Autumn Haiku

by Lisa for Pam

Sorry peeps, have been a bit slack this month with getting Pam's journal done.  I had to go back to work a few weeks ago, and attempt to get back into the swing of things - adjustments had to be made after 9 weeks off work, after my knee op!

Anyhoo, it's done!  Pam's journal is (as always 😊) beautifully made, with lovely paper.  I decided it would be fun to write my own haiku to add...  Don't think I've done one since early high school, so it was fun!

I'm loving making autumn leaves at the moment, using tea bags and watercolour - so an Autumn haiku was in order.  First I made all of my leaves.  I'm always so pleased that they look quite real!

Next I started on my background.  I wanted something soft and .... backgroundish... so I just used swirls of autumnal watercolours.  I then did a wash of undersea green over the top, to tone it down.  Lastly I stamped some leaves, again in watercolour, using a stamp I'd made.

Next, it was time to add my haiku to the page.  I ummed and ahhed about how best to add it, then decided on my trusty alphabet stamps.  But quickly realised they were going to be too big...

But that's okay; some words ended up being stamped, and the others written in with faux calligraphy.  Problem solved!

Finally it was time to place all of my leaves on the page, and glue them down with matte gel medium.  Luckily, like baby bear, the number of leaves I had made turned out just right! 🐻

So my haiku reads:

Hues of red and brown

Leaves shed like hot summer tears

Autumn rears its head.

And here tis!

The colours in the pic haven't come out quite right; I'm hoping you'll love it when you get it home Pam.  I'm really pleased with all the great texture from the different leaves, and really enjoyed putting this together for you!

Happy Arting. 

Cheers, Lisa xx

All About Jenny

by Jenny for Sallyanne

All About Me... this has got to be one of the hardest subjects in the known Universe! So after much deliberation, I started with the one thing I do love... my favourite colour - green.

In the beginning there was chaos on a beautiful green background... I used Dylusions acrylic paints and blended all over the page then while it was drying, took out my growing collection of odds and ends (stamped flowers, cats, birds and bicycles, Dylusions readymade images (cat, flower, girl on the bicycle) and other leftovers).

I had this idea that I'd be riding a bike with one of Tim Holtz's crazy cats on my leg while other cats, birds and frogs hung out in a pretty garden with the wavy things across the bottom... or something! lol :) It looked nutty, loud and crowded, just like it is inside my head "sometimes"! lol :)

What happened was completely opposite. I was sorting through my stencils, picking out the designs that I thought would compliment all the noise, I mean elements, when I picked up an oldie but a goodie (always a fave) - Flossie by Dylusions. She's a pretty groovy silhouette of a girl standing like she'd be holding or having something land on her hand. I stuck her down with a temporary glue so I wouldn't have to hold her still while I blended the paint around her.

When I got this far (above), the whole direction of my page changed... the masking was working well, and other ideas (fresh, not so cluttered ideas) started forming.

Daisies are my most favourite flower (all kinds including Gazanias, Sunflowers, Marigolds and Gerberas)... so including pretty white daisies was the next plan. I was still planning to include some of the elements but maybe not as many.

The flowers were added to the page using the two sizes of "Spring Bloom" stencils by Dylusions using White Linen acrylic paint. After they'd dried, I overpainted most of the petals with more white paint, leaving some unpainted in the background.
The centres are handspotted with a paintbrush using acrylic paint in Dylusions Slate Grey, Pure Sunshine, Lemon Zest, White Linen then lastly, Black Marble. I then added more white spots all around the flowers.
The inside edges of Flossie has been painted with a wash of Black Marble, to give shape :)

The quotes are all by Tim Holtz... Snarky Stickers, Chipboard Quotes and Metallic Quotations.

The frog sticker hopped onto the page because when I was finished, I realised I hadn't included any frogs! Once the flowers had dried and I pulled off the Flossie mask, I found I liked the page as it was so everything else got put away.

So this is me... Dreamer of dreams, feeling free to fly while creating art from the heart in my happy place!
Tim's quote in the top left hand corner says "We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public." - who says we need to grow up anyway? lol :D

Thanks so much for reading and checking out my journal page for Sallyanne. I hope she likes it!

