Home - The Retirement Plan!

by Lisa for Sallyanne

For Sallyanne's journal, about what home means to you, I decided to do some wishful thinking.  In 15 or so years, when we can retire, wouldn't it be nice to move down the beach?

My father-in-law has a holiday house in Ocean Grove, southeast of Geelong.  We love going there for a mini break, and are often there between Xmas and New Year.  We even considered moving down there when the kids were young - but I didn't want to leave Melbourne at the time.

Ocean Grove has become very popular now, and populous.  But somewhere down on the Bellarine Peninsula would be lovely; sell our Melbourne home for a good price and buy a few acres not far from the coast.  Nice to have a dream...

So I decided to have a bit of a go at the dream retirement home.  Since it's my dream, it must have a HUGE art room where I can just play all day.  And a decent kitchen.

A bit of land, so Scott can justify buying a ride on mower.  He's always wanted one... 😄

A spot for a vegie garden out the back, where Scott can grow some veg and herbs.  Not me though, I'll be busy in my art room.... 😝  Plus a verandah to keep the house shady, and a nice pergola for entertaining.  An open fire, timber floors.

A spot to park the caravan that we'll also buy, so we can go tripping around Australia.

It's nice to have a dream... 💜

The spread was gessoed, then everything inked in, and watercoloured.

Hope you like it Sallyanne!  Happy Arting all!

Cheers, Lisa 

Time for Tea with Jenny

Life is like a cup of tea... to be filled to the brim and enjoyed with friends.

Time for Tea conjures up all kinds of ideas... but eventually I nailed one down and started making Sharon a pot of daisy tea. The Tim Holtz Paper Dolls dropped by to help :)

I've made it with quite a few layers, not always happy with each one but it eventually turned out ok. Bright, colourful, full of sweet elements.

First thing I did was take the pages out of the ring binder and glue down some pretty doilies with a gel matte medium.

I then dragged the pages through puddles of Distress Oxide Ink (Squeezed Lemonade and Iced Spruce) on a craft mat but it seemed to stick to the paper rather than spread out. Nice colours but not quite the marbled background I envisioned.
Moving on, I sprayed both Distress Ink Stain (Twisted Citron, a gorgeous lime green) and Distress Oxide Sprays (Mermaid Lagoon and Cracked Pistachio) to the pages and it seemed to liven it up! I finished off the background with Distress Oxide Spray in Fossilized Amber (earthy yellow).

Once the inky background was dry, I gathered a couple of my fave Tim Holtz stencils (ZigZag and Blossom) and added their patterns using Dylusions acrylic paint (Mushy Peas and Calypso Teal) and an ink blending tool (foam applicator).

The next layer was made with the Finnabair Paper Texture Paste (it dries like homemade paper) and Tim Holtz stencil (Lace), spread with a plastic spatula.

An overview of the page so far...

While deciding what to do next, I stamped out a Darkroom Door teapot (set called Time for Tea), cups, spoon and teabags with black Ranger Archival Ink on white mixed media paper. I was toying with the idea of a colourful teaset... but I think the simple black and white is best.

Now the plaster was dry, I added Ranger's Gloss Transparent Texture Paste through the Tim Holtz stencil, Flourish, letting each section dry before adding more beautiful swirls.

This photo (above) is of the texture paste drying, with spots of Nuvo Drops scattered around.

The teapot was made 3D with the help of an Action Wobble... being adhesive backed help hold the Tim Holtz Idea-Ology paper flowers and little teabag strings in place too.

I coloured the flower centres in yellow ink and drew daisies onto the teabags. I was going to use real teatags but they were too big.

The rest of the elements are butterflies, daisies and roses from a pack of Tim Holtz Idea-Ology Botanical Layers, washi tape (more butterflies!), and a pair of Tim's Idea-Ology Paper Dolls.
The silver spoon is stamped using silver watercolour paint, then coloured some more with the same paint to darken the silver paint.

The final touches are a sticky note stamped with the quote, more butterflies, dribble of honey, glitter (sugar) on the spoon and another paper lace doily along the bottom.

Its turned out to be a pretty floral Spring-like page in the end. Thanks for reading :) Hope it makes you smile!

Happy Creative Day!

:)

Jenny

My Book Page Art Journal is home!

I received my journal in the mail a week or two before Christmas, and what a lovely present it was!

Thanks so much to everyone who did a spread in it - it's thick and juicy! 

And thank you to everyone who struggled with ripping up a book.  The first one is always hardest, but old books look fab incorporated into artworks!

So here's my completed journal.  The cover was made with book pages made into petals, and a teabag covered book page in the centre. 

Next was my contract and an example of black out poetry.

