WOYWW #329: Last week's projects plus a mysterious stalker(!)

It's Wednesday again and that can only mean one thing: WOYWW! Well, in my case, What Was On My Dining Table Yesterday Afternoon. This is what my work space looked like while working on this week's LifeBook project.

Not terribly exciting, so I'd rather show you my desk a few hours later. I have a self-imposed rule according to which I have to clear my space after each project before I can blog about it. So after tidying up and staging my completed projects for the sake of this blog post, this is what I ended up with:

• The heron picture was last week's LifeBook assignment. You can see more of it here.
• The orange canvas board was a birthday card for my son. You  can read about it here.
• The page on the left is what I'd just finished for LifeBook. More info here.

Don't feel you have to visit all these links, by the way, they're just there for reference. But I have to say, you'd see some amazing photos of a dragonfly (if I may say so myself!) in my birthday card post! 

Also on the table is the packaging of a new Kindle Paper White, which I bought for my son's birthday with double-value Tesco vouchers for just £16! Last year he got an iPod touch that only cost me £9! Tesco always seem to run these double-value voucher events around his birthday, so it works out perfectly for us. Every little helps, hey? It's quite a big help, actually. I also started ordering all our food online now that they have £1 delivery slots, which frees up a lot of time for me. I can't fault their service, either. Hopefully, they will start paying their empoyees the living wage as opposed to the minimum wage - then I'll be an even bigger fan!

Here's my son reading his brand new Kindle. So much better than a new Xbox game!

Now onto my mysterious online stalker! I noticed there were quite a few hits on my blog from Mountain View, California. I don't know anyone who lives in California, so I couldn't imagine who it could be. There were so many hits at one time, I worried that I may have got some unhealthy amount of attention from someone. Then it dawned on me: it's Google! Their headquaters are in Mountain View, California. I'm being stalked by a Google bot, which can only be a good thing. They probably come to index my pages, so yay!

Hope you enjoyed your visit today. Sorry it was a bit long-winded. Sometimes I fear I have nothing to talk about, and then I just can't shut up, LOL! Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Life Book Week 39: From Here to There

This week's LifeBook lesson comes courtesy of Roben-Marie Smith. Some of you might recognise her as one of the instructors for the Documented Life Project. I've always admired Roben-Marie's carefree, abundant style of journalling. Her LifeBook project didn't disappoint either! Full of colour and layers upon layers upon layers!

I closely followed her video creating my page and let me tell you: I haven't had this much fun in a long while! I made my page personal by bringing in elements around the family/heritage/home theme and did some hidden journalling on the back of my label.

One of Roben-Marie's techniques is to create labels as you go along working on your your page. I love this idea because you end up with labels that match your page perfectly without much extra effort. I'll show you the breakdown of my process below.

Layers 1-4: journalling, watercolours, collage, white acrylics

 Layers 5-6: pen/pencil marks, stenciling

Layers 7-8: stamping, drippage 

Layers 9-14: collage elements, stenciling (flowers and tiny dots), book page circles, outlining

Here are some close-ups. It's amazing how bits and pieces of all the layers show through.

And finally the tag:

I'm really happy with this page! I think I've proved to myself that I'm able to let go of my anxieties and just enjoy the process of creating. Now I'll just have to translate this sentiment into my everyday life! 

Hope you enjoyed your visit today. Next year's LifeBook is already in the making. If you would like to find out more about it, check out this link.

Mixed Media Birthday Card on Canvas Board

Last year I created a giant scrapbook-style birthday card from recycled Amazon packaging to mark my son's 10th birthday. You can see it here if you missed it. This year I wanted to do something different, so I settled an a small size canvas board instead.

I didn't really have a plan, I just went along with my insticts and used pretty much what I happened to put my hands on in my stash. The only thing I kept in mind is that it had to be something cool, suitable for an eleven-year-old boy. And what could be cooler than a dragonfly, hey?

I first painted the entire canvas with flourescent orange paint. Whoa, that was way too bright, but then I distressed it with some black stamping and purple paint, removing it from places to let the orange shine through. It looked something like this:

Next, I added collage pieces from napkins and printed and stamped words on tissue paper, which I glued down with gel medium. The 921 label is a raffle ticket and signifies my son's birth date. After I had glued all the bits down, I did some shading and splattered some white paint over the entire canvas to brighten it up a bit.

I really hope I managed to make something cool enough for an 11-year-old to display in his room! I'll give it to him whe he comes home from school today. Happy birthday kiddo!

Incidentally, right after I made this canvas I had a close encounter with a real dragonfly. Some of you may have seen these photos on Facebook already, but I really wanted to share them on my blog as well. The funny thing is, the dragonfly just presented itself and stayed absolutely still for long minutes, allowing me to take these photos. I'd been trying to capture dragonflies for years without any success. This just goes to show, when things are supposed to happen, they happen easily and naturally, without any fuss or too much effort. I'll have to keep reminding myself of that!

