Altered book

I was lucky enough to receive this beautiful Altered book through the post at Christmas. I am blessed to have so many clever and artistic friends and this book was made by one of them.
Irene is a really amazing crafter turning her hands to many things, I think you will agree that in doing this altered book she excelled herself.

Art Journey page 2

The prompt was to take inspiration from packaging. The packaging that influenced me for this page was a dried pasta package. Greens and yellows with a central logo.

January update

My page for Leanie's Artistic License circle journal.
Leanie asked us to use the artist Vincent Gachaga as inspiration for her CJ.
Using a 7" x 5" watercolour paper board provided by Leanie I have interpreted Gachaga's 2011 work called 'Desired' using a drawn scanned image of a girl and plenty of gesso, paints, inks and stamps.

A small photo of the Gachaga's original artwork is on the back of the board.

This Book of Secrets is one of 2 that I have made for a swap on UK Scrappers. Netty gave us a link to this site and the names and subjects of 2 fellow swappees. One of my swappees, Karen, had chosen Sculpture as her topic! I really had no idea how I was going to do this book and then I remembered last year when I visited Irene we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where I took a series of photos of an exhibition put on by the sculptor Jaum Plensa. I have used these photos to create Karen's book. The cover is made from Tim Holtz grunge paper, Golden moulding paste and painted with acrylic paints and inks.

In the centre of the book are 3 opening drawers made from swan vesta matchboxes and filled with little secrets. I tried to choose things that I hoped Karen would like.

The book is now in Karen's possession so I am not spoiling the surprise for her.

My other book of secrets is on its way to Canada and once it has arrived at its destination I will post some photos here on my blog.

Thanks for looking.

Art Journey

On UK Scrappers this year there are a lot of new challenges and classes. I have been following the 'Art Journey' thread and have downloaded all the prompts so far. I have put together my own art journal following Sarah's brilliant instructions. You can see them on UKS and on Sarah's blog, therefore I will not go into detail here. You will see my book isn't quite up to Sarah's standard but I did have fun making it!

Here are a selection of the papers I started out with, the leatherette is from a charity shop find jacket that I shared with my good friend Kay.

I used matt medium on some of the book pages I wanted to use to give them some strength.

The first page is ready to go! Normally I add completed pages into my journal. However, this time I am being brave and painting/inking/spraying and generally getting messy onto the page straight into the my journal.

I have placed a sheet of acetate under the page as I work to protect the lower pages. I wonder how long I will worry about that. LOL

Here is my first completed page for this 6 month Art Journey.

Thanks for looking.

The Erosion Bundle Project reveal!

In October I place 2 bundles of bits and bobs in my garden as part of the Cloth Paper Scissors Erosion bundle project. You can see my previous post HERE. Yesterday I brought the bundles in doors after they had been tossed around in high winds the previous night! They had been moved into a more exposed site after a month as they seemed to be very sheltered where I first placed them. Maybe I was trying to protect them too much!!!
You can see the big reveal below:



Some of the items had hardly changed and others had but not in a good way!

One of the most interesting changes were to the pieces of photo paper offcuts that I placed in each bundle.

The bundles are now drying off in my conservatory whilst I ponder what magnificent piece of artwork I am going to produce with them. At the moment it is looking good in my head but I have a sneaky feeling that only a very carefully chosen few bits and bobs will be used in the future!

Watch this space. LOL

Circle Journal updates

I have just started a new Journal your Art Circle Journal on UK scrappers.

There are 8 of us in the group and we have each chosen a theme for our CJ.

My theme is 'Serendipity'.

Serendipity means 'happy accident' or pleasant surprise, finding something good without looking for it! My art journalling is all about Happy accidents!!!

To make the journal I took out the pages form a Children's encyclopedia and replaced them with blank Bristol board pages. I have done an introduction page but forgot to take a photo!

I used lots of paints, inks, sprays and stamps for my inner lining pages then stitched the Bristol board in place.

My page for my journal.

Here is my latest page Artistic License Circle journal page.

It is for Frances's CJ. she gave us all art board to work on.

She chose a painting by Paul Klee, she divided into 9 sections and asked the group to do one section each using what ever medium we wished.

I have used Golden artist light moulding paste and shaped and scraped the design into it.

Then I used my acrylic paints and sprays to colour the surface.

All the other boards made so far are very different and fit together so well, I am sure the finished journal will look amazing.

A busy December!

Just like everyone else my December was busy.
Not many craft projects were made but I did make some tags that I used instead of Christmas cards using Tim Holtz dies. I used the small easel die to support them and make them easier to display. I made quite a few but stuck with variations of the 2 tags below.

I also decided use hand stamped paper on all my crafty friends presents.

After stamping over 20 metres of paper I decided that next year I will buy gift tokens!

They did look good though once I had finished wrapping them.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

It seems a long time ago now!