A bit of bracken

Today's daily drawing effort has actually taken me a few days and is not finished yet.  Apparently, it is allowed to work on a sketch for more than a day as many of the others in the pool have.

It is a sketch of a frond of bracken, which does not seem to be as common now as it was before the fires in 2009.  Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I have been doing a little journaling as well, but they are over on instagram.
I have also started on my Tangled textiles challenge here.


Happy Creating!

I'm hot and you're not

Another stinker of a day today, 40 degrees (104F)  and we had to go into town into the bargain.  Because I didn't wear my sunglasses, I ended up with a raging headache.  I sure am looking forward to the cold change tomorrow afternoon!
Here are a few pages out of my daily journal

This one has many many layers, but started out as a waste paint page.  Of course I love feathers, so I added them.  I like how colourful it turned out.

This one is about having a bad hair day, lol.
hopefully I will get around to scanning the work I have done in the last day or so, including a finished(?) textile piece for tomorrow.

Happy creating

Journaling

Almost didn't blog today.  It was a stinker of a day, nearly 40 celsius, but in the end, I got a bit done.  my studio was melting this afternoon, so I resorted to reading old Quilting Arts magazines in the main house.
Haven't taken photos of the morning's work, but here are a couple of journal pages a' la Dina Wakely.

 This one suggested the seahorse to me.

This one didn't give me any clues, so I just did some leaves.
these pages are fun to make.  I suggest you visit her blog, or get her new video. She also has online classes.

Happy creating!

How to be creative without producing anything

I have been very creative today, but it did not yield results.....yet.
I was inspired to do some digital collage by a post here.
But long long ago, when I was using photoshop elements, it seemed easy.  My new laptop only has Gimp.  I know I can do what I want, but the how is another thing.  It did not happen today, but I will keep trying (or I will go and get photoshop elements again)
so What have I got to show? Not much - two started journal pages.

This page is a rubbing over wire (which I learnt from design matters tv), using water soluble crayons. needs more work, of course.

This page is using a couple of things i created today.  On the left is a stencil I created from one of my drawings and on the right is a stamp I created using fun foam after watching the new Art journaling Live recording from Interweave.  It is not a new technique, i have seen it before, but the video was very inspiring.  It was the tracey Bautista part of the video.

I really like both the stamp and the stencil, but of course i need to play with them a bit more.

Happy creating!

Another face

Today I have been quite creative, but I don't think you would be interested in looking at colour mixing charts!,  So I went back to Jane Davenport's video and drew another face.  I find them extremely satisfying, especially since the reason I have avoided them is that I snobbishly regarded them as not art!  Of course that is silly, because art is creating whatever makes you happy.
I really enjoy doing them and feel like can have a success when I am not feeling particularly arty.
Of course, my faces are pretty much all the same at the moment, because I have not actually done many, but I suppose I will get better at making them my own.

Not much stitching seem to be happening, does it, but I am also working feverishly on my Tangled Textiles Challenge piece, but I can't show you that until next week.
Happy Creating!

Playing around

Day 22 of AEDM, wow can't believe I have actually stuck at it!
Today I have been working on a few things, but I will only just show this journal page, which is an excellent example of a page that did not work out the way I wanted, but still, creating is the thing.  Everything you create can't be a masterpiece.  Each bit you do is only a step towards that eventuality - a learning experience.

The butterflies are from the prints yesterday and the flowers are cut with a tiny little cutter from foil chewing gum wrappers!

I must say I added a lot of stuff to the page, oil pastels, paint pens, ink etc and I do like PARTS of it but, there you are, it's all a learning process.

Happy creating

One of those days

After such a busy day away from home yesterday, Today I felt a little washed out.  I have actually got a few things done, but it was a struggle.
I did a page of my Pam carriker journal - from her latest book - CREATING at the speed of life, which is a great book for working on art elements.  My students would say 'why do I need to work on these things if I already know them?', but you can always learn something more, and more importantly, once you  have learned something you need to do it often for it to stay in your repertoire.
The other thing I did was to work on a larger piece of water soluble lace, this one is about six inches so involves a lot of stitching and I will probably finish it this week.
I also did my daily page in my journal. Being in a bad mood, I could not think of what to do, so I got a water soluble pencil and scribbled loosely without looking.  Then I looked at my lines and I saw a jug.

So I added some more and defined the jug and activated the pencils with a water brush filled with diluted matte medium (this makes the watercolour permanent when dry, but it is also thicker than water and I find it works better with watersoluble media)
I filled in the background with some watercolour that was left on my palette from a few days ago.
I wondered what to write and the sentence just occurred to me.  Then I did my messy journalling at the bottom.
So that's what I got up to for Day 17 of AEDM.
Happy creating

oops, no stitching!