Have a wonderful, happy creative day!
:)
Jenny

Janie's Bees Knees

Janie's March entry in Jenny James' "Bees Knees" themed journal; what fun !!!

On a double A4 format, the green watercolour background was created to emulate grass.

 All the flower, hands and insects were fussy cut from
 Google/Pinterest images.

 I find the exercise of fussy cutting, although time-consuming, relaxing, absorbing and rewarding. 

I hope you enjoy my double spread, Jenny.

Robyn's play in Bucket List

This is my entry into Meg Atkins bucket List Journal I decided to do a checklist of dots so Meg can tick off her list as she achieves her goals Hope you have fun Meg xxxx

"We're all mad here!"

I thought I'd had my pages all planned but when I sat down to begin I'd changed my mind. No worries, I was keeping some of my original ideas...vintage, use of silhouettes and collage.
I chose the Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I've always loved John Tenniel's original illustrations so I plundered an old paperback copy for print and images. I also incorporated vintage music paper from a children's Piano Course. 
I used Ranger Distress Oxides to create the first part of my background, followed by Staz-On, Timber Brown, for stamping. Then I layered my papers, adding the chipboard figures last. As I had enjoyed the Australian Afternoon tea that Sharon had kindly included I wanted to use it too...so, there's my layout. 
I'm so happy with it. Sharon, your journal is so fragrant with all those tea bags...lovely. 
I think I'll have a cuppa now. xox

There's a starman in our galaxy

Amanda's Galaxy journal arrived this month and as is usual its been a full on crazy month and I can't believe we are half way through March already.
We are house painting again- it seems to be an ongoing thing with us- another house and another colour scheme but the main issues atm are everything is once again packed away so I have very minimal art supplies accessible. I have some pens, a small tin of inktense pencils, a set of caran dache neocolour 11's and a dribble of white paint left in the bottom of a box I used to teach a workshop with recently. All good- Amanda has very light paper so I couldn't get it too wet anyway. 

As I was mulling over ideas I kept coming back to the ultimate star man for me :) David Bowie and eventually decided on the lyrics for Space Oddity and the page came together fairly quickly once I settled on the theme.

I googled Bowie street art as I had a memory of Australian street artist Jimmy C and his mural tribute once I found it I knew it was the perfect inspiration for my galaxy page. 

 I lightly drew on the paper and then added colour from my pencils 

It came together OK but needed something galactic to pull it together
so I dug out a bottle of blue spray ink and added stars with black and gold dots. 

Pam played in Louise's Gaia Art Journal.

As normal Louise has presented us with an awesomely beautiful art journal to contribute to. For some reason I have Autumn on my mind and so I chose that as the theme for my spread.  I had a good idea of what I wanted to do bit was not at all sure if I could pull it off.

Fist step was the background. With some autumnal colours and a brayer I spread a bit pf paint around.  Then I dug out some hand carved stamps and made a few images.

Then I proceded to gelli print, stencil, die cut and cut out my autumn leaves.  The difficult part was working out the placement. After I had everything stuck down I then wrote the Haiku I composed because it made me happy.

I hope you like it Louise.

My entries in Pam's Haiku Journal

I basically did 3 pages as I had chosen 3 Haiku that I liked. I intended to get creative and put the 3 on a double page spread. I also intended to write them out by hand. I just couldn't get it to work so I resorted to Photoshop and printed them out with a suitable background for each. I still intended to do a double page. However, I printed 2 out and they were too big! Rather than waste the canvas that I printed them on I decided to see if I could do something.

I had already decided on the Japanese paper so I just had to do some re-cutting and what you see is what you get...lol. It does look better IRL!! I also added some washi tape the finish off. I did the 3rd one on the last page in Pam's journal.

Hope you like what I did Pam. If nothing else it feels nice!!

