The last challenge for the year is up over at Less is More. We’re onto ‘D’ in our alphabet themes and we’re looking for cards on the theme of ‘Deck the Halls’. I guess we’re going to see plenty of Christmas-themed cards – after all, it is that time of the year… My design team card continues the carol lyrics and features holly and berries:
So you know that I’ll be redecorating my lounge and that I have already completed this artwork for one of the walls. It was inevitable that I would be commissioned to do a second piece for another wall in the room, so here’s what I created…
Though I tried for a random background, swiping the paint on with a palette knife, it ended up almost as a mirror image along the horizon line. I think it resembles a cityscape, complete with a Ferris wheel!
I’ve jumped a few weeks in my Wanderlust 2016 course – I do aim to go back and catch up, but Andy Skinner was the tutor for this week’s activity, and I just had to get grungy! I transformed the front cover of my latest (A5) journal using his techniques and I’m delighted with the results. I think it looks like embossed leather, and with the soft touch varnish from DecoArt, it even feels like leather. The trickiest thing I found was getting a uniform thickness of modelling paste, so I’ll be working on that the next time I try it.
In my last post, I showed the start of my hand-bound art journal in response to Wanderlust Course Week 10. I promised some more pics of the inside pages… and here they are. The scrap pages allowed for some overlapping designs across spreads, and the different colour backgrounds inspired some of the colour choices.
I’ve had fun doing various different techniques and experiments, varying my style and choice of media – there is something about the informal scrappy pages that releases a more creative side than normal. Just two and a bit more signature bundles to go to complete this particular journal, but in the meantime, I have another two more formal ones on the go 🙂
Gah! It’s so frustrating when you write a blog post and then there’s a glitch and it’s gone and even the saved drafts don’t seem to exist any more… so for the second time of writing:
During the week I was invited by an online friend I got to know through the Creative Chemistry 101 classes a few years ago to join a new art journaling challenge group she was organising. The Pick A Stick Challenge Group on Facebook is open to anyone who would like to join in and is an active art journaler. The premise is simple: each month, ten sticks are drawn at random from a pot of prompts covering media, styles and techniques. The only other stipulation is that you layer your page in the order the sticks are drawn. That is where the process becomes a little more tricky!
I’m meant to be recording tutorial videos this week, but have been kindly handed a cold and laryngitis… so I’m catching up with some of the things that don’t need a voice to action! This is another project that has sat in the corner of the studio for most of the year that I decided to finish for my altered art demo day last week. I’ve upcycled various greeting cards that were saved from birthdays and Christmases into a functional and hard wearing art journal.