spring is in the air (junkjournal page # 8)

Hello,
The last couple of days I just slept because of a flu infection, but today I was finally able to do some art work (definitely a sign of recovery). 

I got inspired by the extremely good weather here in Belgium, it was sunny with nice temperatures up to 18°C (sorry for those still suffering in cold and snow). So out came the summerdresses to sip some cava on the terras in the sun.

The background is a used piece of kitchen towel on a piece of cereal box, the flowers are stamped on some more kitchen towels which I then fuzzy cut and glued to the page.

magical crepe paper

A super simple art projects for kids
(although we created some awesome backgrounds which I will be using in some of my art work, bonus).

All you need is some crepe paper and water.

step 1: Tear or cut pieces of the crepepaper, I found it easiest to cut and because K is into cutting this is what we did.

step 2:  there are different approaches, see for more here:
I glued the pieces down with some water and let them dry, after which the crepe paper just peels off:

But K took another approach, he is into making holes for the moment, so he made the pieces wet with a painbrush until there was a hole in them and then discarded the pieces. This gave a more subtle background:

birthday calendar - March

Just a quick post with this month's birthday calendar.
It had been a while ago (or so it seems to me anyway) that I played around with my gelli plate, so I decided to gelli print this month's birthday calendar.
This is the first time I printed on a bigger sheet of paper (12x12) than the size of my plate(8x12). But it turned out just fine.

Marriage

is a mosaic

you build with your spouse

millions of tiny moments that create

your love story.

Online I created this mosaic picture with 250 pictures of our wedding, how cool is this!
Then I made the tag (got quite some inspiration from Tim Holtz's February tag of 12 tags of 2014)
I like the moasaic and I like the tag but not quite sure whether the both work together.

Ok, so I decided they don't work on 1 page, so I made it into a double spread

Much better.

alpha/dictionary catch-up letter P

4 P’s on 1 page

I started out by trying to create a Panorama out of torn pieces of colored paper,

and I liked the look of this Pair of owls as if they were sitting in a tree overlooking this vast panorama.

The rock has a Poem about owls that is so true.

There was an owl

who lived in an oak 

the more he heard

the less he spoke

the less he spoke

the more he heard

we all should be

like that wise old bird

The last week there has been a lot written and said in the Belgian press (and apparently also in the world press) about these 2 pandas coming from China to stay here in a park for a couple of years,

so I just had to have a Panda in here, I carved this stamp myself, I’m surprised how easy the material carves and how neat results you become.

I need to have some more, much more.

I painstakingly searched for a panda that was facing the right way, that is his face to the left, but had forgotten when you stamped it becomes reverse, doh!

 I’m linking this post to stampotique designers challenge # 134: perfect pairs 

milk/shaving cream marbled paper

As I already mentioned, my 4 year old son also enjoys being creative. The attic is our space and he oftens asks (begs) to go up there.

A lot of the times we each do our own thing, me at my desk and he at his. But recently I’m on google+ and I discovered a community about kid’s crafts and that got me thinking that I actually need to guide him now and then a bit (because there are so many cool projects), I also still think he should sometimes be totally free to do what he wants, he sometimes amazes me with his creativity. Just yesterday he grabbed a piece of paper and laid it on his step which has blue anti slip circles and started drawing them over on the paper or the last couple of weeks he loves to punch holes in paper and then he folds the paper so you get holes in different places at once, and all that without me saying or showing him.

Past weekend we played around with some liquid watercolors ( which I made up with some foodcoloring and water), milk and detergent. (saw this originally here)

Poor milk in a shallow dish just enough to cover the bottom, drip in some watercolor as desired 

and now for the magic: grab a cotton swab, dip it generously in the detergent and place it next to a color and watch what happens. 

It’s fun playing around with and watching what happens, but it is also fun making prints with it, just place a watercolor paper on the surface, peel it off and let it dry.

The colors are subtle (in our experiment anyway). 
The paper does smell of milk, but according to other blogs this should disappear in a few days.
Needless to say he loved pooring and dripping and making prints.

I aslo bought some cheap shaving cream to play around with. Play is exactly what he did, he loved the texture of it, normally the plan was to create some kind of marble effect, but he was just mixing everything together, which was fine by me, he also took a cardboard roll and smeared it with the cream, took a colored paper and roled it on.

 Meanwhile I tried to produce some marbelized papers with it, it was fun for both of us and I have some great backgrounds to use as well. 

An added bonus is that this paper smells nice. I think I’m going to try and make some tools for marbelizing with some nails and give it another go.

dress to impress (junk journal page #7)

When browsing for letters for my strong page I stumbled upon this image and it immediately sparked my interest.

It became my inspiration for the whole page.

I glued torn up pieces of pattern paper randomly on a cereal box,

gave it a white wash to blend it all together

and added some faux stitching

Then started the fiddling part to figure out where I would place everything: the dresses I cut out of scrap pieces of fabric, the colored one I sprayed with dylusions and added butterfly stamps as design, the magazine image and the mirror out of aluminium.

I added the quote: I've been shopping all of my life and still have nothing to wear.

which is so true.