Something a little different....

Hello friends, tanks for being here! A while back I joined a new facebook group called the Mixed Media Art book group, hosted by the wonderful Marjie Kemper. You can read all about it here.
This month we are using Dina Wakeley's book Artjournal Freedom. This is what I made:

It was inspired by a project Dina shared on page 96 of her book, called Artsy Painted Birds.
I had great fun making it, though I can't share the process steps here, as that would be unfair to Dina. It was just what I needed to loosen up and dig out my paints and just have fun creating. My artsy birds were painted freehand from looking at Dina's example. She used a phototransfer for her's, but as I don't own transfer paper, I just had some fun handsketching them.

A few close ups below:

Some stencilling on the birds

And on another corner of the canvas (it's an 8 x8 " little box canvas).

And some scribbely writing (on purpose, I know it looks terrible, I even need to practise my scribbely writing, - how sad is that). The quote reads:

Hold fast to your dreams

for if dreams die

life is a broken-winged bird

that cannot fly.

Well, that's it for today, not my usual style, but I really needed to break out of my vintage box and do something different again, and this seemed like a fun way of doing that. I would like to thank Marjie for this idea and have an arty/craft time everyone! If you would like to participaate, you can join a dedicated Facebook Group
I will also link this to Jo's wonderful challenge at AJJ with the theme Poetry in Motion.

Thanks for your visit

xxxxx

Live Your Dream with Passion for Shimmerz

Hello friends, time for a Shimmerz preview:

If you want to see more, just click here.

Hope you are having a good month and thanks for your visit!

xxxxx

Nature Journal, the next installment

Hello friends and thanks for joining me here today. I have three more pages for my nature journal to share today:

Each of them somewhat different but all using the same materials: hotpress watercolour paper,  Distress Oxide Inks, normal Distress inks and a variety of stamps of course. On this occasion all colouring was done with Distress inks.

I'm not too fond of this one, I think it would have looked better in more monochrome colours, but with each of these pages I learn something new, and after all, that's what journaling is all about. The main sttamp is an older Stampendous one.

The bit I do like on this one, is the crackle effect. This was achieved by stamping with Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink and a crackle stamp (Indigoblu) on top of a darker background. This is the cool thing with these Doxides, because of the more opaque pigment ink in it, you can stamp light over dark!

The next one uses mostly normal Distress inks only, I was just playing around with different colours that I normally don't use very often, jsy to see the effect.

This is a rarely used stamp I have had in my stash for ages. I am not sure who made it.

Some twine and a few die cuts to add a bit more interest

For theis last one I used a Gabrielle Pollaco stencil and texture paste to add a bit mor interest to the background. The stamping of the flowers was done with different colours of Archival inks, Library Green and Plum. I added the white splats to lighten it all up a bit.

The patina effect highlights were done with Distress crayons, carefully putting the stencil back over the raised texture paste. I used Ranger texture paste, as it absorbs colour so well.

Well that's it for now. Each of the pages will be adhered to my nature journal Kraftcard insert, - you can see earlier posts of this journal here, here and here.

Thank you for your visit like always

xxxxx

Astrid

A journal, some news and a blog break....

Hello friends, - today I have quite a few things to tell you about. It's not often I share personal things here, so this is a bit of an exception. I recently retired which gives me the freedom to have other adventures and very soon I am off to China where I was invited to teach for a week. After that I will fly on  to Australia to be with my grandchildren right up until the second week in November. As this means I will be away from my craft space for a long time,  I will have to take a bit of a blog break, so after August 15th there won't be many projects here most likely until I am back. Of course I am bringing some art supplies with me, but I don't know how much time there will be to blog about them.
Anyhow, onto today's project. The one thing that always comes along with me is a journal, so I have prepped a few pages to show:

As time was at a premium, I kept it very simple, and used only minimal supplies. As you can see, it's yet another midory sized one using Eileen Hull's wonderful journal die, but more about that in a moment. I used some of my endless stash of scrapbook papers and washi tapes. (like stamps it's an addiction I'm sure) I'll let the photos do the talking, but as you can see I left everything flat and without embellisments, so it would be easy to carry and light in weight. The closure is a simple elasticated ribbon, with plenty of room for additional things I may want to add at some later point.

