I can’t believe how long it has been since I’ve posted anything! I have been so caught up with work and family life that I have barely had time to squeeze in any free time for anything else. I have managed to complete a few pages but haven’t had time to document them so here I am… Catching up again!  I really must try to get into a the habit of blogging more often as I find it a fun and cathartic process.

Anyway, since I last posted I have discovered the free ‘Documented Life Project’ (over at www.art5academy.com). I am quite far behind with this project so have started with a prompt that appealed to me and will pick up the others as I can. I don’t want to put pressure on myself to catch up quickly or in order as that takes the fun and impulsiveness away from creating. I have to withhold my natural impulsiveness in my work life so art allows me to set it free!

The page I’m going to go through is taken from the March 7 prompt. Each month they have a theme, the March theme was ‘doodles and mark making’. Then each week within the month has both an art challenge and journal prompt, the challenge for this week was ‘as a layer element’ and the journal prompt was ‘survive the elements’. I’d had a challenging week at work where I had begun to doubt my skills and knowledge and I had been questioned about my thought processes. It made me doubt myself hugely even though I knew I had been doing the right thing. Anyway this page is the result of me processing my thoughts about this and releasing the steam!

I love layers and paper so my first port of call was collage.  I collaged down some circles I cut out of kids craft tissue, LOTS of circles, in fact one from each layer of the pack of tissue! I then put a watered down wash of gesso over the whole page to push them back a little and gently wiped some back with a baby wipe. On top of this I sprayed some dylusions purple ink through a doily and printed the remaining ink on the doily back onto the page. I suddenly remembered that the dylusions inks are not permanent and worried about the bleeding through upper layers so decided to layer the printed tissue over the top of where I sprayed ink. I knew from past use that under layers show through this tissue really well but didn’t want to smudge the doily image with glue  so I put gel medium onto the back of the tissue and then gently lay the tissue over the top of the sprayed sections. I the scraped a layer of gel medium over the top of the tissue to seal it down. On top of this I stuck down some strips of yellow tissue with gel medium.

In between this and the next picture I also added some strips of green tissue and torn strips of spotty washi tape. I cut some circles of gridded paper from a kids Maths exercise book I use for notes and stuck those down. At this stage I still had no idea where I was going with this page, I was just having fun! Next, I started adding paint. I used my distress paints to add some more colour, I loved the purple and yellow on the collage layers so tried to stick with those colours. I especially loved how the circles turned out. They remind me of the sun… And I needed lots of that in my life this week! I wiped back patches and blended with a baby wipe. The border around the edge was added with my inktense blocks and my finger dipped in water.

The next picture us where I started to get an idea of where I wanted to take this page. I decided to doodle around the circles with my black and white pens and then added journaling around the circles and border of the page.

This is a close up, you can just see the original tissue paper circles peeping through… I love these layers and colours!

The next photo really shows the page coming to life! I added some flowers doodled in black pen and then more colour picking up on the orange and purple with sharpies used to colour in the doodles and acrylic paint through a stencil. I outlined the doodled flowers with my white soufflé pen… One of my favourite pens!

This is a close up of the flowers. I love how the sharpies are almost translucent over the top of the gel medium. The colours are so warm and glow like stained glass!

I still need to add a quote I have chosen and will be back to post a picture when that is done!

This weeks prompt on Journal 52 really inspired me.  The prompt was ‘artistic restraint’, the limits to the prompt were to only use one colour alongside black and white, and only one shape. We could use whatever mediums we wanted and I chose to use mixed media.  When I began, I didn’t really have a plan… all I knew was that I wanted to use purple as my colour (My favourite colour and one that dominates most of my art journal pages at the moment… I’m in a purple phase!), and circles as my shape. I decided I wanted to use some techniques I had seen whilst watching other people on YouTube and in others work from challenges. I am working in a small A5 Daler-Rowney spiral bound sketchbook.

I began by tearing up some old book pages and sheet music from a book I recently bought for 50p, then I stuck these down with liquitex matte gel medium and added a few pieces of Ikea washi tape. I added more gel medium over the top of the washi tape too, to make sure it stayed stuck down.Next I added a light gesso wash over the top.

