Making books is addictive!

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all well. I have been neglecting my blog for so long now I decided I really needed to get back on top of it. I have been a women on a mission since Christmas with so many projects on the go I don't know quite where to start!

I was bought some encaustic medium for Christmas and have been so excited to start experimenting, I have started up my workshops again. This month it is Intermediate art journaling, I have started a portrait of my youngest daughter and been trying out some abstract landscape painting...... but more on all that another time!

Today I wanted to tell you all about my recent bookbinding endeavours! I am most definitely in a binding phase and am looking to run a whole days workshop in May making Junk journals. Here is a few of my recent makes:

This is a little coptic stitched junk journal. The cover is made from an old book. I am using this as a creative journal to keep family memories in.

This one is made from a gorgeous second hand book. I didn't do anything to the cover cause I loved it as it was. I have tried to keep it pirate/nautical themed throughout.

This last one is made up of random pages I liked and lots of cool embellishments. The cover is an old cereal box. Throughout it I have included things like tags etc that have been sent to me. (apologies for the wonky filming, My 8 year old wanted to film it!)

I love love love making junk journals they are so satisfying to make, so tactile and so lovely to use. I am hoping to start making some to sell on Etsy. I will of course keep you posted on that!

I hope you enjoyed seeing them!

Bye for now xxx

Some Recent Art Journaling

Hello All!

Sorry it has been a while! I kept meaning to blog but life has been busy lately, and I have been distracted with various things. That all said I didn't mean to put it off for so long! I will hopefully make that up over the next few days as I have loads to show you. Today I am going to start off with some recent art journaling:

This first one was an experiment of bold colours and lines. For the lady I used a magazine cutting which I then painted over and I tried to keep to black and white to match the boldness of the page. The whole thing I felt had a confidence about it and so I found the text from a magazine which was in keeping with this. 

This page is in my altered book journal and you may see some of the original text coming through on the right. I have been playing around lately with a lot of portraiture and this is one is a self portrait. Again I stuck to black and white and I think it works well here. This again has an air of confidence and is all about being self assured. 

For this one I really enjoyed playing with layering stamps, ink, pigment powders and tissue paper. I loved the yellow streak running through the page and this is what gave the inspiration for the text. To me the page has a warmth and feels quite happy and relaxed.

Finally this one, done in my small journal, is a bright warm very happy page about my recent family holiday to Crete. It was the best holiday we have ever had, we all had such a good time. The holiday was to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary (we went to Crete for our honeymoon) and it couldn't have been better. It was a memory I had to journal about! The colours have a warm glow to them and the image is my youngest daughter paddling in the sea.

I hope you enjoyed these pages, I will be back with more very soon!

Bye for now xxx

Happy New Year!

Hello All,

Happy new year to you all! I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday. I have had a fantastic busy Christmas full of family and laughter. It just goes far too quickly, after so much build up it is over in a flash. Now I am back at work :( but the sun is shining and so far the new year has been a good one. I have a few resolutions this year.

1. To try and get more art/workshops done and focus on maybe getting some exhibitions.
2. Build up my you tube channel (although I hate filming myself!)
3. See more of friends and family.
4. To do the splits for the first time ever by the end of the year!

Please leave me a comment telling me what you got up to over the hols or any resolutions you have!

Now for a bit of art, here are few art journaling pages I managed to do over the hols:

This one is in my altered book journal. I was just playing around with texture and mark making and I restricted myself to just a few colours.

This is in my small journal. I really fancied using a collage background and used an old comic torn into pieces
. Many if the images were of ladies in the 50s looking so glamorous and feminine and it got me thinking about myself and how at times I don't feel very lady like at all! I used a copper paint to highlight certain areas.

I also managed to complete two mini mixed media paintings:

These are painted on canvass board and are only A5 size. I plan to frame them. I enjoyed painting these especially with the use of texture and pattern. I used pigment powders and iridescent medium to colour them.

Anyway lunch is over and it's back to work for me. I will be back with more hopefully very soon.

