marbled

The background for this page is made using red and orange gel sticks. Through my new homemade brick wall stencil I removed some of the color with a baby wipe.

I stamped an angel statue and some columns on the marbled papers (which immediately popped into my head when I saw the word marbled,these papers were made in a crafting session with my son using shaving cream). After cutting the images out I was a bit disappointed because the nice marbled effect was hardly visible.

For that reason I used the stencil as a template to cut out some bricks and glued them randomly on the page and added a marbled plaque with my quote on it: write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble.

Me Time Message #6 - stubborn

Finished my last message yesterday.

I’m so glad I completed this challenge (I’m good at starting something but not so good at seeing them trough to the end).

And I must say I liked the challenge more then I thought I would.The idea of writing notes to myself didn’t really do it for me, but I gave it a try and I must say I grew towards journaling and who knows maybe I’ll be doing it more in the future.

salt

I started this page ages ago, but I didn’t seem to get it quite together.

I first started with painting the background with blue watercolors and sprinkling in some salt, but this didn’t turn out like I had hoped.

Then some spraying through a snowflake stencil and some embossed snowflakes to picture the crystal structure of salt.

Then it needed something more but couldn’t decide what so I laid it aside for a while (this while turned into months)

As I want to finish of this project I needed to tackle this page and suddenly I knew what to do, recently I bought some felt snowflakes at a garage sale

(actually I think I got them for free, I intended to use them as a kind of a stencil on the gelli plate)

But they were the perfect topping for this page, so I painted them white (as they were brown), added some glitters and glued them down.

The only issue is that they are really bulky, so I think everytime I will flip through my altered dictionary it will open on this page first (which by the way is not one of my favourites)

thing

It’s the sweet simple things in life which are the real ones afterall.

When I read that quote I had to think about cupcakes.

And as it happens I had already some stamped and colored cupcakes laying around on my desk (I think almost a year or so, I thought to use it for my birthday calendar but didn’t eventually, luckily I hardly ever throw anything away because it was perfect for what I had in mind).

I painted my primed page turquoise using a credit card, added gesso through a butterfly stencil in which I sprinkled some glitter (because what’s sweeter in life than some glittery butterflies??)

Then used my new made cherry blossom stencil again (just love it), glued the cupcakes which I glammed up with some silver stickles and the quote down.

As I stepped back and looked at the page I felt it was missing something so I added some more stamping in the upper corners, wasn’t enthusiastic about that so I added some pearl in some of the dots and think it’s okay now.

Thanks for stopping by, make sure to check all the other wonderful entries over here.

oriental

It’s been quite a while since I did some work in my dictionary and I had set myself the goal to complete it by september.

With 6 more letters to go and september approaching very fast it was high time to get started again.

First off I choose the 6 words for the remaining letters and prepared the pages:  glued some pages together for extra strength and torn out the ones which I didn’t need.

Oriental was the word I choose for the letter O as I have a set of oriental stamps.

I started out by adding a coat of gesso to the pages,which I sprayed with  red Dylusions sprayink, I was surprised that it didn’t become a solid vibrant red page, but instead was patchy and rather dull, even a second coat didn’t do the trick. Maybe the glued dictionary pages absorb the ink??

Instead of figthing it I went with it.

I added black stickers I had which felt very oriental to me, I used both the positive and negative (no waste here) and a text sticker with the quote Life is too short.

A few weeks back I would have stopped here, but after Clare’s workshop I’m getting over the fear of layering and added some more to the page.

I wanted to add some japanese lettering and tried to make a stamp, but this was too fiddly so I gave up, instead I printed the letters on a piece of tissuepaper (I glued a piece of tissuepaper on regular printer paper and held my breath when I ran it  through our printer because I was scared that it would get stuck, luckily for me it didn’t this time, but  if anyone has a better way of printing on tissuepaper please let me know in a comment below)

I tore the letters and glued them down with some matte gel medium, of coarse the ink reacted with the water in the gel, but that’s fine with me.

I also printed out this japanese lady and glued her down in the center of the book.

Thought this would be it, but still wanted to add something.

And that something was some delicate cherry blossoms, so I sat myself down and made a cherry blossom stencil. This is the try-out, just perfect:

Then I ran one problem into the other with stenciling this on the page, the pink and green were hardly visible, so I thought delicate white flowers,  but the white was not that clear either, then black maybe? Better, but still wasn't that happy about it, so while the paint was still wet I added gold glitters to make them stand out more. 

Still not sure whether I like it, but maybe it's best to let it rest for a bit and have a look at it later and decide then.
What do you think?

Me Time Message #5 - creative

As always I followed Clare's instructions, but along the way there were some oopses (outstanding opportunities presenting suddenly).
After applying gesso to my envelop I stamped some paisley motives all over with Kaleidocolor ink, then I clear embossed circles, but my ink from the paisleys wasn't completely dry yet, so they too picked up the embossing powder, oops#1.
Then while heatsetting the embossing powder the plastic from my window melted off course, oops#2.

