1000 Sheets Blog Candy

I know two post in one day.  I spoil you!!!

Anyhoo I spotted this on a blog I follow and thought I myself a chance of winning.  there is some amazing blog candy on offer so hop over to A Thousand Sheets of Paper and you too could be in with a chance of winning.

Journal Journeys Challenge #2

After taking codeine to help with my painful legs I went on-line and entered myself in the Journal Journeys Fairies Challenge.  I only knew about it when Dawn e-mailed me.  Thanks Dawn :)

For the challenge I decided to do a gel transfer of an image from a CD I've not used before called Victorian Angels and Fairies by Joanna Sheen.  Its not in circulation now sadly but has some fab images on it.  Dawn had used the gel transfer technique in her journal and it gave me the incentive to use it too.  I'd not used one in my journal before and managed to tear my first attempt.  For the second one I applied a bit thicker layer of gel and worked just fine.  I'm sure there'll be videos on YouTube showing how to do it so I won't bore you here ;)

Because the gel was thick the image turned out a little murky and grungy but I like that.  I then painted the back of the transfer with gesso to make the colours pop a little more.  I didn't want to do a pretty, pretty fairy page.  That's just not me.

I coloured the pages with charcoal grey and 2 colours of yellow Inktense Pencils and activated them with gesso - my fave technique at the moment!  I chose these colours to tie in with the image.

Next I Googled Fairy Poems and found this sweet little poem.  The image shows a lady steeping into a fairy ring and all of the fairies dancing and presumably (can't hear them lol!!!) singing.  I copied the poem into MS Word, changed the font and made it larger.  I then printed it out, coloured them with the same charcoal grey Inktense pencil as the background and activated it with gesso again.  I then cu the words up and stuck them to the page and went over the font with a black extra fine Sharpie pen.

I stamped various fairies from Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque) onto white sticky labels and cut them out and placed them on the page.  I have to thank Lesley W for showing me this technique.  I'm not that good at planning what I am gonna do with pages so this is sooo much easier than masking for me and means I can do things like these fairies and colour them in afterwards.  I used one of yellow Inktense pencils for their wings and used water to move the colour around.

So here you have it.  My Fairies Journal Page for the challenge on Journal Journeys.

Please join in even if you've never journaled before.  Its a great way to relieve stress can be done with just a few pencils / paints and an old exercise book.  I'll be back for the next one Dawn!

Elements of Art Journaling continued

Well I've done another 2 pages in the Elements of Art Journaling e-course I'm taking with Effy from Wild Precious Studios.  I am absolutely loving the course and I'm learning so much too!

The first page is for Air Week.  This week we had to practice free-writing around the idea of 'what I know for sure...'.  Free-writing is where you just sit for a certain lenth of time, in this case 15 minutes, and write whatever comes into your head.  Its a great technique if you're wrestling with solution to a problem as it can fall out of the free-writing.  The element of air is all about communication and words.  So of course me being me, I went down a different path from everyone else.  I looked at the other associations with air and discovered that smell and the colour yellow are associated.  As soon as I saw that the page came together easily.

Being a qualified aromatherapist, smell is very important to me and the first thing I thought of was lavender.  I used the free-writing as the background for the page, painted gesso over it and Claudine Hellmuth Yellow Pastel paint over that.  Once it was dry I rubbed Vaseline in parts over the page and painted Titan Buff over that.  Unfortunately I left it too long to rub the paint off the Vaseline and had to scratch some of it off ;)

I painted the lavender using Sheena Douglass' Paint Fusion technique.  For the other side of the page I left a portion in the middle unpainted and coloured it with a yellow Inktense Pencil and activated it with gesso to get a lovely pastel colour that I could write over.  The writing is my attempt at a poem-ish!!

The next week was Water Week which Effy gave us 2 weeks to complete as it is about our emotions and 'sitting with' the way we feel.  She suggested doing some writing about how we feel using water soluble pencils / crayons then painting a compassionate face over it and putting a loving sentiment on the page.  As I am suffering from depression this was going to be a step too far for me as I felt that it may drag me into the abyss I have been trying to get out of.

So I did an alternative page.  I did some 'sitting with it', but just to type out my problems.  Water is about 'daring' and 'dreaming', so this is what I did on my page.  I used lots of blue and green Inktense Pencils and activated them with gesso again to make the background.  I used the same pencils over the words and used water this time to activate them, then put twinkling H2O's over them.  I wanted the whole page to be irridescent. The bubbles are a tiny letter 'o' stamped in Golden Iridescent Gold paint. 

The Sea Horse is from Chocolate Baroque (previously Elusive Images) and I used it because they are very elegant, move so freely and ride the waves when they hit underwater. These are all things I struggle with. If a 'wave' hits me it'll knock me for six and moving freely is completely out of the question!

I am really happy with my page.  At some point I'll do the 'sitting with it' exercise, but not now.