Bye for now! xxx

Some Recent Art Journaling

Hello All,

Apologies for not posting recently, I don't seem to have been able to find the time to sit and type. That is not to say I haven't been creating, I have been doing the odd bit of art journaling recently and I thought I would share some of the pages I have been creating:

This is in my altered book and was an experiment in playing with a hot glue gun to create texture.
I enjoyed adding the colour and bringing back forward some of the original text and imagery to the foreground. The glue texture worked really well, I will definitely be doing this again!

This was a 10 minute exercise simply playing with paint and pattern. It gave me a lovely creative boost on a gloomy Sunday morning. It is a lovely thing to do, just give yourself 10 minutes to play, it doesn't matter how it turns out!

I was using this page to mop up left over paint from other projects and decided to create an autumnal spread over the top. The image is taken from an old calendar I had lying around and the quote is from a Fiona Apple song that I always used to sing to my daughter. I also used a leaf stencil that someone sent me a while ago and I haven't had a chance to use yet.

This is a spread I created in my smallest journal. I was inspired by a lovely evening I had with a friend of mine and I really fancied painting a figure. I am really pleased with how she turned out.

I hope you like these pages, I will hopefully find some more time to blog as I have also been working on a new canvas and had a lovely art swap this month... more on this to follow.

Bye for now! xxx

Tile Stamping

Hello All,

This week I was looking at tiles with my hubby and saw that you could buy some sample tiles for 50p. There were some really interesting patterns and textures and I thought they could make really good stamps for art journaling so I bought a couple to try out.

Here is one of them. I tried with ink but the print was quite faint so I had a go with some acrylic and I really liked the result. I think rubbings might be good from these too. I will definitely be looking for some more!  I used this pattern on a page in my altered book art journal and the result was really quite effective. Here is the final spread:

I played around with layering paint and pattern allowing some of the original text from the page to show through. I finished with the circles stamps. I was recently looking at art foamies which are a product in the states that look fab, really big chunky interesting foam shapes and patterns used for stamping. I would so love to buy some but the postage to the UK is really expensive. I decided to try and make my own instead, using a piece of card, some craft foam, scissors and glue. I cut out 24 identical circles from the craft foam and glued 6 onto the piece of card. I then kept gluing the circles on in layers over the top of the previous until I had 6 stacks of 4 circles. Once dry I tried it out with some paint and you can see the result. Simple but effective! I will have to try out some more complicated shapes to see if it works.

I do enjoy experimenting with different art products but making your own and using an everyday object in a different way is really satisfying, it sometimes takes a bit of thinking outside the box but, like buying a bargain, when it comes out right it is even better :)

Bye for now xx

Bank holiday creative madness!

Hello All,

This lovely long bank holiday weekend saw me go creative mad! I started so many different projects at once and flicked from one to the other. My brain was filled with so many ideas and I couldn't wait to have a go.

Firstly I did a few journaling pages:

I was feeling happy and so inspired and I think the colours I went for in these pages reflect that. I just kept flitting back and adding a layer to these then moving on to something else and coming back once they were dry to add some more. I am really pleased how they turned out.

The other thing I was getting really excited about this weekend was some upcycling. I love the idea of taking something old and giving it a new lease of life. I have done a bit of this, some of my journals for instance are made from old boxes etc, but I would really like to get into this more. I was watching you tube vids for example Sealemon and Hermione Chantal who have some fab ideas. Turning something plain or forgotten into something that looks great. I particularly like DIY decor. I started thinking that once the kids are back at school I will start going around junk shops and seeing what I can find to revamp. I felt so inspired I couldn't wait and took a trip to my local poundland and chose a few bits to start with.

I am in the middle of turning a ice cream glass into a tea light holder and I also bought a few frames to do up:

I turned one into a shopping list by painting the frame and adding some nice paper inside. I found some little letter magnets in the shop too and glued these on to form 'shopping list' all it needs now is a whiteboard marker :) the little pot next to it is a pen holder made with craft foam. I got this idea from a sealemon vid and it looks really cute on my windowsill.

I hope you like these as much as I enjoyed making them! I will have a go with the other frame and finish the glass and post them up to see what you think! 

