New Gelli plate!

Hello all,

Just a very quick post today because I managed to have a play with my new round gelli plate that I got for my birthday and  I am feeling excited!

I forget how much fun gelli printing is! and I am loving the round one for all the fun overlapping patterns you can create. You may notice that I often put circles in my work, I am always fond of a good circle :) .... anyway here is my play!

I also used some new stamps to create the patterns. Hope you like it!

Bye for now xx

Take a closer look

Hello All,

At the weekend I had a few hours with my eldest daughter and she decided she would like to do some art work with me. We set up on the kitchen table and I taught her how to use the geli plate. Many many prints later we moved on to working in our journals. I decided to use one the prints as a starting point for a background but after adding a few layers it just wasn't working. At that point my husband and youngest arrived back and our art session was abandoned.

Last night I went back to it and after adding many more layers I am finally happy with it.

You can't see much of the geli print anymore though it still inspired the colour choices.

I love getting those moments to share creativity with my daughters and I hope they will grow up loving it as much as I do. One things for sure though, I will be getting her her own geli plate!

Bye for now! xx

Finished page

Hello All,

Managed to find some time somehow to finish off this page in my small journal.

The background started as a gelli print which had lots of circles in it. I added the doodles in white and black pen over the top. I then added blue acrylic and a piece of a stencilled napkin. Finally I added the girl and the text. I think I like the combination of blue and orange best in this one. I love big bold colours and in particular orange at the moment.
The girl appears to be looking forwards and so that was what this page became about for me. Especially with new years approaching its all about looking forward to all the things I have to look forward to.

Bye for now! xxx

Weekend Work

Hello All,

This weekend I had loads of time to work on my various projects. I am doing a another stall next month, a local Christmas fair. I have plenty of journals and labels left over from the last stall but I wanted to add something a bit more christmassy so I set about making packs of christmas labels:

I made these using my Gelli plate and some Christmas washi tapes.

The other thing I worked on was my commission which is coming on nicely but still has a way to go, here it is so far:

I also had a friend over who has been going through a rough time and has started coming to my art journaling sessions as a form of therapy to try and help her make sense of things and vent her emotions. It is brilliant for this and I myself use it in this way a lot! She was stuck though, she had started a page and just didn't know where to go next with it. We got out loads of materials and I helped make suggestions and point her in the right direction. She managed to finish her page and was happy with the result:

Susan's page

I really love that about teaching art journaling. It is really relaxing just to sit and play with all the different mediums and at the same time it really helps to get things sorted in your head and process how you are feeling about something. To see that working for the people I teach is wonderful. :)

Bye for now! xx

Shopping!

Hello All,

This week I been watching quite a few you tube vids and it inspired me to purchase a few new things. I found that a lot of people are using dylusion paints and the colours look really good so I have ordered a few to try and also a few fab stencils from www.stencilgirlproducts.com.
The other thing on the way is some mapped colorpeps smoothy crayons which all the reviews I have read say are very similar to gelatos (but cheaper) and that the colours are really vivid. Looking forward to it all arriving so I can have a play. I hope to make a new vid, trying out some of the stuff.

Also on you tube this week I watched a fab vid by Julie Fan-Fei Balzer. If you haven't seen her work, check it out, she is really good. Her You Tube channel is:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYS7gznVtfxvVQsKOW1Jiww

The vid I watched shows Julie using some simple but very effective mark making. Mark making is something I like but more often than not forget to do. I decided to create a background in my art journal inspired by Julie:

I started with a gelli print, pealescent paint, brushos and modelling paste before adding stencils and my mark making. I think I am going to attempt a portrait or a figure of some kind over the top but not sure yet. I will post a piccie up again when it's finished.

Bye for now xx