Jenny did an amazing underwater spread with lots of gorgeous elements!  The photo doesn't show how shiny and glossy it all is. 💙

Melissa's spread was called Round & Round the Garden and included some great black out poetry, plus a lovely garden scene.  So cute!

Sallyanne came up with a fairytale scene with the requisite dwarves, a wolf, and princess, with music paper and book pages collaged into the background.  Lots of great texture!

Next is Janie's fabulous medieval scene!  Amazing print in the background, with heaps of stamps and imagery, including a lovely tree of life.

I did another black out poetry page in pink. 💗

Sharon did a spread based on Alice in Wonderland which included old pages from the book in the background - she found a cheap copy at a market I believe!  Lucky!  Always love a bit of Alice!

Next page is by - I think, as it hasn't been signed - Amanda.  Lots of cute fairies and toadstools, with words collaged into the background.  Love, love, love the colour scheme in this one!

Just love the colour scheme on this next spread too, which is by Meg.  She's used an old crossword as her base - great idea!  All of the circles really work with this cute spread.

This next page was a joint collaboration by Pam and Louise, using Pam's stash 💚.  Heaps of collaged book pages, with a wonderful sentiment in cut out letters!

Louise's spread is awe inspiring: stained fabric and book pages shaped into a Ghost Ship.  I'm really drawn to the muted palette in this!

Robyn did a wonderful tree with book page flowers and a painted book page background.  It's so cute, and I certainly don't mind that it's upside down!  Think we've all done that at some stage!

Roz did a lovely peaceful beach scene with a book page background.  Would like to be sitting there right now!  

And lastly was a pocket page with some book pages in it (for those who were hesitant to rip up a book of their own!) and the posting order - teabag covered book page flowers.

Thank you all so much for my lovely journal!

I look forward to the next journal round starting soon - happy arting all!

Cheers, Lisa xx

Jenny's Bees knees.

With the hot weather not being very condusive to acrylic paint and glue activies. This truly is a mixed media piece. 

I started with a bit of acrylic paint but it really was to hot and went all sticky and lumpy. So I switched to a bit of ink and some Uni Posca pens.Now my dear friend Jenny is not a big fan of Gelatos but I find I can blend them quite well with a brush or finger,  plus use them with a stencil and baby wipe.  ( be warned they do take a while to cure ) All of which was easier to play with on my dinning room table, indoors with the aircon going.

Now every piece of mixed media gets to that,  oh help,  what am I doing stage. This is a mess!

However I find if I step away for a few hours, have a cuppa, then things generally sort themselves out. 

So once I returned I felt the need for some collage. So with a few images from an old calender and some painted letters, I was nearly done.

Just the face to play with and a few gold pen dots and swirls. 

Now what has all this to do with the topic of The bees knees. 

Well anytime I can sit and play with all of my art supplies, that's the Bees knees to me.

Under the Sea...!

by Lisa for Melissa

Melissa's journal is a hooge journal full of beautiful papers - I didn't really want to paint over it! 

But I did.  Lots of lovely sea creatures in this journal already, and I decided to go with some fascinating creatures - jellyfish.  Brainless, spineless, dangerous, but strangely beautiful!

I found heaps of lovely photos of jellyfish on Unsplash.  Thanks to Unsplash contributors Karan Karnik, Michael Jasmund, Octavian Rosca, Arushee Agrawal and Kanyon Bollinger for your pics that I've based my jellyfish on!

Firstly I painted my background using acrylic paints.  Whilst I love the colours of the Dylusions paints, I obviously don't use them often enough - sadly they dry out.  My Dylusions Polished Jade was on its last legs, so I mixed it with some other paints in colours of teal and phthalo blue, and sponged it on.  Funnily enough, because the jade was a lot thicker than the other paints, if didn't blend properly, creating a lovely background!  Win!

Next I drew my jellyfish onto the background using my General's white pencil.  It's a bit hard to see in this pic, but it's there!

I coloured my jellyfish using pastel pencils.  And the colours looked beautiful, but pastels are very hard to seal - so it was a bit stoopid of me to use them for a journal!  Sigh, I should have taken a photo of it at this stage.  Oops.

To seal the pastels, I sprayed the pages three times with a sealing spray.  And yes, it did work, but it dulled the colours considerably.  So much so, that it just didn't stand out at all.  A bit of swearing happened here, and then I got out my daughter's Derwents.  And proceeded to colour the jellyfish all AGAIN.  

Next I sprayed the spread again, and added gel pens for highlights.

I also came up with a haiku to add to my right hand page:

Undulating blooms

Glowing in the murky depths

Dangerous beauties

Doing this made me think of Pam... 💜

And here's the whole spread!  Hope you like it Melissa, and here's hoping that 2020 is a great year for all.  Happy Arting!