Bye for now xxx

Change

Hello All,

Today I thought I would share an art journaling page I finished at the weekend. I was playing around with layers. This is in my altered book so there is already text on the page to start with. To this I added gesso then modeling paste through a stencil from stencilgirl products designed by Carolyn Dube  Once this had dried I added layer after layer of ink and paint keeping it quite wet and allowing it to drip through the modelling paste. I then drew some circles and added a layer of gesso to everything but these so that the circles really stand out.

I decided to add the butterflies and the word 'change' to reflect the changes in my life recently with my youngest finishing nursery and my eldest finishing infant school. I used stamps on tissue paper to create these and adhered them to the circles using matte medium. Lastly I brightened some areas of the background with ecoline watercolour inks.

I hope you like it! let me know what you think.

Bye for now xxx

Time for a spot of art journaling

Hello All,

There is nothing like finding time for some art journaling. Art journaling is something I love, it really helps to get things into perspective. I use it as a diary or just a place to play with my creativity freely.

Here are a few pages from this last week:

This was definitely a page for experimenting. I found a lovely bright pink acrylic paint that I couldn't wait to use and had carved a little handmade tear drop stamp. I also had made some collage pieces earlier in the week and decided to use one to create a little embellishment with a quote I found that seemed to suit the page perfectly.

This one is in my altered book journal and it was the original background image of a girl looking out of the window that decided where the page was going. I was enjoying playing with texture. My mother in law had given me some old torn lace which I wanted to try out and I also used modelling paste through a stencil. I kept adding colour with acrylics, inks sprays and mica pigment powders but it wasn't quite right. My husband liked the stencil pattern and suggested I add the flowers. It worked brilliantly and reflects my mood at the time, which was happy and peaceful. I finished it with the text 'take a look outside' to express my excitement that spring is finally here!

I hope you like them as much as I enjoyed doing them.

Bye for now! xxx

New art journaling page.

Hello all,

What a busy weekend. It was my nephews 3rd birthday so we all went to the Yorkshire sculpture park for the day. Luckily it seemed to be the first real day of spring and was lovely and sunny. The kids loved running about and I got to see the Bill Viola exhibition I wanted to see. I am not normally bothered by video art or installations but I saw his work many years ago while I was at Uni and it is mesmerising, you can't really explain why but you can't tear your eyes away. This exhibition didn't dissapoint and I really enjoyed it. Particularly the piece in the chapel which showed a blazing fire slowy turn to water and then almost to smoke. I recomend going down to have a look if you can http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/bill-viola

Also this weekend I managed to make a start on my next large canvas and finish the art journaling page I started last week:

I really fancied putting in a portrait and when I had added her it made me start thinking about what is confidence? Quite often it is a mask for many insecurities. When do we actually feel truly 100% confident?

Anyway bye for now! xxxx

The next layer

Hello All,

Happy Mothers day for yesterday to all you wonderful mothers! I was treated to a handmade card from each of my girls and breakfast made for me by my eldest. Then later four generations went out for a meal with a free class of bubbly....lovely :)

All this wine-ing and dining meant little time for creating but I did manage a bit more on my commision:

I added further colour with pigment powders and glass bead texture gell through a stencil to create the circles. I feel that the pigment powders allow me to great depth of colour that sometimes I can't achieve with normal acrylics.

I also got a background in my altered book journal done:

I haven't done any journaling for ages so it felt good to make a start on this page. I had a load of paper towels I had used to clean up paint with saved up to use and these form most of the background with added acrylics andgold paint. The photo doesn't show that the text from the page also comes through which I feel adds nicely to it. What to do with it though?! I will have to wait and see where it takes me next.

Bye for now xxx

From experiments to finished pieces

Hello All,

Last night I decided to take my experiments with glass bead texture gel (from the other day) and make something of them.

I didn't want to do too much to this one cause I loved the colours already so I added the text and a little wire and flat bead embellishment.

To this one I added more brushos and some irredescent ink to add depth and shine. Then I added the pom pom, a slide casing with old maps and the text.

This spread is in my altered book and I love the background so much I decided the only thing to add was the word 'simple'.

I am really pleased with them all :) loving the glass bead gel! 

Bye for now! xxx

Christmas pom poms and stencil play.

