Birthdays Book

I've been taking a great class -- Wanderlust 2018 -- and for most of this year have I've doing the projects that are a part of each week's class.  It has been great and a lot of it has stretched me, so I've mostly posted photos of what I've been up to there.

Other things have taken over recently, however, and I've stopped trying so hard to keep up; this has freed up some space for other creative things, including this birthdays booklet.  I've been wanting to make one of these for ages!

The purpose of this little handmade booklet is to keep track of friends' birthdays.  It seemed silly to buy one when it would be so easy (and satisfying) to make one.

I started with some offcuts from A4-sized Gelli-printed pages, and added further layers of Gelli-printing to some.

I used card(stock) for the cover and ultra-smooth 120gsm paper by Navigator for the pages.  This paper works particularly well in picking up prints from the Gelli-plate and holding up to layers of paint.

I gravitated towards ghost prints and more transparent paints (Golden Open), so that the writing I will do on top will be easy to see.

The pages were sewn together using a saddle stitch, and the months were stamped using the Dylusion's Creative Dyary Stamp Set (number 1).  The lettering on the front was stamped using letters from the My Acrylix Whimsy Stamp Set by Close To My Heart - unfortunately, I don't think they make this set any more, which is a shame.

Back cover

Now I just need to add in all the birthdays, and perhaps a bit more in the way of doodles and other embellishment.

Cards from New Year Masterboard

I managed to make six cards from yesterday's masterboard.  

Again, it was just a matter of putting the pieces of the masterboard against various colours of card.  Red was the first colour that clicked for me:

Then burgundy:

I came round to the teal last:

A close up of this last one:

All of the cards have 'Happy New Year' penned inside using gold ink and a calligraphy nib:

And one more snap of them all together:

Happy New Year!

A New Year Masterboard

I've been enthralled by the white fairy lights on trees and windows at this time of year, and so I decided to try my hand at a masterboard of whites and golds.  I really enjoyed the last one and have been itching to do another.

I started with white and buff acrylic paint pulled with an old credit card across a page of A4 prepped with gesso.  I then did a second layer with white and metallic gold acrylic paint.  It would have been good to snap a photo at this stage, but it did not occur to me until later... 😒

I then mixed a bit of golden yellow with white to make cream, and stencilled very small cream snowflakes over the gold bits.  I then stencilled very small acrylic metallic gold snowflakes over the white bits.  Finally, I used individual letters and numbers to stamp '1 Jan' and '2018'.  I also have a stamp that is slightly suggestive of a firework, so I also randomly stamped that all over as well.

These close-ups show a bit more detail:

Next, the tough part . . . cutting it all up:

This next photo show how the gold paint reflects the light:

So now to turn these into New Year cards ...

(...which are now posted here).

A Simple Christmas Card

Work and other things have taken over my last 6-8 weeks, leaving almost no time or energy for card making or other creative endeavours.

This morning I rose early to make at least one seasonal card.  I've had this stamp (made by A Stamp in the Hand) for several years now and I never could figure out what to do with it.  It just didn't seem to combine well with any of my other stamps, and it felt too simple just to stamp it (and possibly layer it) on a card.  

As it turns out, simple is exactly what I needed.  It's probably what I need every year, in terms of how long it's been since I've managed more than one or two hand-made seasonal cards.  

I did edge the top layer with white pigment ink and subtly whitened the snow with white pencil -- gel pen and paint  were too prominent and disrupted the coherence of the image.  

It was nice to get the sleeves rolled up and briefly dip into a bit of creativity.  Maybe I should make a couple more and send a few belated season's greetings...

Two more ...

...autumn envelopes.

There's something about these big envelopes that I really find freeing, in terms of experimenting with Gelli-printing.  I also really like using prints for envelopes.

I stamped the leaves (PaperArtsy) over the top, using pigment chalk ink

I like the contrast of the red and orange against the gray, faded summer flowers.

I'm still working out how to use real leaves in my Gelli-prints.  These served as outlines rather than 'prints':

I started and ended with some ghost layers (before & after the print with leaves) for more texture.  And this is how it turned out:

Autumn Gelli Printing

Autumn leaves and their colours always inspire me.  As a result, I've been a bit distracted from my composition lessons by my Gelli plate and the desire to capture some autumn splendour.  

This first one and a few below were done with a favourite stencil called Leaf Specimens by Joggles.  The next few were done with pressed leaves from outside my home.

I find it challenging to achieve the colours (and colour combinations) I'm aiming for.  Some are a bit too bright and garish:

I think the one above and the one below would benefit from some additional embellishment ... maybe with gold and black pens, or dark brown calligraphy ink.

Others are a bit too diminished by the layers or by the addition of too much brown:

The camera also washes them out (or rather, my lack of photographic skills).  😏

Still, I do enjoy playing with colour and the anticipation of how it will all turn out.

And this last one is merely a unplanned nice surprise -- the result of pulling paint from the holes of a stencil (Balzer Designs Pointy Circles)  for the early layers of a few of the prints above.

Happy Autumn!!

Learning Composition: Lesson 2

I've moved on to lesson 2 of Jane Davies' downloadable workshop The Keys to Dynamic Composition: the abstract landscape.  This  is  a very different exercise than lesson  1.  The first photo is the composition midway through:

I'm glad to still be using up bits of my Gelli prints, albeit small bits, most of which got painted over.

The finished version (I think):

I can't say I'm satisfied with it, but that's not really the point.  I'm learning.  Perhaps one of the most important things I'm learning is to tolerate results that are less than satisfying.  While I've always known this is important and that I'll need to do a lot of 'meh' stuff to develop the skills and knowledge to make stuff that is really pleasing to me in its final form, knowing this in the abstract and knowing this in the doing have been distant relatives for me.  This has meant I haven't done a lot of doing!

Importantly, I also found the process enjoyable.  

It feels like it needs something further, but I don't know what that might be.  I'm also not sure about the maroon top; it's possibly too strong and though I tried to knock it back, I didn't want pink.

More to come...