Christmas journal page

Just a quick post before we head out for the year end celebration.

This is a page in my journal which had smears of paint from cleaning of my brush. I added some scrap pieces of patterned tissue paper (leftover from decorating some wooden Christmas ornaments).

The tree is cut out of a collage from leftovers from my christmas cards.
I cut the tree in pieces and distressed the edges with DI walnut stain ink.
I hung the tree upside down after seeing Carolyne Dube's tree , maybe next year I will be brave enough to attempt this in real life.
I had a leftover ornament (I didn't have enough tissuepaper to do the back) which I turned into this little snowman.

And just added this quote that fitted with my upside down tree:
It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

I hope everyone has a nice, festive evening.

Quotes book

I am very proud to present to you my very own illustrated quotes book, a work of love from a whole year.

I started with writing all the quotes I have used on pieces of scrappaper, tearing them and glueing them down on the inside covers.

I gave that a wash with some dilluted gesso.

I wrote the letters Q and L with an embossingpen and heat embossed them with some clear embossing powder. I wanted to create a resist for the next step, which was sprayinking.
I then used my frame stamp all over, my stamping was far from perfect :-(

I painted the space in between with green to ty it in with the front cover, this was already making a difference, outlined the frames with a black pen, much better.
I typed all the words out and glued them in the frames, this was the finishing touch the covers needed.

For the outside covers I used some vintage green paper and created this 3D frame in which I stamped my handcarved butterfly stamp.

The inner pages are glued on 3 sides, so the top is open and creates a pocket in which I can insert tags with other inspiring quotes from the other entries.

Here is a recap of all my entries

Faith

I'm still in the process of learning to carve my own stamps, the 2 next lessons in the book Stamp, Carve and Play from Julie Fei Balzer were to carve a frame and a word (actually first an alphabet, but will be doing this when I have some more time on hand). 

So I wanted to incoporate those 2 new stamps in my last entry for the Q&l challenge.
The words to choose from were harmony and/or faith. I first started looking for a quote with harmony because I was sure that every quote with faith would be religious, was I wrong about this, found more quotes that appealed to me with faith than with harmony lol.

I used: 
Sometimes all you can do is
not wonder
not think
not imagine
not obsess
just breathe and have faith
because miracles do happen

I've ceated a wall with picure frames on.
I started with a background paper from Emphemera's vintage garden Enchanted rose kit, which totally could be someones wallpaper. Stamped my frame stamp on different papers and gold heat embossed this and cut out. Stamped the not in each one and handwrote the rest.

Now I need to make a book out of all my entries, hopefully I will find some time during this festive season. Not only the festivities will keep me busy, but I also need to move my studio from the attic to the basement, because my sweet husband has started finishing off the attic, so me and my son would have a nice place to do our art.But first I need to move all of this ?!??

ad initium

I’m soooo excited, I hereby present to you my first ever commissioned work

This was the briefing I got:

A book bounded with O-rings, 

size A4 (21 x 29.7cm), 

with some pockets 

and lots of space to write in.

As this book will go to a Latin teacher, I thought it appropriate to use a stamp of an old parchment roll, which I scanned into my computer and enlarged to fit an A4.

I printed a second page, cut it in half and glued it on 3 sides, leaving the top open to create a pocket.

I used 5 such pages with in between 10 plain white pages.

On the cover I glued torn pieces of an old dictionary (unfortunately I couldn’t find my old Latin dictionary) which I colored with some antique linen distress stain. I stamped a border stamp on top of the border I created with walnut stain distress stain. Did some more stamping and heat embossing with a stamp set I acquired only last week. And some gems in the corner to finish it all of.

On the inside covers I glued some patterned paper I acquired from Emphemera ‘s vintage garden. I had to glue 2 pieces together and didn’t like the seam, so I added some cut out butterflies, perfect as my signature.  I also made some pockets on the inside covers.