Lisa's Book Page Art - Round and Round the Garden

At first I wondered, "where can I find a nice poem that I could reuse to remake another poem within it", at first I did struggle, but then found a small book that my auntie had given to me when I was a little girl, this little book had a simplistic instructional side to it, re how to create a simple garden with cute, quaint drawings alongside, and the other function, a poetic pathway scattered throughout. I decided that it would be okay to take a page out to use it as a contribution to Lisa's journal, I no longer wanted that little book to not be seen and not be heard, it needed to be remembered, appreciated, it needed to serve a purpose again.  So I chose a poem that spoke to me, and then began to let the creative juices flow, I hope you like what I have done Lisa, I really had fun doing it, thank you for the opportunity :-)

Preparing the pages:

I used the Chromacryl Gold acrylic as the colour base, and then waited until the pages dried before painting on Jo Sonja's Decor Crackle, I waited until this dried and then went ahead with the gold again, I did four layers of each.

Next, I added a rose gold colour and a dark teal acrylic from the Jo Sonja collection, waited for it to dry and then added Decor Crackle again, I did three layers of each. I used a very small rounded chrome tool to add the rose gold and dark teal spots.

At this point, I was feeling anxious that it was looking a bit kindergartenish. I took a breath, and I took a small break, to decide on my next move. I flipped through one of my favourite magazines called: 'Flow', and chose a cool background picture for the poetic paragraphs to sit on top of, I felt it was perfect for what I needed, I felt like it suited the whole theme. I then chose to find a poem. This was fun, because not only did I get to choose a poem, I then had to pick out words and let them relive a different purpose than first intended for them. Lisa, I have to let you know, I really love this concept. I wanted to choose words that didn't rhyme, I wanted the words that I picked to help the person reading them to be re-imagined in a totally different way than when first thought of.

After choosing the words, I needed to think about how they would be presented. I felt like using a green prismcolour pencil to colour in the whole cut out, then I used a black thin pointed marker to block out the words. After the marker dried, I used a fluoro green highlighter to make the words that I had chosen stand out. I then cut around the paragraphs and stuck them down with my favourite glue '450 Quick Dry Adhesive', why I like this particular glue is because it does dry very quickly which allows me to move on to my next exercise without having to wait a very long time.

Around the paragraphs, I used a gold marker. I wanted to add some wildlife, so I chose to use black and white birds from a Kaisercraft ephemera pack called 'Everafter or 'Everlasting'? I'm not completely sure if that is the name as I no longer have the plastic packet. I loved the fact that they were black and white, it was a nice contrast between the busy colours. I felt like they needed to be surrounded by something, so I chose the gold ring for the two birds at the bottom of the two pages, and two individual wooden flourishes to surround the birds on the top page. I wanted a raw material on the page but I didn't want to overdo it, so the flourishes were just enough without being too over-sized. I liked that they had the appearance of being perhaps old black and white photos, garnished in a frame. I love buttons, so I had to get a button in there somehow, again without it being too over obvious, and so I felt it belonged on top of the golden ring.

Lastly, I needed to think of something for the flap attached to the page, I had a bag of confetti tissue paper that I thought would be perfect, I felt like it added a bit of dimension and it looked playful. I used my dry adhesive to attach the pieces, and then used clear tape to contain them within the space. I wanted something tangible associated with the heading of the paragraphs: 'Colours', I felt like it made sense.

Again, I'd like to thank you, Lisa, for this opportunity, it was so much fun. I cannot wait for you to receive your journal back and post pictures of all the pages that everyone will be contributing, it's going to come together so wonderfully. You have thought of everything, and I love the resources you have added to the pocket on the back cover, it's such a great idea, I wish I had of thought of it too.

Enigmatic Octopus for Melissa's Under the Sea Journal

As above, so below.

The oceans of the earth are just as vast and undiscovered as the oceans of outer-space.....

The Octopus floats in the tranquil embrace of the oceans...

Dark and mysterious..

The enigmatic quality of the octopus mirrors the mystery within each of us....

Before the journal arrived I had envisioned lots of colourful sea creatures, lots of collage and bubbles.

However this journal has aged papers, it's dark and mysterious, it should be full of the wisdom of the ancients and so I decided to go free hand and paint the octopus with acrylic paint mixed with a clear glaze to give it a translucent appearance.

I added lots of warm white dots so he didn't get lost in the background.

Finished off with a few fish and shell shapes.