Just a Moment

I've belatedly joined Instagram having only recently got a smartphone and been dragged into the 21st century! I'm finding it fun to use and have started doing the 100 Happy Days project which is enjoyable and (sometimes) quite a challenge. If you haven't tried it, give it a go and let me know what you think.

Lots of stuff going on chez Every Colour at the moment and I don't seem to be getting a lot of time to make arty crafty goodies, though I did do a quick video a week or two ago where I muddled my way through a journal page - complete with goofy mistakes!

I'm currently quite obsessed with making notebooks and journals again. Having just discovered the wonderful world of Midori and the 'Fauxdori' idea - basically making your own version of these utterly gorgeous leather journals - I have been doing lots of research and dipping my toe into working with leather, something which is totally new to me.

Here's my first attempt. It's sized to hold Field Notes or A6 notebooks and I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. I also plan to make a traveller size and I'll post pictures when I do.

Project Life and Journalling Cards

This is what I've been playing with this week. I made a whole bunch of cards to fit Project Life folders or just to use for journalling on. They were all printed on my 6" gelli plate and I'm just in the process of adding text to some of them.

Organise This

In another of those pieces of synchronicity which sometimes happen I've been encountering all sorts of things to do with personal organisers lately and I finally went, 'ok, I get it'. I need to work on changing some stuff in my life and (the horror!) getting better organised is part of the process. 

So here's my plan: I am old school, in that I'd rather use paper and pen to keep track of things than an electronic gadget, so I found this luvverley Filofax A5 Domino in a sale and snapped it up!

This is it when I unpacked it. Nice, huh? But I wanted to make it less 'officey' and more arty so I set about tricking it out with customised bits and bobs.

The landing page had to be something which would make me want to use the planner, in fact that is the whole ethos behind what I'm doing here. If I make it a happy, fun place to keep everything in then I will be much more likely to work in it. So, the page is a gelli print I cut to fit and then decorated with washi tape, paper flowers and little letter charms.

In the front I have a few business cards, paper clips, shopping lists and a variety of notelets and stickers to decorate my diary pages like so:

This week, being Valentine's, is all about lurve. It was pure fun using stamps, tape and stickers on these pages and just playing.

In my next post I'll share some more of this work in progress, and whether it's bringing any order to the chaos, so stay tuned!

Gelli Journal

 

I have been gelli printing a lot this last couple of weeks and decided to go ahead and make my new art journal with a pile of the prints I'd done. I'm really looking forward to working in it too!

Check out the video below if you'd like to have a guided tour of how I created it.

Telling the Bees

Another video this week, this time of a journal page. I am doing a series of loose pages which I plan to bind together at a later date. 

It occurred to me the other day that I have seen virtually no bees so far this year and you may well be aware that bee populations are in decline all over the world. It looks like organo-phosphate insecticides could be playing a big part in this and it has potentially very serious repercussions for us all if numbers of pollinating bees keep falling, so if you have a garden make sure you do everything you can to welcome bees into it by planting the sorts of flowers they love and not using pesticides!

Folklore tidbit: there is an old superstition amongst beekeepers that you must tell the hive of any significant events - births, marriages or deaths for example - or they will swarm and you will lose your bees for good.

In The Background

Working in my journal trying to make something that would 'pop'! Think I succeeded.

Look at all these fun brushes I picked up for just over £1. They were in the children's art and craft section at the home and garden store. Well worth checking out!

House Of The Spirits

More from the journal. The page didn't start off going in this direction, it just kind of happened along the way. I like it when things evolve and take on their own life!

October Colours

I love this time of year, especially for the wonderful colours. Here's another journal page trying to capture it all.

Saturday Journalling

Finished this off today. It's been languishing for a while because I wasn't happy with how it was going, then this morning it just seemed to come together, inspired perhaps by the lovely autumn sunshine!

True Confessions

I have too much paper. There, I said it. My studio has several deep drawers and boxes stuffed full of interesting scraps - prints of my earlier artwork, book pages, painted book pages, scrapbooking papers that I've only partially used, little things that I've saved 'just because'. Then there are the junk shops books which I've collected because they had pretty illustrations or were in French or Chinese or wonderful gothic-fonted German. And don't get me started on old Ordnance Survey maps because yes, I have piles of those too!

I know I should part with a good chunk of it. There's enough there to last several arty lifetimes. But, like my fabric stash, I find it impossible to decide what I can really live without. And I know I'm not alone: I can almost see many of my fellow mixed media makers nodding in shifty-eyed agreement. There is, you see, so much possibility in these pieces of paper. They talk to each other, gathering together in pleasing combinations within their confined spaces so that when I pull out a seemingly random pile I discover that they are speaking to me too, including me in their conversation. It would feel rude to interrupt.

Occasionally I print copies of older pieces of work in various sizes so that I can reuse them. The tag and the journal page here have details from just such a piece. I like a bit of repetition sometimes.

Journalling Again

Another page which is the other side of the spread from the previous post and carries on the sunflower theme I'm playing with. This journal I'm working in at the minute has 8"x8" pages but I'm thinking of making one with a larger area to mess about on.

In case you're interested here's what I used for this page:

Materials

• vintage book pages and sheet music
• commercial scrapbook papers
• acrylic paints - Liquitex and Golden
• various stencils
• Faber drawing pens
• Hybrid gel pen
• bee stamp with Stazon ink

Journalling

I recently started working in my journal again, trying some new stuff out. My fave find recently has been a white Hybrid gel pen which actually seems to work over other media - I do not have a good track record with white pens but am enjoying this one so far!

Taking My Own Advice

A journal spread on the theme of encouragement. I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks at photos of themselves as a child and wonders whatever happened to that carefree, all-singing, all-dancing creature. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of what we're about.

More Journalling Fun

Another journal spread using some of my favourite colours and techniques but combined in ways I haven't necessarily done before. It's very freeing just to play with materials and see what happens without there needing to be 'art' at the end of it!

Flower Power

This is my latest journal entry which was inspired by Wednesday Stamper, the theme this week being flowers. I used stencils and cut out stamped flowers plus some lush new paper which has purple flocking on it - how great is that?!! I had a fun time sitting in the semi-dark listing all the flowers that came to mind while the biggest rainstorm we've had in years bust the drains and ran in a river down our street. Here comes the summer...

Crusade No.9 ~ What's That Smell?

I recently discovered Michelle Ward's Green Pepper Press Street Team and was immediately hooked! Each month Michelle provides a creative challenge and artists respond to it. June's is about scent and the power it has to evoke time and place so, as this is something which has been rattling around in my brain for a while, I thought I'd join in.

Two things happened the day I started these journal pages. The first was that the song As Time Goes By began playing on some weird sort of interior loop in my head, so much so that it became the theme for what I was making. The second was that my 18 year old cat Schrodinger, who had been with me since she was just a few weeks old, died of heart failure, and these pages took on a whole new signifigance for me.

So the little envelope contains a tag with scented wax from the candles I am burning in my studio dripped onto it (thanks for that idea Michelle!) and stamped with the date. Tucked into the page pocket is a little print of a painting I did of Schrodi several years ago. I also got to play with my new toy: a set of letter punches which I used to stamp the metal shim with a line from the song.

Click on the image for a larger picture.