Weddings of Clay

My very talented friend Judith makes the most wonderfully detailed clay models for the tops of cakes or just as a special gift.  They are absolutely beautiful and so personal.

Please have a look at her new website called Weddings of Clay and see how fantastic they are for yourself!

Elements of Art Journaling

Sorry I've not been around for a while.  Things have just gotten away from me.

I was lucky enough to sign up from the Elements of Art Journaling e-course run by Effy Wild of Wild Precious Studios when she ran a one day only 'pay what you can afford' day.  There was no way my budget could stretch to the original price, but this was I managed to be able to afford it and I am so pleased I did!!

As the description says 'Join Effy on a six week journey through the elements of earth, air, fire, water and spirit! Learn new ways to imbue your pages with deeper meaner by developing your own symbolic language!'.  I nowhere near that eloquent lol!!

We're half way through week 2 so I thought I would share what I've done so far.

The first week was orientation and preparing our journals for the full course.  I used a large Moleskine Cahier.  Effy has made videos for us to watch and PDF's to show us various techniques and how she builds up pages.  I took her technique and tore up various scrapbook papers and stuck them onto the journal covers after I'd gesso'd them and coloured them with Inktense pencil.

I then stuck 3 pages of the journal together to make a much stronger page to use and gesso'd them.  To make the binding on the journal even stronger, Effy suggested tying  fibres or ribbon round.  I made paper beads out of the same scrapbook paper to use on the ends of the fibres.  Carrie has a great tutorial for making these beads here.

I then went on to make my first page which is the back of the front cover of the journal and the first proper page.  This practically a copy of what Effy did.  I am determined that this will be the only wholesale copy of Effy's page that I'll do.  Its to show the relationship between me and the elements.

And now we're doing 'Earth Week'.  Effy suggested that we focus on our relationship with the Earth and a way to do that is focusing on our bodies as that is what connects us to it.  Effy kindly gave us a picture of her from the back to use if we were gonna 'art' along with her and copy the page.  I didn't want to do that so I took the image, made a stencil out of it with thick acetate and scraped fibre paste through it.  I used Carrie's beautiful stamp of the Tree Nymph on tissue paper on the 'body's' back and Rock Crystal Crackle Paint over it to show my broken body. 

This was all over a background of tissue paper, covered by paint, using my fingers to move it around.  I LOVE this page!!!

I've also treated myself to some new toe-posts.  I just couldn't resist them, especially when they were in the sale!!  They are soooo comfy to wear even though they don't look like they will be and so me!

And I've finally given in and I'm waiting for my appointment at Wheelchair Services to be measured for my own set of wheels.  The pain in my legs is made soo much worse by walking so, although I can and will still be walking, I'll have a wheelchair for when I need it.  Its been a tough decision but I've definitely made the right move and I'm content with it :)

Wonderful new bag!!

I was out on Sunday with Jo and we called in to TK Max.  We always love going in there as we never know what we're gonna find.  Obviously the bags always call to us and it'd be rude not to have a mooch round them.  Jo spotted an entire stand devoted to 'hippy' type bags.  Just the kind of thing we both love.  I normally can't get these kind of bags as I need cross body ones so I have at least one hand free when I'm walking (the other is on my stick).

Anyway Jo spotted a couple that were reduced and one of them was a cross body bag - YAAY!!!  So I just HAD to buy it and here it is!!  Isn't it gorgeous?!

Its handmade from selected original Rajasthan rugs and is lovely and bright.  In fact the photo doesn't do it justice.  For any of you who know me, you'll know that its me to a tee!!!

And the best bit - it was only a tenner.  How's that for a bargain (spotted by Jo!)??

Angela's wall hanging and more blog candy

A couple of weeks ago one of the girls I met at the hospital while having treatment was the big 5-0!

I wanted to make her something to mark the occasion, but as it had to go through the post I wanted it to be durable.  So I set about making a wall hanging for using 2 Crafty Individuals swirly frames.  It was based on idea I saw in a Graphicus Guild (now Chocolate Baroque Guild) monthly news letter.

I coloured both of the frames with Chipped Sapphire and Stormy Skies DI's then triple embossed the whole of the front frame and just the swirl of the back frame with clear embossing powder.

I stamped Ophelia from Stampsmith onto watercolour paper put her inside the frames and glued the together.  I needed some way of hanging the frame so, following the idea from the newsletter, I used some thick-ish wire.  The only wire I had that was thick enough was copper so I had to use it as her birthday was in a couple of days.

I bent the wire round a paint brush and added some beads before adding it to the frame.  To tie everything together I made some flowers using the smallest flower from the TH Tattered Florals die.  I used tissue from a drinks coaster and Glimmer Misted it with Timeless Lilac and Cherub Pink and used the same technique as in the previous post to make the flowers.  I used curls of copper wire as the centers.

Moira from Happy Daze has a new blog called The Altered Blog and she has a £30 gift voucher plus free p&p to giveaway.

Follow the link to her blog to enter.