Collage 43

This collage turned into a very surreal one, almost unnoticed by me, till it was done. I do however like the end result. All the imagery comes from a variety of magazines.  The queen's head came from an image of a pottery jar and it was placed on the body of a statue by Anthony Gormley. It's modesty is protected by the strategically placed fox, a piece of sculpture by Barbary Franc. The other figure comes from a Gucci advert and there is a final surreal touch in the shape of the Dutch postage stamp. Along the edge is a piece of washi tape with hand writing on it.  Make of this what you will!

Collage 21

Here is Collage 21 for my #52collages2019 and it ended up looking very differently from how it began! What message it conveys I don't know nor do I have any idea what that large looking bird is. It came from an advert for an antique fair. I also used another image (ginkgo leaves perhaps?) as well as a selfie printed on an HP Sprocket mini printer. Washi tape and a postage stamp were also added to the page in a 5 x 8" Moleskine journal. I wonder what riches will come my way?

Little Journals

It’s always a good idea to have some gifts ready for special occasions so as not to be caught unaware, and one of the things I love to do is to make small journals that people can use in any way they fancy.  I thought I would share some with you as my May project for Stencilgirl®. You can find the full instructions on the Stencilgirl®Talk website today. You can also find a list of all the stencils I used there.
Don't let the fact that it involves a bit of bookbinding put you off. This is ever so simply and each journal is done using just one sheet of paper.
As you can see on some of the pages I have already started adding extra items to the journals (mainly postage stamps at the moment) and I hope to add more elements and also writing in due course. Here are some detailed pictures:

You can also find a small video of one of the journals on my Instagram account here.

Collage 16

Collage 16 features the inspirational artist Frida Kahlo surrounded by colours and a postage stamp that suited her in my opinion. This is the latest collage for my #52collages2019 project this year, all done in a 5 x 8" Moleskine notebook.

Collage 13

Week 13 of 2019 has arrived and with it a new collage in my series of 52 collages, one for each week of 2019. I'm working in a 5 x 8" Moleskine journal. I love the quotation as it's so true, and if I'm honest I also think there is a time to calm down but there is also a time when taking action is the better option. So I very seldom advise anyone (including myself) to calm down.

The above motto suits me much better. I spotted it on a little camper van parked at Penicuik Estate this morning. No idea who owns it but I liked them sight unseen just because they named their van Daisy. It was decorated in a lovely, happy, hippie style and offered up my sort of guidance: One Life, Live It!.

Collage 9

This collage is a strange mix of elements that somehow made it into a coherent whole. It features an interior picture from a magazine (almost obscured but the window is still visible), a newspaper image of Florence, a Chinese clothes label, an Italian postage stamp, a photo of a forest view I took myself, printed on an HP Sprocket printer, and some washi tape with gold spots. Plus, of course, the words, always the last items I add.

Collage 8

Another week has passed and this is collage 8 in my series of 52 collages in an 5 x 8" Moleskine journal, made as part of my #52collages2019 project.

I never plan these collages out but instead start by making a background. Sometimes this is one image and at other times such as this one the background consists of various different images, all obtained from magazines and the like.

Then I start tearing out a wide variety of imagery that catch my eye as I leaf through magazines. I also find things in newspapers, my stash of vintage postcards and catalogues. The text is usually the last item that gets added.

For this collage I used a vintage postcard featuring a house in Barcelona, a Chinese postage stamp, a detail from Grant Wood's painting American Gothic and washi tape with text. It's hard to say when I stop but the best way to explain it is to say it's done when the entire page looks like it was always meant to be. .

Collage no. 3

Here is my collage for week 3 of 2019. I'm hoping to make one a week this year as part of my #52collages2019 project. My imagery will come from a wide variety of magazines and will thus be a good excuse for the occasional indulgence of magazine buying. On this one I also added postage stamps and washi tape.

Art Cards 315 - 323

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 24

You can see the final prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal below. And I didn't entirely stick to it. I did put tape on the pages but did not cover it completely as that word was missing from the prompt!