After the gesso dried I couldn’t decide whether to add acrylic paint or inks, I decided to have a play with my distress paints and eventually chose to use picket fence (white) and seedless preserves (purple). I love these paints so much! they are really fun to play with and give some great results. I love to dab them all over the page and spray with water to make them swirl around, this is the kind of effect you get when doing this:

These paints dry really flat and you can wipe them back while still wet but once dry they are permanent so don’t reactivate when you add other wet media over the top. I love them so much! They also dry really quickly with the use of a heat tool. I laid a piece of sheet music over the top of that swirly mess to soak some of the liquid back up and wiped some back with a baby wipe before it dried… this is what I ended up with at this stage.

My next stage was to add some liquitex basics acrylic paints (dioxizine purple and titanium white) with a brayer over the top. I also tried adding some texture with some home made lino cuts but they didn’t print very well!

Continuing with my acrylic paints, I added some more texture through a Crafters Workshop stencil (Well Rounded)

I then added even more texture with some Pebeo Studio modelling paste, I love how you can make this bubble up when drying with a heat tool. I also added some more circles with the liquitex basic acrylics and a sponge dabber from my children’s art stash haha! I doodled over the top of these sponges circles with a black letraset drawing pen and added some white dots randomly around the page with my white edding paint marker.

I then cut some circles of varying sizes from some book paper and stuck them down with matte gel medium. I stuck down some more washi tape over the top with the gel medium too. By this point I had found a quote and decided where I was going. I really started to lose myself in the process and found a quote describing how restraint can actually prevent you from discovering who you really are and how you need to allow yourself to lose yourself to discover who you really are. I am guilty of restraining myself far too much and not allowing people to see the real me.

I decided the circles did’t stand out enough, so swirled some gesso on them with my finger and when this had dried I doodled around the circles with my white paint pen and my letraset pen.

 At this point I decided to print my quote on normal a4 printer paper and cut it out. I stuck it down with matte gel medium and when dry I doodled around the edged of each word. I then added black inktense block around the edge of the page to create a border and did my journalling in white uniball signo gel pen. I later added some more doodled circles around the page like bubbles.

I will leave you with some photos of my completed page. I hope you like it, please feel free to leave me a comment to let me know what you think!

 

In my last post I mentioned that I have started following the Journal 52 challenge (http://journal52.com). I have now finally caught up with the weekly prompts and have decided to share a few pages that I have created with you. I didn’t manage to get photos along the way so will try to describe my processes to you. I have really enjoyed participating in this and sharing my creations with the group. They are very supportive and give great feedback.

This is first page was for the Week 3 prompt ‘Conversation starters’. I initially couldn’t think what I wanted to do for this and then I got the most wonderful phone call… To arrange delivery of my new car! I had ordered it back in Ovtober so had been waiting a long time and it seemed that everyone I spoke to asked if I was getting my car yet, and now I was. I wanted to wait for my car to actually arrive before completing the page as I wanted to incorporate the car in the page, so I started the background and patiently waited another whole week before finishing the page.

I began with laying down some colour, I used liquitex basics acrylics and just randomly painted red, white and blue around the page until I was happy with the result. I chose the colours as mini is a huge part of British cultural history. I also added some texture with some Pebeo studio acrylic modelling paste and a crafters workshop splatter stencil. Next I doodled around the edges with a white paint marker.  I then waited until the car arrived.  I then took photos and printed one out on ordinary cheap a4 photocopy paper. I fussy cut around the image and stuck it down with liquitex matte gel medium. I went over the top with more matte gel.  When this had dried I sketched around the edges of the image with a black Fabre castell Pitt pen.  I then created shadows around the car and edges of the page with Inktense blocks and water. Finally, I journal led around the car with a white Signo pen and added more journalling around the page with black Pitt pens.

I hope you like this page, it is one of my favourites! I will be posting more of the others that I have completed  soon.

Wow, it has been such a long time since I have posted anything!  I have been so busy over the last few weeks that blogging has taken a little bit of a back seat. I must try harder to keep up to date. Over the last few weeks I have returned to work after a short period of illness. I have taken delivery of a new car (… Which I have completely fallen in love with!), and we have had Valentines and a trip to London to visit family.