Cheers, Lisa xx

Sharon's Tea Time journal

This is a lovely little journal and a fun topic. However as I'm at the tail end of it's journey, all the usual topics such as High tea, Mad hatters tea party, Japanese tea ceremony have been done. I didn't really know what to do. 

Sharon very kindly supplied some tea bags to go with the journal. So I challenged myself to see how much art I could do while drinking a cup of tea. 

Using some left over torn pages from another project and a cup of Lemon and Ginger tea, I laid down the background. 

Next day with one pair of scissors, the remains of an old childrens book, ( unfortunately it had lost it's cover so I can't attribute the work), glue and a cup of Camomile, Honey and Vanilla, the main character came together. 

Third day, one more cup of tea, Earl Grey and it was all done. 

So no more "I haven't got time to create " all you need is the time it takes to drink a cuppa tea. 

Thank you Sharon.

Who Am I?

by Lisa for Sallyanne

Sallyanne's A4 size journal is a great chunky thing that she's going to love when it gets home!

Her theme is "Who are you?" which can actually be a daunting thing to journal about.  Pam's entry is now especially moving, as she's no longer with us 😢💜.

A few years ago I'd done a self-portrait as part of a weekly drawing challenge I was in, so I decided to recreate this piece but make it a bit smaller.

As usual, I forgot to take enough progress pics!  Jenny always puts me to shame!  My usual medium is watercolour, but for this journal I opted for acrylics.  I have stacks of stencils so wanted to use them in some way. 

So I ended up using all the colours!  😁

Afterwards, I thought it was a bit loud, so used another favourite stencil to add some white over the top, then spritzed it with watercolour.  Also added some white Molotow pen to make it whiter.  Can't please me!

Next I watercoloured strips of paper and wrote bits of trivia on each one, about myself.

And on the right hand side, I also added my little self-portrait, doing some of my favourite things - reading a good book, drinking a glass or three of chardy, and eating M&Ms!  Don't think wine and M&Ms really go together, but not letting that stop me.

So here are all my bits of trivia!  

Family - I've been married to Scott for 25 years and we have 2 kids - Riley, 20, and Mel, 18.

Home - Scott's family have always been in Melbourne, but I moved here in '91.  Before that I lived in Pt Pirie SA, Newcastle NSW, Golden, Colorado USA, and Mt Isa Qld.  We moved a lot with my dad's work!

Art - I've dabbled in different arts & crafts all my life, but it's only in the last 5 years or so that I've been happy to call myself an artist.  I love using watercolours and doing collage with teabags that have been recycled.  I try and make art every day!

Sport - When I was younger I played netball, softball and tennis.  Arthritis in my knees put an end to my sport, and I had a partial knee replacement almost 12 months ago.  Now I try to walk regularly!

Smells - I love the smell of brewed coffee, vanilla and orange.  In the supermarket, I love the smell of the tea aisle and shampoo aisle!  I hate strong smells like petrol, textas, oil paints, some flowers, and lavender!

Community - I'm the secretary of our local cricket club, the membership secretary of the netball club, and life member of the junior footy club.

Work - I've been in banking since I was 16, first with Commonwealth Bank, and now almost 17 years with Bendigo Bank!  I do Home Loans and other consumer lending.

Travel - Scott and I have been to Vietnam 4 times, the last in Sept/Oct this year.  We've met many wonderful people there.  We've also been to Cambodia and KL, and will hopefully go to Thailand next year!

Pet Hates - Rude people, people with no manners.  Please and thank you are important!  I also hate incorrect grammar and spelling!

Beliefs - I've never been religious.  I believe in treating people how you'd like to be treated.  Kindness goes a long way!

Music - I'm an 80s girl and believe this decade to be the best for music!  Love INXS, Cold Chisel, Fleetwood Mac, Human League, and new stuff - Ed Sheeran, Chainsmokers, Cold Play, Miley, Birds of Tokyo, James Blunt.  I love to sing in the car.

Food - Unfortunately I have a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate!  And caramel, and M&Ms... I try not to buy blocks of chocolate because I will eat the whole block...  My willpower is poor!

Books - I love to read and do it most days.  I prefer real books and have way too many.  Fave authors?  Diana Gabaldon, Stephen King, Melina Marchetta, JK Rowling, Justin Cronin, Anita Shreve, Geraldine Brooks.  

Movies - I love going to the cinema but Scott doesn't - Mel and I usually go together.  Love Harry Potter, Avengers, rom coms, thrillers but not horrors, lots of genres!

Left - left handed and proud of it.  One day we'll take over the world! 🙌

Hope you like it Sallyanne - happy arting!

Cheers, Lisa xx