Instead I made the background for this spread (in a 9 x 14xm journal) using a variety of paints together with stencil L635 Tiger Lily by Stencilgirl  Products® as well as the large stencil from the October 2018 Stencilgirl®Club. Once the background looked right I added the brown trees using stencil L635 Winter Trees Bark also by Stencilgirl®

Then I grabbed my rather overwhelming collection of washi tapes and started to populate the forest with animals, mushrooms, birds and I also found a washi tape to add leaves to the trees.

 It was great fun specially as I  found a suitable vintage text to accompany it all. 

This is the last prompt for this fun project, organized by Tina Walker (who also made the prompt tags) and Stencilgirl  Products®. It's always sad when projects finish but I'm sure I'll find other ones and, shock horror, I could just make spreads for the fun of it!

Art Cards 279 - 287

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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 and you can find them all on  my Instagram feed

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 197 - 205

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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.

The Stencilfied Journal Prompt Seven

Here is my contribution for prompt 7 on #thestencilfiedjournal. The tags with the prompts are lovely and were produced by Tina Walker, the instigator of the project that you can follow on Instagram and Facebook using the hashtag above.

This is my finished spread in my 9 x 14cm journal before I tore out the left hand page. It was made using collage with vintage papers, rubber stamping with both a face and a texture stamp as well as collage with tissue wrap and washi tape. Then I used a variety of paints and Stencilgirl®'s L311 Tropical Floral stencil for all the stencilling. The text relates to the prompt too. Somehow this seems to have become part of what I'm doing in this journal.

After I removed the left hand page I tore it into strips and then added the strips to the empty page that had then appeared on the left. I painted that blue first. I didn't use all the strips. You may see them appear on another spread (or not, it all depends!). Then I wrote it text relating to the words on the right hand page.

Monarch of the Glen

During our long and hard winter this year we spotted many deer. They were short of food and ventured out of the forest to try and find something to eat. It is always a joy to see these wild creatures even though we had to sacrifice our ivy!

Scotland is known for it's deer population and that means that the painting Monarch of the Glen by Landseer is a nationally treasured painting. Some years ago we even had a television series named after it.

I love deer so grabbed this opportunity as monthly Guest Designer for Stencilgirl  Products® to produce my own version on a 9 x 12" sheet of watercolour paper. You can find a full step by step tutorial here.

As per usual when I'm working on a project on a loose page, I made another page using exactly the same methods, just in case there was a bit of a disaster at some stage. There wasn't, so I had a page left on which I did the opposite as on the main project, using the stencil instead of the mask as I had done there. The image below is the result.

Art Cards 161 - 169

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #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.

Art Cards 125 - 133

Here is the latest batch of nine art cards. 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.

The Dreamers of Dreams

Our mission this week on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was to add texture to our pages. My spread in an A5 journal was therefore started with a collage of washi tapes, using black/white and neutral colours. Once I was happy with how that was looking, I used Distress Crayons and Fluid Acrylic paints and removed them through the small stencil from the January 2017 StencilGirl Club as well as M155 Random Lace stencil using a baby wipe. I then used yellow spray paint and the small stencil from the October 2016 Stencilgirl Club to add the circles. I also dropped on some Magicals powder in dark blue.

The text came from Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy and reads: "We are the music-makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers, Of the world for ever, it seems. 

Finally I added some sparkle using a gold Perfect Pearls Misters and stencil M080 Repetition and some imagery in the form of postage stamps.

Art Cards 116 - 124

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.

Apologies for the fact that the card bottom row right is on it's side. I only noticed it just now and wasn't inclined to re-photograph the set again because the sun is shining and the garden beckons!

Art Cards 98 - 106

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.

I have to say those nine days seem to fly past. Every time nine cards are ready to be shared here it takes me by surprise. And we have passed the 100 mark too. I need to grab 2018 by the neck before it too vanishes without trace!