Searching the net for quotes about creativity I found so many that spoke to me, but this one fitted in so well with my message and is so true, because the more I create the more ideas pop up in my head for a next project.
Does this happen to you too? And how do you keep track of your ideas? Do you write them down?

vintage birthday card

Hello all,

Hope you're all doing well, we're enjoying a vacantion day here in Belgium. The weather is not with us though, I think summer might be over.

That's not all bad, because then I don't need to feel bad anymore if I'm sitting inside in my art studio.

Here is just a quick post with a birthday card I made for my aunts' birthday, which is today. hope she likes it.

Me time Message #4 - Stress

For message #4 we needed to create a patchwork with a stamp. I didn't immediately know which stamp I would use so I browsed through my stampcollection and found a narrow text stamp which I never used before but thought would fit the bill. When I read on the package what was written on the stamp I couldn't believe my luck. My message to me is about stress and the stamp read: everywhere peace, everywhere tranquility. How perfect was this. To color in my patchwork I used some gel sticks, everybody keeps on saying how great they are and how creamy they are well it's all true. Some washi tape, an image of buddha and the quote You can do anything, just not everything (which is so true) and the circles in dimensional paint finishes of the piece.

It' such a fun project, we get clear instructions but still everybody creates such totally different pieces. If you want to see some of the others just click here.

rainbow shower canvas

Today we, me and my 4,5 year old son, made a canvas to hang in his new playroom.
I had seen this technique a while ago and definitely wanted to try this.
What technique you are wondering, well melting crayons.
Super easy (even my son is able to do it), cheap and so much fun.
All you need is a canvas, a whole bunch of crayons, something to glue them on to the canvas (I used a hot glue gun) and a hairdryer, that's all.

step 1: choose your colors (we choose all the colors of the rainbow)
step 2 (optional): remove the wrappers around the crayons, my son opted for this, but o boy, did this take forever.
step 3: glue the sticks to the canvas

step 4: very important step!!! do not forget to protect the floor and wall because everything gets splattered (even my hairdryer had suddenly turned artisticJ)
step 5: LET THE FUN BEGIN, just heat up the crayons with your hairdryer and see it drip until you're satisfied with the result.

I painted a silhouette of a boy happily stepping in the rainbow shower

mind

When I came cross this quote  Creative minds are rarely tidy I immediately knew what to do: make a messy painty page.

First I started by making a stencil with paint splatters.

Then the fun could begin: 

using a sponge and different colorful colors I stenciled through my new stencil.

Next I dripped some acrylic paint onto my page and to top of the mess I added some splattering.

Now I just needed to add the quote and done.

I like the fact that I finally managed to make a page with still some white space coming through, yeah.

logic and imagination

Hello,
I managed to catch up with challenge # 14

Searching for quotes with the words imagination and logic my eye fell on this one:

Imagination is more important than knowledge from Albert Einstein.

But then I realized I already used this for the word knowledge

Back searching, but not for too long because I found another one from Albert Einstein with both words in it

Logic will take you from A to B, but imagination everywhere.

And immediately I knew what to do.

I started out by collaging some random pieces that were laying on my desk 

and gessoeing the page.

On top I sprayed some Dylusions spray inks and used a stencil and a babywipe to create some pattern.

Then I randomly stamped the letters A and B all over the page and connected them with each other.

Then came the moment of hesitation because I was liking what was already on the page but knew it was not quite there yet, but what next??

So I added the quote and an image of Einstein, but no, still not ok,

The summer challenge from Clare is teaching me how to proceed and keep on layering so that is exactly what I did.

I added some bubble wrap stamping, already better but still not there.

And then it dawned to me, I tossed the image of Einstein and added embossed images from all things imaginative: a fairy, a gnome in his mushroom, a funny bird/chicken and of course some butterflies.

This was exactly what the page needed and now it is done.

And now off to the drawingboards for this forthnigths challenge.

Hope to see you back soon.

Me Time Message #3 - self-esteem

To see the instructions for this message please click here.

I applied some soft chalky inks through a stencil, on the one side I have a butterfly with some roses and on the other side only the roses.

Added a text stamp randomly and gold embossed a chicken wire background stamp, this was the background finished.

On the front I embossed this butterfly image and added some 3D butterflies.

The text “Believe in yourself” was written with an embossingink pen and embossed in black.

On the back I tried to add some glitter butterflies which I stamped with a glue ink pad and added glitters, but you can’t really see the image.

I probably better first stamped the image in black and then on top the glue and glitters.

 I tried to stamp afterwards with black, but this only caused my stamp and ink pad to be loaded with glitters.

The text stamp “know thyself” fitted in with the fact that you need to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, to come to a healthy, positive self esteem.

The irony of it all is that the message is about low self-esteem and I’m in doubt about the finished result, my inner critic is speaking so loudly I don’t seem to hear anything else.