Word of Inspiration Wednesday: BOOK

This week's WOIW topic in the Kraafters Kommunity on G+ is the word BOOK.

Whenever I think about love of reading, I always think of Jane Austen. This page was inspired by one particular event I remember. I took English literature at university and at the end of the semester I had to return Pride and Prejudice to the library. I hadn't quite finished it yet, so I sat down in the garden on campus and read it all the way through before returning it. It was a lovely early summer's day and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Just one of those rare, precious memories life throws at you at random that you have to hang on to and treasure forever. (OK, let's not get too sentimental about this!)

I still enjoy reading, though these days I would consider it my second favourite activity. When Jane Austen wrote "there is no enjoyment like reading" she obviously hadn't discovered mixed media arts!

My page consists of a distressed background painted and stenciled on book papers (yes, another Jane Austen novel, which I have on my Kindle, so I don't need the book any more). I printed the quote and outlined the letters by hand as they were a bit faint. I double outlined the text blocks with black and white pens to bring them out of the busy background a bit more. The photo is off the internet. I think it's Anne Hathaway portraying Jane Austen. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for the movie trailer!) I just cut around the figure and adhered it with gel medium. The gel medium created a non-porous surface, which allowed me to shade around the cut-out with a black marker pen. I finished with white doodling on the figure and the stencil pattern.

WOYWW #282: Experimenting with faces

Featured image for G+

One thing about doing these weekly WOYWW posts is that you realise just how fast the weeks fly by! Here it is, another Wednesday and another messy desk. It's not that different from last week's, only the clutter has been "carefully" rearranged. You'll notice that I blurred out an object in the top left corner on my desk. It is because it's a surprise for Cindy, who sent me that awesome desk organizer I showed you last week! It needs a few more finishing touches before I can post it.  I'm really excited about it and can't wait to show it to you, but I don't want to ruin the surprise for Cindy!

This past week I've been experimenting with faces - painting over faces found in magazines, to be exact. If you look carefully, you might spot the current issue of Vogue somewhere under the pile of other stuff on my desk. I never buy these sorts of fashion magazines to read - I only bought it this month for the faces! The idea came from this video by Tamara Laporte of Willowing Arts:

I know my version is far from perfect, but I quite enjoyed playing with these faces - and at the end of the day that's all that matters! So today I'd like to share with you some of the pages I've created with this technique. I'll show you the original images too for comparison. You'll see that my paintings don't look anything like the original, but it's a good method to hep with proportions and positioning.

Thanks for visiting my blog today! Just click on the first image below and cycle through the photos through the gallery view! If you would like to see what other crafters have been up to this week, just hop over to the Stamping Ground to snoop around their desks!

Here they are again for a closer look:

 

And even closer:

Sunday Sentiments #4: 26 October 2014

Welcome to another post of Sunday Sentiments! The quote I'm sharing with you this week is this:

"Courage is being yourself every day in a world that expects you to be someone else."

Isn't that true? All too often we conform ourselves to fit the expectations of other people. Stop being the person that other people want you to be and start being true to yourself!

I've created this double spread to celebrate this sentiment in my "practice" journal. I stopped calling it my junk journal as Vicky has pointed out that junk journals are made out of junk. This is just an old diary I use for journalling to give myself the freedom to "mess up" as many pages as I want! 

There's quite a few layers in here starting with some paint off my brayer while gelli printing. I also added some scraps of gelli prints and stencilling and some more paint to fill the blanks spaces. The images all came from the internet, but unfortunately I can't remember where. They're supposed to be free vintage images. I finished off with some washi tapes and white outlining, and also added some white circles with a bottle cap and splatters with some watered down gesso.

This was printed on regular computer paper and coloured with gelatos.

Also printed on regular paper and coloured with gelatos.

Add caption

You can see the background from the diary peeking through

The purple paper is a scrap of gelli print, which I blended into the background with acrylic paint.

Please share your creations for this week below. If you're new to Sunday Sentiments, you can read about it here. Have a happy and creative week and don't forget to be yourself!

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Word of Inspiration Wednesday: GIFT

The inspirational word that Heather Kraafter gave us this week in the Kraafter's Kommunity on Google+ is GIFT.  You know, I've been talking about how I struggle with some projects, while others just seem to fall together effortlessly. This one belongs in the latter category!

It probably took me less than half an hour to put this together, including drying time. My journalling process has become quite predictable lately: gesso, paint, gelli prints, stamping, image, quote, shading and highlights. While this is becoming comfortable and quick, I have to be careful so that it doesn't get too "samie" and boring. For now, I still enjoy this process!

