blog post catch up letters B and F - Trial and error

Finding a word for the letter B was a no brainer, what else could I pick  than butterfly.

I started out by cutting the pages in the shape of a butterfly and spraying the background with Dylusions spray inks, however I wasn’t satisfied with the result, the colors were too dull for me. As I was undecided what to do next I laid the page to rest for a bit.

But yesterday I found it was time to finish this letter, so I decided to go drastically to work and gesso the whole thing and start over again.

I sticked to spraying the background and this time I was happy with the results. But now what…

I grabbed some butterfly stamps and die cuts to get some inspiration and the die cuts it was, I used scrap paper which I use to clean of my brayer during gelli printing.

When die cutting an intricate design as these butterflies I find if I insert a layer of baking paper in between the die cut and paper, this makes it easier to remove the paper without tearing.

F = feather

For this page I started out by making some feather stencils.

I spray inked the background and added some stamps and I was very glad with the result, wanted it to leave it this way but I had made these stencils so I was going to use them.

I sprayed the feathers, but this didn’t work out at all as planned and as I had feared, it was all smugged because my stencil couldn’t lay flat in the book. No panic I thought to myself, this is just an oops as Carolyne Dube would say (Outstanding Opportunities Presenting Suddenly )

So tried to work with it:  outlined the design with black marker, no… didn’t work, went over it with Liquitex Ink! phtaloblue, but still wasn’t doing it for me.

So out came the gesso again. It didn’t obliterate everything but that was fine by me, I liked it that way. I spray inked over it, added the stamps and this time stopped there. I’m not sad that I didn’t do this the first time, because there’s a nice depth to the page that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

I must say I am pleased with the end results, I’m above all glad I finally finished them. Now on to the S and E.

Sometimes you just have to do and don’t overthink things, not every single piece will be a masterpiece.

Q&L challenge - smile

This year’s challenge over at The Craft Barn is the Quotes & Lyrics challenge. Each fortnight we receive 2 words where we can choose from or use both in a quote and/or lyric.(for more details check out their blog)

I love to look for quotes and use them in my art, so this challenge is right up my alley.

For smile I stumbled across this nice quote: “ let your smile change the world, don’t let the world change your smile.”

I immediately had to think about a video Carolyne Dube posted on creating a globe using the round gelli plate.

As I don’t own a round gelli plate, I just have the 8x12 plate, I needed to think this one through.

I cut a circle out of a piece of paper which I then could  use as a stencil for a globe, applied different blues to the plate, added texture with an antislip bathmat (detail below) and printed the image. 

I forgot to add the continent masks which I carefully had cut out, so off to trial no.2, this time with the masks, but as it happens I actually liked the first print more.

Next I added the smile by using another stencil.

The pieces that I had cut out for the stencils I kept because I needed these as masks in the next step.

I laid the masks on the print and used some yellow, orange and red spray inks to color the background.

Typed out the quote and added fired brick, spiced marmelade and scattered straw distress ink (don't you just love those names). Cut each word and glued it around the globe and smile.

Can't wait for the next words, maybe I also do something with the second word: up.

Desigual inspired lay-out (junk journal page #1)

This week's Stampotique designers Challenge is about using something Santa brought or something you recently bought yourself , so I used the paper bag in which my present was wrapped, because not only the handbag is beautiful, also the paper bag in which it came, I knew immediately I was going to use that in my art journal.

This is the handbag from Desigual Santa brougth for me, guessing I was nice this year.

So I glued a piece of the paper bag down as background (yeay, I still have left over to use in an other project)

The package also contained this quote “you are not the same”. This got me thinking about nature, how no one flower or butterfly is the same, so I created some flowers with Dylusions spray ink on which I added wooden flowers.

I also used for the first time my Dylusions ink pad, which I bought a while ago  on a crafts fair but hadn’t used yet, to stamp the butterflies.

I discoverd this group created by Clare called Junk Journaling 2014, I like the idea of re-using materials that otherwise would land in the bin.

As I re-used the package, I will be linking this also to this challenge.

Till next time, bye for now

alpha/dictionary letter H/A

Letter H=hieroglyph

I painted an Egyptian scene which I’m pretty pleased about as I can’t draw or paint, for the desert I added some real sand to the paint.

Then I added a border out of hieroglyphs.

Letter A for aboriginal

I painted the flag of the aboriginals and added aboriginal elements with a self-made stencil.

When I bought my gelli plate last year I quickly noticed that I had a need for a lot of stencils and invested in a heat tool, now I can make any stencil I want.

motivation booklet

With a new Year, a lot of us make good resolutions.

I am no different.

And to keep track of my progress and to keep me motivated I made a cute little book out of envelopes.

I saw this tutorial from ThePaperAddiction (whose books are just so sumptuous and gourgeous) which looked not too difficult.

And indeed, I whipped this little book together in less than an hour. And I see me making some more of these in the near future, they are so much fun to make.
They have a lot of pockets which I filled with tea dyed tags

On this tag I stamped with one of my homemade journaling stamps, just glue some string to a piece of cardboard and seal it with gel medium. It's as simple as that.

To keep me motivated to stick to my resolutions I decided to reward me on a monthly basis. If I succeed this month I let myself buy these books 

I really want these so I better succeed...

New Years' gifts

I made these little notebooks to give as New Years' presents to the family. They are made out of colored notepads where we, me and my son, added some stamps and drawings to some of the pages. Aren't they colorful and cute?

birtday calendar - january

HAPPY NEW YEAR,

I wish you first of all good health because without that we can't do anything.
I also wish you a lot of creativity and time to do so.

And without further ado, I hereby reveil this months birthday calendar

This month it's my mother-in-laws birthday and as she is currently in a black-and-white fase I got my inspiration there. I cut black and white squares which I then embossed and added either white or black ink to highlight the embossed images. added some grey flowers made out of bookpages to finish it all of.