up the paint in my studio (the gate). Flora herself is an image transfer from a photograph.

The quilt was machine quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching and embroidery. It has been further embellished with size 11 seed beads and sparkly sequins.

I Wish

The months seem to fly past and yet again it's time to share my monthly project as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products. This month it's a bit of a strange one. The project started with an upset, then deteriorated further and I thought I would have to start from scratch. But somehow it did eventually emerge (like the butterflies featured) and start to acquire a look I liked. I decided to go ahead and share it anyway as having to rescue a spread is something we don't often think about but that happens to us all.

You can find a full step-by-step tutorial (a bit tongue in cheek!) on the Stencilgirl Talk website together with the stencils I used. I also rubber stamped on the pages using a stamp from the Marks set by Nathalie Kalbach.

The disaster was entirely my own fault. There is a strict rule in my studio that tops have to be put back on things as soon as I am finished with them. And yet! I had gessoed this spread (in my A4 Dylusions art journal) and while I was waiting for it to dry I thought I would just add some glitter to another project. You probably can guess what happened next. My sleeve swiped the entire pot of glitter and it fell right on top of the wet gesso. And that's where most of it stayed. I had never realized before how sharp the edges of glitter are but it proved to be nay on impossible to go ahead with my usual techniques. To find out how I managed to tame the glitter go to Stencilgirl Talk!

The event also  inspired the words I used on the pages. They are addressed mainly to myself. I have learned over the years I have been art making and exhibiting, not to be affected too much by outside criticisms but still wage daily war with my hyper critical inner voice, which of course gave me a right telling off about the glitter disaster.

The Greatest Bliss

You may remember that back in June I was one of the Guest Designers on the Artful Adventures, Stroll through the Hood project, initiated by Nathalie Kalbach to celebrate the publication of her book with the same name. There was a step-by-step tutorial from me for this project on her site but I wasn't able to share a picture of the entire page then. Enough time has passed to enable me to share it with you now.

For the Stroll we were given prompts and we could interpret them any way we wanted in photographs. I chose the Penicuik Estate for my "hood". The estate surrounds Penicuik House.  The house dates from the 1760s but sadly burned down in 1899 and only the walls were left standing. There was no money to restore the house and it remained in a ruined and dangerous state till 2007 when the Penicuik House Preservation Trust took on the huge project of stabilizing the house which is now finished. The Trust then started on a long term (till 2035) plan to restore the various built structures within the landscape of the estate.  One such structure is the Chinese Gates, as seen above, dating from 1758. These have now been fully restored as close as possible to the original structure. 

You come to the Gates from the Lime Walk extending from the side of the house and when you look into the far distance you see the Allan Ramsay Monument, erected in 1759 by Sir James Clerk, 3^rd Baronet of Penicuik, in commemoration of the Scottish poet Allan Ramsay (1684-1758). He has been called one of Scotland’s most important literary figures and is now mainly known as the author of Scotland’s first folk opera The Gentle Shepherd, set in the countryside around the nearby village of Carlops, that also has a lovely pub named after him.  The Gates and Monument were simply perfect for the prompts Fence, Sky, Sign, Pattern, View, Boundary, and especially Geometric which was the prompt on the day I posted my project  

 I used the L457 Santiago stencil designed by Nathalie Kalbach for Stencilgirl Products in the background and the L456 Buenos Aires one for the Monument. This last paper was done on a gelli plate and then cut to shape.

For the gates itself I used the Chicago art foamie, also designed by Nathalie and in the background I stamped with her Kaffee Klatsch rubber stamp set. Of course I had to include my constant strolling companion, the lovely Miss Flora. She was printed out to size from my computer. I used a quotation from Allan Ramsay himself to finish off the page.

I had a lot of fun making this project and in fact with the entire Stroll through the Hood. It helped me to pay even more attention to my surroundings and I have been keeping that up ever since.

A Fairy Tale or an Abyss

A new notebook/art journal was found (from Imagination Illustrated) just in time to do this spread for our prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week. Like the previous two I used for the Joggles prompts this one too is sized 5.3/4 x 8.1/4". I am using it as an art journal so I'm glueing pages together and start with a thick layer of gesso to make it all more sturdy.

Our prompt this week was to be inspired by mythology, fairy tales or folk stories. As you can see it had to be fairy tales for me and the image I used is from my favourite one: Sleeping Beauty.

The background was done entirely by using stencil L568 Crazy Quilts Bold and Beautiful by Stencilgirl Products. I added rubber stamping using a stamp set designed by Nathalie Kalbach, while the focal image, the circular sticker and the Once upon a Time text all came from Alpha Stamps.

The quotation is by Paulo Coelho and was stamped using a mixture of alphabet stamp sets unto vintage paper.

Opposites

Opposites was the prompt for Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week and once again my notebook with favourite quotations came up trumps with a quotation by Alexander Sutherland Neill that reads: "Love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is indifference". This rings so true with me.

The rather riotous background was done with a wide variety of paints (including some fluorescent ones) and stencil S451 Woven Small by Stencilgirl. I also added rubber stamping with a stamp designed by Tim Holtz as well as stamps from the Marks stamp set designed by Nathalie Kalbach.  Collage was the next step with tissue paper in the same design as Tim Holtz's stamp as well as imagery from a magazine. The LOVE sign (we saw one of them during our New York visit) was also added.

The imagery was outlined with a black Stabilo All pencil as was the text that was printed out on my computer.

The background is a bit wild but within it are hidden nuggets of great colour and texture, that make me happy.