I used a new stencil I'd recently bought and I really like it! It's got several different designs and just the right size for art journalling. It's a 6X6 inch stencil by The Crafter's Workshop called well-rounded. I consider this a good buy as it contains nine separate patterns, all of which are very versatile.

I hope you like my page. If you would like to join the Kraafter's Kommunity, we'll all be happy to see you there!

I'm loving how the paint accumulated on the wire binding!

I used polyfilla to put through a stencil instead of texture paste.

I outlined the word tiles with Stabilo All watersoluable pencils and activated it with some water

The polyfilla always gives crisp outlines and dries almost instantly!

I'm filling up my WOIW journal rather quickly adding a new page each week!

WOYWW #281: Happy Mail from the US!

Happy Wednesday! Yesterday I received a rather large packet from the US from my crafting friend, Cindy Wirl. It was such a wonderful surprise, I was (and still am!) completely overwhelmed by it. I decided to share it with the world as it would be a sacrilege to keep it to myself! Here it is sitting in the middle of my work desk/dining table along with the lovely card Cindy has also sent me. It's a desk organizer, which is very useful as I do need to organize my desk a bit more, as you can see! Thank you so much, Cindy, for such a wonderful gift! Now I can always find my favourite pens and pencils!

I'm showing my desk in its full glory today, which is not something I usually do. I normally just show you the tidy bit. I thought I would be brave enough today and show you the full monty. I should have warned you that it ain't pretty! I have a lot of clutter, but whenever I tidy up, I can never find anything! (Tiding means stack things in a big pile and shove it somewhere never to be seen again.) Out of sight out of mind. No wonder I can't find anything!  If you would like to see some more gloriously messy desks, hop over to the Stamping Ground to snoop around other crafters' work desks!

I have taken some close up photos of Cindy's creations (both the organizer and the card), which I'd like to share with you below. I know you will appreciate the pretty patterns and yummy textures as much as I do! I'm always amazed at the precision some paper crafters like Cindy are capable of achieving. I can never make things line up so neatly! If you would like to see some other fantastic paper crafting projects, please visit Cindy's Paper Creation. Perhaps she'll even post a tutorial for this organizer!

Thank you for visiting today! I return every single visit, just don't forget to leave your number!

Sunday Sentiments #3: 19 October 2014

Another Sunday, another Sunday Sentiments post. This week, I'm sharing a quote by a contemporary writer and philosopher, Neale Donald Walsch.

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

This is certainly true for me. We all have our comfort zones, the place we know and are familiar with. But if we don't venture away from that place, we will never grow or have opportunities to experience life to the full. I'm celebrating this sentiment with a page in my journal. You'll notice that this is a little different from my usual colourful creations, which have become my "comfort zone" lately.

It all started with a brownish/greenish/gold background colour off my brayer for one of my Gelli prints. I added some more paint to this layer; copper to the bottom and black to the top of the page. I completed the background with some white number stamping using acrylic paints. I used KaiserCraft's numbers background stamp. The Gelli plate is great for loading your rubber stamps with paint, but remember to clean them immediately - don't let the paint dry on your stamps! If you can't clean them immediately, just drop them into a bucket of water and clean them later. 

For this layout I used a well-known image transfer method with sticky tape. In case you're not familiar with this method, it involves placing a piece of sticky tape over a laser printed image and then removing the paper from the back with some water. As if by magic, the ink gets transferred to the tape! This is the easiest and quickest way to do an image transfer. The drawback is that you can still see the edge of the tape somewhat, but keep in mind  that it shows up more in the photos than in real life. If  you spread matte gel medium over the tape, it tones down the glossiness as well!

The images I used for this page originate from the Internet. I do realize there may be some copyright issues here, but wouldn't the same apply to images we cut from magazines, books, postcards, calendars, etc? More than ever, I am confused! The funny thing is, we could put ANYTHING in our personal journals, and no one would ever know. It's only because we display them on the Internet that it becomes an issue.

The word art is my own design using free fonts (Xband Rough, PlagueDeath, TrueTypewriter and Bergamot Ornaments). Again, I'm not sure if this violates copyrights of the font creators? They're free for personal use, but is it considered personal if I display it on the Internet? If we took all these copyright restrictions seriously, we couldn't share any of our creations publicly. Let me know what you think about this in the comments! I'd like to hear your opinion. Perhaps it will help me understand the situation.

That's it from me for today. Have you got a sentiment to share this week? Please post your links below making sure to link directly to your post and not your home page! Remember, you can post an older project, as long as it has a sentiment to share. If you would like to find out more about Sunday Sentiments, please follow this link . Have a wonderful week filled with craftiness!

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