Then all that was left to do was to bind the book, of course there it went wrong with the back cover. First I had punched the holes on the wrong side, ok maybe I can fix that with a ribbon, but then I managed to start punching at the wrong end on the other side so the back was now beyond saving. I started afresh and paid extra attention on the punching for the binding.

The customer was satisfied, even that much that she asked for another book. 

arrows and chevron

I played a bit in my art journal with these 2 new handcarved stamps:

Oddly enough the 4 arows took me longer to make then the chevron one. That one was surprisingly quick and easy. Or maybe I'm geting the hang of it??

I wanted to use them immediately so I grabbed my art journal (that has been gathering dust on the shelves), but now and then I glue some scrap pieces in there or add left over paint or clean of my stencils in there. 
I opened this page with some pieces of gelli prints on

and started with creating blocks of color the same size as the chevron stamp with oil pastels, added the arrow stamp with black acrylic paint.

And the chevron stamp with stazon black ink randomly in a few blocks

This page has progressed but still is far from finished.

heart

For this forthnight’s Q&L challenge (which apparently is the penultimate, I had to look that one up, thx I learned a new English word) I choose the word heart.

A couple of weeks ago I bought Julie Fei Balzer’s carve, stamp and play book because I admit I am a stampaddict and am intrigued by making my own.

She is also having a challenge called #carvedecember, you can find everything about this here.

The first project in the book is carving a heart.

As it goes with addictions I couldn’t stop at making just the one and I made 5, actually I only made 4 but the negative makes also a great stamp.

For my spread I started by free cutting heartshapes out of bookpages. 

I added some textures with texture paste through a dot stencil, there was a happy accident as I don’t clean of my stencils, the dots became blue. I then stamped the different heart stamps (I like the stitched one the most) across the middle of the page.

I wanted to keep it simple, because I was liking the left over white space (normally I fill everything up with color but not now), but it was missing something and that something was a ribbon.

I stamped my favorite heart stamp along the ribbon and created a focal collage underneath it with a doily, a vintage picture, some feathers and a heart gem.

The ribbon I didn’t glue but sew on ( can you believe I sew it, I am absolutely rubbish at sewing but I like the look and well I figured I can only get better if I practice, right?)

Here’s a close up of the collage

Last but not least I wrote the quote A heart that gives, gathers from Tao Te Ching on tissue paper. I used acrylic paints in handy bottles with a fine tip (from Ikea).

The paint did take forever to dry however(overnight).

I also will be linking to Inky Dinkly Doodles sunday sentiments.

a little teaser...

Hello everybody,

I am contemplating on starting my very own challenge.

I had this idea (call it crazy) to do something around actuality.

This can be seen very broad, something about international/national/local/personal news; hypes of the moment; hit parade…

The idea behind it is that time flies by so quickly and this way you create something (it doesn’t have to be a journal) that captures the time spirit.

So when in a couple of years you grab whatever you’ve created you will be sent back in time and can relive it, a memento of 2015.

I’m still thinking this one through, like do I work with a link or start a facebookgroup, which should be the frequency,…

Just wanted to share already to see whether there would be any interest at all, so let me know and if you have suggestions do not hesitate to let me know.

christmas cards

Last year was the first time I made Christmas cards which I sold for charity.

This year I want to repeat that and do even better, I want to sell (and make) double the amount of cards and by doing so raising more money for Unicef.

Unlike last year when I only came up with this idea end of November and I had to make a whole lot of cards in a short amount of time, I wanted to be well prepared this year.

So I started already in August, I must say it was a little bit strange making Christmas cards when it was 25°C outside.

First I spent a weekend on designing 5 cards which were simple to make and wouldn’t be time-consuming (because if you are planning on making 300 cards that’s something you really can miss)

These are the designs I came up with:

I set up my very own production line, I cleared a table and put 5 shoeboxes on it, 1 for every design.

They contain the materials needed to make the card: stamps, embossingfolder, die-cuts…

So I can easily grab a box and make some cards.

And I set myself the goal of making a minimum of 20 cards/week, so by now I have 300 cards and I can start selling.