Happy New Year!

Each January Milliande starts a new series of art journaling prompts, but it wasn't until the email popped into my inbox that I remembered!  Last year the theme started with 'z for zebra'.

This year's theme is 'Seed Journals: growing a seed versus being a seed .....  a curious journey begins'.

This is such a perfect project, and has come at just the right time for me.  My journal pages have always been 'time to play', but I had begun to feel that I needed a bit more of something.  This theme is really making me think through the medium of my art journal...

I'm also really enjoying the organic nature of this January's prompts - they may be daily, they may be weekly, perfect for someone who was finding she ended up playing catch up all the time when prompts were every day!  Feel this is a project for you?  Join the gang over at www.milliande.com.

thankyou everyone

There's just something special about having 100 followers so I  wanted to say a huge thankyou to all those who follow me, and those who leave comments.  It really means a lot :)

Our playdate numbers are growing and there were 4 of us in total at Sue's this week.  Sue had to go out unexpectedly and not knowing where she kept her crafting tablecloth, we got stuck into a clean activity - zendoodling!!!

Having completed Milliande's challenge and created a large circle of doodles in my journal, I continued in some smaller ones.

There's still more to do on this page but I'm loving how it's turning out.  Despite it being such a clean activity, we seem to have made enough mess on Sue's table lol

What was fascinating about this activity though was that we'd see a doodle someone had done and replicate it in our journal, but they still looked so different as we all had different pen thicknesses, size preference and a different way of working.

I've got some photos to share with you from my busy weekend (teaching for the first time at the Cubby Hole - fab, and a visit to the NEC) but as I have a four year old nephew hanging around my neck I'm going to leave you with this journal page which is a result of my demo at the Cubby Hole.

finally caught up...Dina Wakely workshops

Sue and I had a real treat earlier this month.....we went up to Art from the Heart in Harrogate where Dina Wakely was teaching two days of workshops.

I've been keeping my eye on Dina's blog for a while as I love her use of 'white space' on the page, as well as her splodgy, inky, splattery effects.  

Dina was working in the most enormous book (full of yummy paper :)  )

Day One saw us exploring masks, and thinking about image placement on the page.  It was great to use masks that I wouldn't normally try...stars and flowers are usually my choice of image, but I love how the lady (she did have a name, Betty probably!!) turned out.

The people on the workshop were a great bunch and it was amazing to see how we all started with the same prompts yet produced such different work.

We were kept thoroughly entertained, and the snacks also kept us laughing!!!

On the way in to Art from the Heart we met Milliande (centre of photo below), whose online videos on art journalling I've watched.  [do check them out, I think they are brilliant!]

We discovered we were all staying in the same place so hooked up later for dinner and a good chat, with time later to share our journals.

[sorry for the poor photo, it was a bit dark in the room; thought it was worth sharing the piccie anyway]

Milliande had some gorgeous pages in her journal and showed us some she'd done for her January 'page a day'.

Day 2 involved a change of seat, a change of name [i just fancied being labelled differently so I was 'Alice', Sue was 'Fred', and we certainly weren't short of other cheeky girls to join in the fun :) ] and lots of layering.

We were very definitely the noisy end of the table, which surprised Dyan, she'd got the impression from my blog and the lovely things people say about me that I was quiet!!!! ;)

Er, no, not when I'm happy!  And throwing myself into my artwork

I felt like Harry Potter giving my page a good old splattering!! [Only when he holds a stick like this it's to conjure up a magic spell]. 

 

I love the layered piece I made that morning.  Milliande concentrated on making a piece in her journal with 'white space', and succeeded wonderfully [sorry I didn't get a piccie of it] and even used peeloffs  to great effect!

Actually, there was a distinct lack of peeloffs in this workshop, we had to bring our own ;) lol  Not that I could persuade Sue to use hers!!!  I do love the colours she used in this piece.

 I played with embedding objects...

before focusing on leaving a 'white space' on a page.  This is still unfinished, but I'm pleased with it so far.

As the workshop was over by about 4pm, we decided to continue back at the Premier Inn.  This is a bit difficult to do in one of their rooms as there is limited space, but sweet talking the lady at the reception desk (or putting your foot in it, which is what I did - fancy mentioning paint!!!) meant we got to play in the meeting room.

We set out our 'stuff'', then worked on each other's journals for a timed ten minutes at a time, before moving onto the next one.  My camera battery gave out at this point so Milliande took the piccies.  It was a fabulous experience, and I love my resulting page :)

Day three saw us travelling back down the motorway after a sneaky visit to Harrogate for brunch.  And look who came in after us!!!  Great minds and all that!!

bits n bobs

Just a few bits n bobs to share today.  It was Mothers' Day here in the UK yesterday.  My Mum is in the US at the minute so I've not made her card yet, but I did get one made for Malc's Mum.

I love to add little snippets to my cards, and really enjoyed sewing this one together.  But why can I never design and make a card in ten minutes?!!

 

The flower is by Wendy Vecchi and is stamped onto some card I had sprayed with lilac ink.  The centre is a prima flower and the rest is just bits n pieces from around my craft room :)

Last week saw me in the plant nursery that my sister runs.  We were creating a centre piece to the room based on the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.  It's not finished yet, but it was great fun making bird feeders from cups and saucers, and planting herbs in jugs and cups :)

 

I managed to squeeze in some time today to complete a zentangle, something I've wanted to play with for ages.  Milliande put a challenge on her blog to draw a zentangle within a handshape within a mandala.  So here's mine:

This is across two pages in my journal so I think I'll add more circles around it, of various size, and maybe do a zentangle border.