I know I will not have the time to do involved mixed media art journaling, so this is more in junk journal style, though rather minimalist with plenty of space to jot down notes and memories.

Here is the first inside page with a paperbag pocket. It has a little gusset, so will hold quite a bit in the way of ephemera etc.
Below some of the double pages with some more detailed photos inbetween:

Another little pocket, with space for tickets and things

At the moment it just hold further bits and pieces I want to use for following pages.

The ticket on the right side acts like a tab. I cut two and adhered them around both sides of the page.

Here is the other side. As you can probably see it was all done in a bit of a hurry and there is not much variety. Below some closer views of each side.

And here the final page I have done so far... travel themed as you can see.

Now for the news, - I was lucky enough to have been invited to partake in an Eileen Hull publication, produced by Bellcraft Publishing. If you are at all interested in journals, you have heard about it already on Facebook or seen it on blogs. There are the most stunning examples in there, all with links to the blogs of the people that created them, plus a load of other useful information, help and tips and ideas. You can read all about it, including costs etc on Eileen's blog The book itself is downloadable and available from HERE, and there is a discount if you order during August!

Well that's it for now, I'll try and visit blogs when I can, meanwhile stay creative and thanks for your visit.

xxxxx

Gift card holder

Hello all, - time for a bit of crafty fun. I needed a little gift card holder and decided to use a technique I regularly used some years ago. These are quick, fun and great to use up all thse leftovers we have....

To make this you need a size 12 tag and score it at 3.5 and 7" along the long side away from the shaped bit. Hope this makes sense.

Adhere pieces of scrapbook paper on both the out and the inside (alter them as you see fit). I used scraps of  Prima Rose Quartz paper,  covered with clear gesso and then heavily altered with inks and sprays. I embellished with scraps of the same paper collection too.

Here you can see te front flap, heavily crackled and inked because the actual paper was way too pink and sweet for my taste.

Here is the back, - I added some washi tape along the folds for a little more strength.

Here is the inside, where I left the papers more in their original form, creating a belly band to tuck in the little envelope that holds the gift card.

And that was pretty much all there was too it, - making a little gift card just a little more exciting and a good way to use up some paper scraps.

Well, that's it for today, back to creating more pages for my nature journal I think.... Thanks for your visit and see you again hopefully.

xxxxx

Astrid

A Nature Journal page for Shimmerz

Hello friends, - today is a preview day as I have a post go live on the Shimmerz blog.

If you want to see more, just click HERE. Thanks for dropping by today and have a great week!

xxxxx

Astrid

Watercolour page for A Vintage Journey

Hello lovely visitors! Today sees the start of a new challenge at A Vintage Journey and the lovely and talented Amanda has chosen Watercolours for her theme. Well the obvious choice for me was to make another page for my Nature Journal, so here it is:

I worked on 300 gms hotpress watercolour paper and started by stamping my image in Sepia Archival and then heatembossing it with clear powder.

The next step was to add some texture with one of Tim Holtz's layering stencil and texture paste. When that had dried it was time to start with the watercolours. I used Daniel Smith brand colours in  Quin. Deep Gold, Burnt Sienna and Raw Sienna first of all.

Next more drama was added with some Payne's Grey. In this brand the colour is almost black, so I had to go carefully.

Time to add some different effects, so I pulled out my Oxide inks and added some further layers, using mostly Antique Linen, Wild Honey and a little Peackock Feathers to add a Patina Effect over the raised bits.

I deepened the effect with going over it again in a Peackock Feather Distress Crayon and also added a tiny bit of Treasure Gold to add some shimmer.

Time to colour te butterfly, - I used water colour pencils in matching colours for that.

I added a few embellishments to finish it all off...

I added a bit of shadow here and there and that was pretty much it

Now all I had to do was to glue it into my Nature Journal and I was done.

I hope you will pop over to the Vintage Journey Blog, to see the amazing projects my teamies have created, - watercolour inspiration galore. We also have a wonderful sponsor this month, Craft Obsessions, so do head over to get all the details, and of course we all hope that you will decide to play along with us this month! Meanwhile, thanks for dropping by here like useual and stay creative!

xxxxx