WOYWW #657: Happy New Year - ugly art club challenge completed!

Happy New Year everyone! Who else has their Christmas deco still up? Back to the drudgery tomorrow for me and I have some errands to run this afternoon but I'll make time to visit as many desks as I can before that and the rest later on. I have decided to blog less often - maybe once a month - just to keep my blog going, as much for my own records as for anything else, and of course to keep in touch with  WOYWW and the handful of other blogger friends who follow me. It's nice to look back on my blog as a sort of diary but it's so much easier to post on Instagram. Should you miss me (I don't see why you would, but if you do) just visit my Instagram profile for updates. 

My desk shot from yesterday taken in rare daylight: 

I've completed the 2-week ugly art challenge and started two other January challenges. They are not too demanding as the #creativeunfold2022 runs weekly and the #happyyouin22 every other day. I find these challenges very inspiring as we cheer each other along, otherwise I tend to get a bit lazy and aimless.

Here are the remaining pieces from the #tuac5minchallenge: they were supposed to be 5-minute projects, but some of them took longer - I don't think it matters. These have all been created on brown paper packaging and they all have collaged teabags. I like to work in series, though there's always a danger that the pieces begin to look too similar to each other using the same materials. 

I've also made this reel showing all 14 pieces together in quick succession (reels can only be max 30 seconds in length):  

I have a couple of pieces for the January challenges completed as well but I'll post them all together next time. Until then, cheerio! xx  

WOYWW #656: Last pages in my Advent Journal 2021 and more ugly art

The last WOYWW of 2021! Christmas is pretty much done and dusted. The days are short and going fast, especially when you sleep until 10 am, like I do. I enjoy not having to get up early and dreading the return back to drudgery in January! But we're not quite there yet! Here's a shot of my desk with all my Christmas pressies staged:

Some Tim Holtz stamps and stencils (I've been wanting the Stamp Collector set for absolute ages, how did Santa know?), some mini Archivals just for using with those stamps and a very nice book that I accidentally stumbled upon. 

Also on my desk is a stack of  "ugly arts" - more about those later - but first the last three pages in my Advent Journal: 

The last page is my word for 2022: freedom. I'm looking for my creative freedom where I don't have to fuss about small details, just play and enjoy the process. I've come a long way, but I'm still not quite there yet. 

The Ugly Art Club's 5-minute challenge helps me achieve this freedom, though I must say I still spent way more than 5 minutes on some of these pieces, sometimes overworking them unnecessarily.

The Ugly Art challenge runs for only another 5 days, but fear not, there's a brand new challenge on the horizon #happyyouin22 which runs throughout January. I'm planning to take part, even though I told myself  that I wouldn't! How could I resist? These challenges give me such a creative boost and I get so much inspiration from others. 

Hope you all had a good Christmas and got lots of pressies from Santa. Here he is delivering ours a few minutes past midnight! 

Wishing every one a happy, healthy and creative 2022! 

WOYWW #637: More pages in my scrap journal and ugly art

Good morning, Deskers! I've just found some new comments on my blog post from last week - true to my word, I think I got back to everyone, but if I accidentally missed you, please let me know! A new week, a new messy desk - whatever I do, I don't seem to be able to keep on top of things! Since taking this photo a couple of days ago, I'm afraid the situation has got even worse.

Shoshi sent me down that proverbial "rabbit hole" when we got talking about laminators, so I got mine out to try a few things. Since then a fell into a few other rabbit holes - it's a mine field out there LOL, especially when you have a passion for experimenting like I do. Which explains the state of my desk to some extent. I got side tracked several times over the course of the week with "things to try" but I still managed to add a few pages to my scrap journal:

Then I moved into a completely different direction when I discovered The Ugly Art Club on Instagram and their 5-minute challenge (#tuac5minchallenge).  Admittedly, some of these took a bit longer than 5-minutes, but the idea is that you create without second guessing yourself, putting an end to all that faffing which drives me crazy! Just do it and don't worry about the end result - if it's ugly, it's ugly, it's still art! I'm still working on grasping and accepting the concept! This is what I came up with running a few days behind the daily challenge, but it doesn't matter:

I only used scraps that were lying around, some of them the by-products of my laminating attempts . For example, these moth prints in the last piece were smudged inkjet prints on tracing paper, which were laminated with a matte pouch (only on the top side), which gave them this hazy, distressed look. One of them even got wrinkled during the laminating process. The good thing about the #uglyart movement is that you can include all your trials and fails because it doesn't need to be perfect or pretty. Of course, ugly doesn't mean I don't like it - I still have to like what I do, otherwise what's the point? It's more about letting go of imperfections.  

Having a messy desk with lots of scraps can actually be beneficial, but there comes a point when it becomes a nuisance! I have already reached that point this week, so a tidy up will be in order! If not next week, then soon(ish)...one day, for sure! 

I might be a bit late visiting again this week - son needs a haircut to get rid of his lockdown curls, so we're off to the town soon. He doesn't let me cut it anymore LOL! Happy #637!