The Documented Life Project - Week 3

Week three of the new year already.  On the up side that means the dreary month of January is almost over and Spring  is edging just that teensy bit closer. Can you tell I am not a winter girl at all.  Give me the Spring and Summer any day.

Continuing with The Documented Life Project the prompt for this project this week was to use something that had come in the mail.  My mail is not very exciting in the main so I just used a plain window envelope and cut it down to form my tip in page and sealed the open side to form a pocket.  I decorated the front with scraps of scrapbooking paper which I painted and stamped on and added some flowers made from a die cut which I coloured and doodled on.  I stapled on a wee die cut tag I had and finished off with some washi tape strips.  On the reverse side I painted then sprayed inks through one of my home made hot glue stencils.  I think I might do some stamping or doodling just to finish this side off. 

I had received a gorgeous piece of mail art recently from my lovely friend Dee so I popped that in the pocket so that it was peeping out.

I used the diary side of my page to documents the weeks happenings having firstly scribbled two colours of inense pencils over the background and swiping over them with a baby wipe.  I finished off with some doodling.

On the right hand side of the page under the tip in I coloured some wavy lines with neocolours and washed over again with a baby wipe. I have drawn a couple of long egged quirky birds and some more journaling on this page.  The planner is proving useful for practising techniques in and I am determined to learn to doodle some simple things this year.  The birds aren't perfect but they are a start lol.

The prompt for Week four is to right a secret message then paint over all but one word.  Hmmmmm will need to have a good think about how I am going to tackle that one.

If you want to see a bit more about this project have a look on the Art from the 5th blog here.  The project is being run by some seriously talented ladies.

The Documented Life Project Week 2

Hello there.  I am just loving joining in with The Documented Life Project so far.  Here is the link to their blog Art from the 5th if you want to have a look.

The prompt for last week was to take a "selfie" Oh how I hate that word lol and my daughter says I am too old to be using it lol.  Stangely I had just used a selfie I took for my layout for my teams challenge on UKS so I printed it out smaller painted up the background for my tip in page incorporating some pages from the A to Z with where I live and some washi tape,  a border and some doodling, rub-ons and journalling and it was done.

For the other side of the tip in page  I layered up the same paint colours, stencilled through some punchinella and put on an image of some rocks balanced on each other.  I am using this one for the One Little Word I have chosen for this year which is "balance".  After a tumultuous few years I have decided to have some peace in my life I need to achieve some balance so that is my aim for this year.

I have temporarily misplaced my neocolours but when I find them I will be using them to give a wash of colour to the plain cream diary and planner pages which I haven't shown in these pictures

The prompt for Week 3 is to incorporate an envelope from your mail as your tip in- this should be interesting so I will need to have a think about that one

The Documented Life Project

I have decided to join in with this fab year long project along with Donna, Dee and Lesley. I think our new UKS teamie Virginia is going to join us as well.  For more information follow this link to the amazing blog Art to the 5th, set up by the five very talented organisers of this project.

It's a year long project combining a diary, year planner and art journal.

The girls on the group are using moleskines but as I'm desperately trying to stick to a budget am using this Letts Noteletts diary and planner which Donna got me from Tesco for £6.50. I like the slightly bigger size better and also the paper is very slightly thicker than in the moleskins.

I started with a review of 2013 which had more downs than ups.  for this one I glued two pages together as the start of the diary has loads of pages I wont need for this particular project. I based my page on one the very talented Rosie did but mine is no where near as good as hers.

I have the base layers down for my introduction to 2014 page but it still needs a bit of tweaking before it will be ready so I will show that in my next post.

Here's my pages for week one.  I didn't want the diary pages to be boring cream so I scribbled over them lightly with some neocolours and then rubbed over lightly with a baby wipe to blend.  The right hand page is being used for journaling on days when I have more to say, quotes and goals for the year.  Its not quite finished yet. The tip in page which was a jumbo tag was following Prompt 1 on "doors" which was attached with washi tape.

 

 

I'm hoping we all keep each other going through this project as I'd love to see all our finished books at the end of the year.

I'm well under way with my prompts for Week 2 and will blog them shortly

Mixed Media Canvas

Hi there.  I've neglected my blog a bit this month as not much creativity has been going on.

I did do a multi media canvas for Fionas room as part of her Christmas thoughwith a photo of her and her best friend Jade on it

I tore some strips from scrapbooking paper and adhered with gel medium.  I added some texture paste through a stencil in a couple of areas, added a painted and sprayed chipboard flourish postioned my photo adhered some lace and trim which I then gessoed over. I covered the photo while I sprayed with some Dylusions and shimmerz inks.

I gessoed over some flowers which were not the right colour before again giving them a good spray so that they matched.

It took me the whole day at my crop to do but it was so worth it to see her face when she opened it on Christmas morning.

I have a whole load of canvases in my craft room waiting to be decorated so i think you will be seeing more of them on my blog soon.

UK Scrappers Christmas Blog Hop

Good morning and welcome to my wee contribution for the month long Christmas projects Blog Hop being organised by UK Scrappers.  I hope you have been following as there has been some fabulous projects and there are more to come right up till 24 December.

For my project I have a Christmas card with a painty background and a fab stampotique stamp

I started out with a square of watercolour card just slightly smaller than my card blank.  I sponged on some blue paint (sky blue paper artsy fresco paint) and some of their nougat colour,

 I then sponged some more of the nougat
through both a circular stencil and a stencil made from a snowflake punch.  I then sewed round the edges of the square with black thread as a contrast.

Then I stamped the stampotique image (global warming) and coloured it in with my derwent coloursoft pencils (ooh I love these pencils, so soft and creamy and easy to blend).  I added some glossy accents to his buttons, stuck him to the background with some gel matte medium and finished him off with some snow made from various frantage embossing enamels and glitter.  The final touch was computer generated text et voila here he is.

I hope you like my wee project and remember there is a new project on the home page of UK Scrappers each day thorughout December.

Ten Minute Tuesday

Hello there.  It's Tuesday again so its time to show what you have been spending your little ten minute bursts of creativity on this week. Pop over to Vicki's to see what she has been up to this week.

I really am having a bit of a creative slump at the moment.  Between working all week and the dark gloomy nights I haven't really been in the mood for creating much.

When I was away at Lochhouse with the girls last month we were following a tutorial by Roben Marie Smith (oh how I love her work) and as pert of the process she used a gelli plate.  Now none of us are fortunate enough to own one (yet!!) so we improvised.  I had seen people using all sorts of other things to experiment with and as I had bought a couple of non stick oven liners from the Poundshop to use as craft sheets we cut those in half so we could all have a  go.  We actually got some not bad results. These ones are not entirely smooth but I quite like the texture the surface gave the prints.  Of course I only remembered to take the only photo!!

I think I will experiment a bit more with these but not bad for 50p though.

Why don't you join in and share what you have been up to this week.

Tryiptych Canvas Swap

Hello there.  Some time ago (yes quite a long time ago!!) I signed up to take part in a triptych canvas swap with the Secret Swappers group on UK Scrappers.

I got Lou as my swap partner and her brief was pink/cream, feminine, shabby chic, distressed, tatty, butterflies and angel wings.

I used a wee set of 4 by 4 canvases.

I sponged on some cream and pink paint, collaged some tissue paper and music paper and stamped a script stamp on the front and sides.  On the middle canvas I used a digital image and on the other two I stamped the butterflies and the sentiment onto tissue paper and adhered with gel medium.

I finished off with some wee flowers and some ivory frantage to give a more distressed feel.

Lou has now received these so its safe to post them on here.