more journal pages

These are some more of the pages I worked on last week.  I've been having a sort and a tidy in my studio and unearthed some walnut ink...

The inside of envelopes, Tim's tissue tape and splashy, watery paint have been a bit of a signature this week!

As well as letters and numbers in various forms!

My little journal, empty at the beginning of last week, is getting nicely fuller!

PDCC 126: taking on a colour challenge

I think I've managed to journal every day of the Easter hols so far -it's been great!  I'm working in my little A6 Moleskine look-a-like from Rymans and just going from page to page.  Yesterday I had a go at this week's colours provided by my fabulously talented friend Julie Ranae over at The Play Date Cafe...

[check out that gorgeous fabric featuring silver birch trunks!  LoVe it!]

I started with the grey, then added in the blue, but when it came to finding that green...

..it looked ok, but needed a bit of something else...

... a vibrant pinky purple!  So today I had another go, and just stuck to the three required colours...

The grey flowers are stitched on, and inspired by a card I had pinned in my studio by Angie Lewin whose work I LoVe, LoVe, LoVe!

[note: as co-creator of the challenge I'm not entering for the prize, just for the challenge of using the colour!]

I still can't quite believe it!

"In every quarterly issue of Art Journaling, artists open their journals 

and share creative techniques for capturing their emotions"

and I'm going to be one of them!!!

I received an email from the editor last month, and have duly written my article and now just have to wait to sign off the final copy in May :)  

It being the Easter hols I've had lots of time for some art journaling (in between gardening, shopping, tidying, feeding the family....)  I came across some gorgeous pages by Amanda Hawkins on Pinterest and was inspired to use pencil on my pages.

I added pencil lines amongst splashes of ink...

...and between collaged lines of paper...

I've also been playing around with my collection of envelopes (the insides have great patterns) and letraset rub-on letters

and enjoying that relaxing feeling of just playing in my journal.

Anyone else use an ordinary HB pencil on their pages?  Or fancy the challenge of trying?  Link your page in my comments section, I'd love to take a look :)

from this....to this....

I've been playing in my journal again over the last few days, starting with this

and, a few layers later, ending up with this

The number five has no particular relevance, except that a pile of numbers was lying on my desk and the shape of the five caught my eye!  I laid it down on a piece of scrap paper and cut it out, then stitched it to my journal on the sewing machine.

There's more stitching on the circles, and I dug out my soft pastels recently, for use on another project, and decided to try them as an accent in my journal.  I just love inky, splodgy, stitchy pages like this so last night I did another.

I stitched the flower design on a piece of previously painted paper, then glued it onto the page in my journal that started life like this

After a bit of stamping, cutting and sticking I decided it needed another element and set about carving a stamp from an eraser (15p in the WHSmith sale last year!)

A bit of a design change meant it didn't quite fit (the raindrop's missing it's point at the top), but I can live with that!

my new baby!!!

I've never, ever had a new car, but now I do!!!  And I LoVe it :)  It's beautifully designed both outside...

... and inside!

... with funky graphics...

... and gorgeous fabric inside.

Can you tell I love it :)

Happy Mothers' Day!

Where did that month go?  Teaching full time in a busy special needs classroom certainly speeds up time.  And washing your mobile (no, I don't recommend it!) doesn't help when you rely on it as a camera for your blog!  

After getting a couple of Mothers Day cards made this morning I borrowed my daughter's phone and took a few snaps.  A couple of weeks ago I took my sketchbook out with me to a local National Trust garden and used one of the sketches to create this drawing using my sewing machine.  [sorry it's such a faint image in my sketchbook!]

The Easter holidays are looming and I'm going to be tackling my  craftroom  studio as I have to climb over piles of 'stuff' to get to my table at the minute.  And when I get there there's no space!  It's still mid-tidy and not conducive to work/play.  In desperation I did get a few pages sprayed up in a new journal I picked up in Paperchase!

   

Think I'll add some painted layers next!  I did love playing with stencils and splashing paint around on this page...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sorry for the missing blog posts over the last month.  Work kindof took over, but it's half term this week so I'm planning on some playing, in between decorating (that's what teachers do in the holidays you know!).

This is the card I made for my daughter for Valentine's Day.  I used to make all three of my children cards and heart related gifts but the boys, at 15 years and 17 years, aren't too impressed with the "Valentine from Mum" anymore ;)

I've already got some decorating under my belt this week.  This wall in my craft room was pink (the room was my daughter's bedroom for a few years) but now boasts this bargain wallpaper I found in John Lewis.  I LoVe house images and this paper also features two of my favourite colours (and I managed to make the one roll cover the whole wall :) )

Hopefully my next blog post won't be so long coming!  Enjoy the rest of your day of lurrrrrrrrrrrrrve :)