As the title says, no stitching to show today (although I have done some).
For day 7 of AEDM, I have a journal page to show and those of you who know me well will probably be shocked.  It is totally not my style at all.

I was watching Jane Davenport's Whimsical faces video and decided to have a go and this is the result. Quite a few mistakes and bits that didn't work and it was fun to do at the end of a hot sticky day.
I have been working on the monoprint piece and doing a bit more embroidery and beading.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

A little bit of free motion

Today, I found an embroidery pattern on pinterest that I liked.
I decided to do a collage using it.  I have to remember to get back into step by steps, but here is how it turned out.

I used a piece of pastel furnishing fabric that seemed to  speak to me.  I added some scraps of chiffon and organza approximately where I thought the flowers, leaves and vase were.  I actually just placed the photocopy over the top and stitched through it.  This is really easy with simple line drawings  but it was a bit difficult to pick out all the paper with this one.  An hour or two later, I decided that the pink and green thread I had used was too pale and unable to be seen and that I needed tulle to hold all the bits down since the stitching was not dense, so I went over all of it with black.
Here are a few close ups.

It really did not take too long and I think it turned out ok.  I will do it again, though, perhaps use water soluble stabiliser or sew through the paper from the back.

I also did a few bits and pieces in my journals

Feathers again, needs a bit more work with black and white gel pens.

My stencils smudged a bit on this one but it's still pretty, needs a bit more.  I tend to work on my pages in several stages.  These are just the first stages.  I usually leave these until I get some inspiration to develop them further.

This one is cute, but needs a lot more defining.  The background is one I did months ago and is almost the last page in that journal - wow!

Tomorrow is my 'away from home 'till late day, so I will be back in a day or two.  Thanks to all of you for looking, it does help me to keep going and make art every day.

make art every day!

From paper to fabric

Last night, I was working in my journals.  Mostly I was using acrylics in spray bottles.

Some of these designs,I thought might make interesting quilts, especially the feather page(s) and the large butterfly (sorry, I did rotate these, but flickr seems to have ignored me)

And then, I thought, why don't I do some of this (stencilling) on fabric?
So today I did.
I got out the compressor and airgun

And started playing with stencils

These are the ones I selected.

This piece of fabric used quite a few stencils layered.  I love the coffee stain rings stencil, it very cute.

Here are a few single layers.  As you can see I am a bit partial to trees.

and this one is the piece of fabric I used for testing out the airgun - yum.
And of course, the piece 'd' resistance.....

This piece I did with feather die cuts and I really like it.  I think it might have to go on my design wall!

And now the nuts and bolts.  Using an air gun is not difficult, however most people think it is.  Getting the right connections,or plumbing is the biggest problem, and I am not going into lessons here because every compressor and air gun have their own little quirks.
BUT you can do this technique using fabric paint in simple spray bottles.  There are two provisos.
First, you must spray very lightly if you are using spray bottles.  It is easy to saturate the fabric and then it will bleed
Second, spray bottles are temperamental, you need to test the misting each time you pick the bottle up, on a piece of scrap fabric to look at the lightness of the paint and the fineness of the spray.  If there are problems, or the paint has settled in the bottle DO NOT shake it with the nozzle screwed on the top.  I always take the spray off and then shake the bottle either with a normal lid or by holding my finger over the top.
I know, from lots of experience that the main problem with sprays is not the spray top itself, but the paint.  It needs to be a certain thickness (or thinness) to go through the nozzle.  Most of the time when my nozzle is spattering, I just dilute the paint a little and then it works.  If the nozzle really is blocked, then you will need to pull it apart and clean and dry it.  I have a special thin paint brush I use to do this.  Again, there are several different types of nozzles for spray bottles and I only really know mine, which are cheap bottles I got on ebay.
So there are a few pointers, but don't let it put you off, stenciling is great fun and it's very rewarding to create your own fabric.

.

From a journal junkie

Still not keeping up to date with blogging.  I have been so busy with classes at the community house.  It's hard to keep to my routine...  so perhaps it's time to change it.
I have been trying to finish some large pieces and doing a lot of reading and journalling.  I recently had a fall and injured my hand, so that set a lot of work aside, so reading became something to keep myself focussed. Whilst I was reading I came across a lot of journaling inspiration, so when my hand got mobile, that's what I started with.  I did quite a few pages, none of which are finished, but are passable.

This is a sketch page for a large collage which is in my list of things to do.

This was inspired by a magazine picture.

A few experimental backgrounds.

These backgrounds were all inspired by "journal Junkies", which is one of the books I read.

These two were inspire by "art journal freedom", which I also read

And this one was inspired by a quote.
So that's all the journalling I've been doing.
Hopefully I'll post about a few other things I've been doing in a day or two