I have also decided to take part in some art journalling prompts and challenges. I have discovered the Dylusions Facebook Challenge, which is a monthly challenge so not too hard to keep up with. The only restriction is that you should use mostly Dylusions products to create your page, tag, atc etc. I have found this tricky as I have a limited supply of Dylusions products at the moment (my supply consists of only four sprays!). I do plan to by the paints when they become available but although I love the sprays II have also joined in  would prefer it if they became permanent when dry as I like to layer and it drives me mad when they reactivate. The page above is one I created for February using the prompt hearts, purple, skulls.

i have also joined in with Journal52. This is a blog based challenge but there are also A Facebook group and Flickr album you can follow. I have really enjoyed this challenge and the groups are really inspiring and encouraging. They don’t fuss if you are catching up with previous weeks prompts like I am and don’t mind if you are posting out of order. There aren’t really any rules as such either, which really appeals to me! The page above is one I completed for this challenge using the Week 2 prompt ‘Just Be’. I used liquitex basics acrylics and black and white pens. I really enjoyed just getting messy with this one and exploring what the prompt meant to me. The page below is what I created with this weeks prompt (week 7 – valentines) after my trip to London. I have yet to add my journalling but like it even as it is.

I used the inktense blocks that my husband bought me for valentines to create this. I really love these! I especially love how they are permanent once dry and how they can layer over the top of themselves or other media. I can see me needing lots more of these… And the pencils eventually of course!

I thought I would do a post about why and how I came across art journalling, and show you some of my very first creations.

I accidentally discovered art journalling at the end of 2013. This occurred at a time when I had hit absolute rock bottom emotionally and this was also affecting me physically. I became very much a recluse and could not face the real world at all. It had been a year since my beloved father had died holding my hand… After I had given him permission to leave us, which he did within minutes.

Anyway, after impulsively leaving my job and deciding on a career change (the second in five years!) I needed to begin processing how I was feeling and making decisions. I unfairly blamed my career on everything that was wrong with my life as it was all encompassing and I hadn’t had time to do anything for me during the previous five years. My art materials had been packed away for such a long time while I pursued my career and I didn’t realise how much I needed to just immerse myself in creativity and allow myself to just let go.

As I searched the Internet for inspiration to revive my creativity I stumbled upon art journalling. Years ago I had a friend who had undertaken counselling and she had been recommended to keep a journal to help her work through her feelings. In my career as a midwife we are encouraged to write reflections and this was something I had gotten used to but also didn’t feel entirely comfortable with. I felt very exposed and vulnerable having people I knew and respected reading about my innermost worries and feelings and then grading them. For those who aren’t familiar with this, in healthcare related occupations reflections are graded and assessed during training).

I worried about my friends, family and children reading my thoughts. BUT, I had always had a tendency to draw when stressed, my husband joked that he knew he was in trouble when the pencils and paints came out. So art journalling seemed perfect. No one would really know what I was thinking when I did this and I would still get the benefit of working through things on my mind. So I began art journalling. Amazingly it was the art journalling helping me through my feelings that made me realise I was wrong on the career change and after a much needed 9 month break I went back to midwifery feeling much better and with a renewed enthusiasm. I am now care to allow myself time away from the world and to create, doodle, splash paint and share in a way that doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable like writing a diary would.

How exciting! This is my first attempt at blogging and I’m really looking forward to it. I have often wondered if I could have a go and have finally plucked up the courage to give it a go. So if anybody actually finds themselves reading this, please be gentle!

So, who am I? To be honest I don’t know. This is part of the reason I have decided to begin writing. So that I can learn more about myself. I am a mother of five wonderful children of varying ages from 18 to 4 year old twins. I am immensely proud of my no so little family and what we have achieved over the years. I am also a midwife and although I have had my moments I love my job and feel very privileged to be able to welcome new people and new mothers into the world every day. I am also married to the most wonderful man in the world who happened to be my favourite teenage crush and best friend. But who am I without all of this… I don’t know as I have never explored myself as a person. There has always been someone around, I went from living with my parents as a 17 year old, to living with my now husband and pregnant at 18 years old. I have never been alone or had time to just be me as an adult.

I have recently begun exploring my creativity in an effort to explore these feelings and discover more about myself. I find that art helps me to dig deep into my inner feelings without it being too traumatic. Call it therapy if you want. Whatever it is, it feels deep and personal and all about me. So much that sometimes I feel like I can’t show people what I have created and keep it hidden away as it is too personal and exposing. This is what this blog is hopefully going to be for, to expose the inner me and expose my brushes with creativity that allow me to express my deepest, inner feelings.

I am not an artist, am a dabbler. I love to draw, paint, knit, crochet, journal, scrapbook…. Anything I can get my hands on really! I am not promising great artworks or amazing enlightenment. Just a little glimpse of what I love about the world and what I can manage to create as an amateur who just lets the paint flow whenever I get a peaceful moment… Which are few and far between in a busy house with lots of noisy children!

Anyway that’s it for now… See you soon!

I will leave you with some lovely images of my latest creation.