Conversations like this

As part of the series of Wanderlust 2017 classes we received a monthly prompt for a collage. It told us what to do on it in a timespan of just 5 minutes. The clues will remain secret but this is what I ended up with, sized 9 x 12". I already knew what might happen last as I had done the same project during Wanderlust 2016. The collage is to be cut up. To  my shame I must admit now that I never cut up the 2016 one as I liked it too much. I feel less of an emotional pull about this one, perhaps because I surmised I would be told to cut this one up too. So you will eventually see how this one ended up but I thought I would share it here first before getting the scissors out.

The entire collage started with a layer of vintage text where we had circled some words. I kept the full text that I had circled and it read:

"importance to the world

filling it with words

the good became characteristic

old black silk gown and grey shawl

a waste of valuable time

conversations like this

with great sinners

turned austere"

Other words were added as per the instructions where we were to write down how we were feeling on a given day. There is also more collage, as well as rubber stamping with art foamies and other stamps, as well as lots of doodling in both the back and foreground

I also added some random items (such as washi tape) simply because I felt like it and thought the collage needed it.

Now for the cutting up!

There will be another series of classes: Wanderlust 2018, and I hope there will be another collage activity like this one too.

What comes around, goes around

Here is another set of mandalas I made following the instruction on both the online class and The Mandala Guidebook by Kathryn Costa. They were done in an A5 sized Moleskine sketchbook that had previously been used to mop up left over paint, wet stencils (all these came from Stencilgirl Products, I think), stamps etc. Having a background to work on is so much more inviting than a blank page.

The mandala on the right came from the book and Kathryn calls it Seed of Life Mandala, while the one on the left is from the online class and has been filled with Zentangle patterns. I coloured in the Seed of Life one with Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen brushes in a variety of colours and used the blue to also outline the other mandala as well as the circles that were on the pages already.

These mandala pages reflect my love of circles and also serve to celebrate today when it is the 7th anniversary of joining Blipfoto. When you jump on a circle you have no choice than to keep on going and see where it takes you. Putting up my very first picture on Blip was a very similar adventure. I have added the picture at the end of this post. I began on the 30th November 2010 as the result of reading a small notice in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper.

I have no idea any longer what possessed me. At the time we were on a dial-up connection of 44Kb (yes, really!) and it took forever to post. My very first Blipfoto below is sized 94Kb and taken with a small point and shoot Lumix camera that gave up the ghost soon after when I dropped it in the snow. I continued blipping using a more up-to-date Lumix, and also occasionally using my old but digital Canon DSLR. The next step was a Canon SX50 bridge camera (I took today's pictures with that one) and then I progressed (or should that be regressed) to using an iPhone 6+. The quality of the pictures taken by the phone are somewhere in between the Lumix and the Canon. The main reason is the utter convenience as the phone is always with me.

Taking a daily picture has become so much part of life that I no longer give it much thought. My camera (in whatever form) is with me and my eye is constant on the lookout for pictures, that is when I'm not using images of my art. Being on Blipfoto has honed my eye even more than it was before and being a blipper has enriched the way I see the world.

my first blipfoto taken 30/11/10

I need hardly add that I will continue blipping with the additional blessing of now having fibre-optic broadband at home. What a difference it has made but the fact that I persevered despite the difficult conditions in the early days signifies that the desire was there from the start to do it, and to do it well. I never missed a single day and have only had to backblip once way back when, and then I was only one day late.

 So here's to the next 7 years! 

The Labyrinths of Thought

Grids speak to me! I'm not a quilter for nothing. I made a small grid on one of my journal pages some time back,  and loved it so much that for this Stencilgirl Project I returned to making a grid on the page so I could share it. It's great to be back as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products this month and I hope you will enjoy my grid as much as I enjoyed making it.

As always you will find a step-by-step tutorial on the Stencilgirl Talk site today. This is the only place where I share such elaborate instructions on how I made my pages and there are other great tutorials from other wonderful Designers on a daily base there, so add it to your Favourites! You will also find a full list of all the materials I used specially the stencils.

Filling the grid lines with small white circles is a bit of work but it is also a wonderfully Zen activity and I am very keen on the finished effect. You don't have to use circles but could doodle in whatever pattern is your preference

The spread was made in an A4 Dylusions Art journal. I love the quality of the pages. They will stand up to anything.

Let's Doodle

If you are very observant you may have noticed that I didn't do a Documented Life Project 2016 spread last week. I simply didn't have it in me at that time and in a way it was good to give myself permission to let it me. I should do that more often! The new October theme didn't help either. It is: A Fresh Start - clear your palette. Our art challenge this week is: start with a doodle.

I have no idea why I didn't start doodling in my art journal straight away but instead I grabbed the nearest piece of paper from my bin (it had some typing on it already) and doodled a mandala-like shape on that. That meant I had to cut it out to apply it to my page but it also meant I could photocopy it first and use it again on the opposite side.  The palette was cleared by using metallic paints in the background as well as on the art foamie I used.  The quotation as seen below was also about making a start.

 Techniques: painting, stamping, collage, doodling.

Tools: art foamie (I used Ring Hopscotch designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer), rubber stamp of small circles (from a sheet from ImpressMeNow), gel pens

Exceed your Borders Page

I used one of the gelli plate printed papers I showed you yesterday as the starting point for The Documented Life 2015 page this week. Our theme for March remains: Doodles and Mark Making. The Art Challenge for this week is: Borders. And the Journal Prompt: Borderline feels like I'm losing my mind. 

To make the borders I used some of my ever growing collection of washi tapes to decorate two sides of my page making them all different lengths. After that I started a marathon session of doodling along and inside all the various features of my page which included stencils by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (the leaves) and by Stencil Girl (the circular shape you see just above). 

 And in more detail here.

The original quotation I was thinking of, used the word "limits" instead of "borders" but I liked the adaptation and wrote it on masking tape using my own handwriting and then added it to the page. I'm well in touch with where my borders are but that doesn't seem to stop me going over them! Although never so far that I feel I'm losing my mind.