Hello All,

I love Christmas crafts and always try and make something new with my girls each year. This year we went a bit pom pom mad. We made ones to hang on the tree plus enough little ones to make this:

Which is now hanging on my wall :) I wrapped a picture frame and stuck the pom poms on the top. 

My eldest who is 6 has obviously inherited my love for all things creative and loves to draw all the time. She decided this year to draw me pictures to go in my advent calendar. Here a few of them:

It has been fab to find out what she has drawn each day and she has even written little notes on the back for me too! :)

Apart from all things Christmassy I have had time to play with one of my new stencils and created this background:

I used modelling paste, acrylic paint, brusho pigment powers and irridescent ink on this so far. I don't know where it is going to take me next. I felt I had to leave it a while to see where I wanted to go with it. I love the stencil though which was made for me in the last art swap. It may well become one of my favourites! 

If I don't get chance to blog before Christmas now I hope you all have a fantastic one! I for one am really looking forward to it all!

Bye for now! xxx

Using Paper Towels

Hello All,

The other day I mentioned about making collage papers and patterned paper towels. I thought I would elaborate on the paper towel technique as it is one of my favourites.

This is a page I did in my altered book journal last night using the for-mentioned paper towels. What I tend to do is that whenever I have used a stencil I clean it with a baby wipe on top of a paper towel. It uses the excess paint left on the stencil to create lovely patterns on the paper. Leave them to dry and voilà! lovely for adding to my journals (whilst not wasting a drop of paint!)
When I come to use them I use matt medium to stick the paper towels into my journals, though you could use PVA as well. As soon as you add the medium the paper becomes transparent whilst the pattern remains.

I also stamp on to paper towels and again stick them down using matt medium, which works well too! Both are fab techniques and really easy and effective, so give them a try!

Bye for now! xx

Texture and Bling

Hello All,

This week I decided to have a play in my altered book with my new stencil girl stencil and some modelling and texture pastes. I am really happy with how the page is turning out but I have got to the point where I love it and don't know what to add that won't spoil it (if anything) So I have had to hit pause for a while until I decide. Here it is so far anyway.

I am really loving shiny and metallic mediums at the moment, like the silver texture paste, shimmer inks and metallic gel sticks that I have used on this page. Don't know why, just really enjoying the bling, I'm like a magpie :)

I realise I haven't done a new video lately so that is something I am looking to resolve very soon. I have just signed up to this months art swap so may create a video of that. This time the challenge is to create two art deco ATCs. Really excited by this one as I love making ATCs but also because over the last few months I have been involved in a dance show set in a 1920s speakeasy and have been surrounded by all things art deco and since I love vintage it is a perfect one for me :)

Me in my 1920s dance show costume

Bye for now! x

Holiday page

Hello All!

Just got back from a lovely family hol in Angelsey. Lots of beach combing, making sandcastles and paddling, walking and visiting castles and cafes. It was Lovely :) This is the reason I haven't posted for a week but I did manage to take some art stuff with me and get some journaling done. Here is a piece I managed to do in my altered book.

I was inspired by all the beachy colours and the all the flotsam and jetsam washed up. The painting is my daughter and brother in law having a paddle. I am pleased with how it turned out. It has loads of texture to it and for me really expresses the seaside.

Now back to work, loads to do! I also have a new vid that I will be posting up hopefully later today.

Bye for now! xx

Altered Book

Hello All,

For a while I have been on the lookout for the perfect book to make an altered book art journal. I knew exactly what I was looking for, I love the 40s and 50s and wanted something from that era with a mix of text and illustration. I was in a charity shop this week when I came across a stash of 50s girls annuals which are perfect. I bought two and as soon as I got home I set about removing half the signatures from one of them. This is to make room for the art work.

The text inside is a mix of articles, stories and comic strips. I love the vintage pictures and language. I even came across an old doilies advert that had been used as a bookmark. The inside front cover says 'Curtain up' With a picture of a stage and the back cover says 'Curtain' which makes a perfect start and end to my journal.

I couldn't wait to get started so I made a start on the first page, I will post up pictures of the finished page soon!

I also made a little index card this week which I was really pleased with.

Bye for now x