I'm linking this post to Roses of Inspiration #38

LifeBook Week 38: Journey to Acceptance (Heron)

The last LifeBook lesson I was able to do was week 9 back in February! The group is now up to Week 38! I've missed so much! Instead of frantically trying to catch up, I decided to pick up and continue with the current week and also try to do as many lessons as I can retrospectively.

This week, our guest teacher was the wonderfully talented Jill Berry. Jill has showed us how to use our own painted tissue paper and gel skins in collages. Like everything else, these techniques also require a certain amount of experimenting to get them right. I'd tried making gel skins before, but I could never find a substrate to peel them off successfully. Jill recommended page protectors and I've found the ones used in scrapbooking albums are just perfect for making gel skins. They peel away easily and stay in one piece!

This is my second attempt at this lesson as the first one went off on a tangent and was barely recognizable! This time I've followed Jill's 'Heron' project a lot more closely, and I'm glad to say, I'm quite satisfied with the results. However, I realize that copying somebody else's art will never be as meaningful as coming up with my own ideas. Having said that, I added a few elements that were my own, so it's not an exact copy.

I used a dabber to pattern the tissue paper for the sky, instead of using a stencil, like Jill did. I didn't get very good results with my stencils, for some reason. The sun is made out of a gel skin. I added some reeds cut out of painted tissue paper to balance the composition and I used a purple gelato to frame the entire picture.

Here are a few photos. If you click on them, you can see them larger in the photo gallery.

I'm also entering this page for the Kraaft Shaak September Challenge on Google Plus.

WOYWW #328: Lights will guide you home

Hello to you on this rainy/windy Wednesday morning! At least in my part of the world autumn has arrived well and truly. The perfect excuse to visit the Stamping Ground to nose around other crafty desks!

The photo of my desk was taken yesterday mid-day as I was working on a project, which since then I have actually finished, so I can show it to you as well, if you scroll further down the page.

On my desk you can find the following items:

• My Wimsy Garden mini canvas, which you can see more of here.
• Some Amsterdam acrylics, which I'd bought back in the summer, but haven't had a chance to use much until now. They have a great colour range - much bigger than Liquitex Basics.
• A copy of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles, which is one of my favourite books, but here I'm using it for collaging. I have it on my Kindle if I want to read it again!
• Some painted and stencilled tissue papers for my new project, which features a lighthouse, a sketch of which you can also spot on my desk.

Last night I managed to finish my lighthouse project, which started out as this week's LifeBook lesson, but somewhere along the road I diverged and ended up with something completely different! Oh well, I'd better go back to the drawing board for the LifeBook lesson and follow the instructions a bit more closely. The only thing I kept was using painted tissue papers and the fact that the project was inspired by poetry, in my case the lyrics to Coldplay's song 'Fix You'. The similarities pretty much end there!

This is probably not my best piece artistically - well, who am I kidding, I know it isn't - but it means a lot to me.  These past few months we went through a rough patch as a family - with my husband's mum passing earlier in the summer and the palaver with our new house, which we are now selling, never having moved in properly. 

I titled this canvas 'Lights will guide you home' which I borrowed from the Coldplay song. The three little fish represent us as a family (me, hubby and our son - in reverse priority order!) in the sea of life, the lighthouse being our home guiding us back to safety. 

I covered a 12" X 9" canvas with book paper and then used the painted tissue papers for the background, which allowed the print to show through. I collaged the pieces of the lighthouse with tissue paper as well, using white acrylic paint as glue, because I wanted the orange colour to pop, rather than be transparent. Finally, I added the strips of text and some metal charms. The entire project didn't take longer than an hour to make, not counting drying time. Here are some photos:

Thanks for visiting today! I'll leave you with this great Coldplay tune:

Whimsy Garden Small Canvas

I created a canvas last year that I just didn't like and was about to throw away during our major decluttering back in the summer, when I thought, what am I doing? I can paint over it!  That's the great thing about canvases - if you don't like something, you can always cover it up with something else!

I wanted to do something really fun and whimsical with my recycled/reclaimed canvas and I remembered the videos of +Betty Franks Krause, Mystic Tulip Art. I find them incredibly inspirational and very appealing with all their colour and whimsy. This style is right up my street! Here's a link to the original video:

My canvas is rather small, 7" X 5" in size. I used a combination of Liquitex Basics, Amsterdam and Golden Fluid acrylics for the painting and Uniball Eye and Uniball Signo pens for the doodling. Although these pens are not waterproof, I think I can seal them with an acrylic spray later. Hope you like my little whimsy canvas and feel inspired to make your own.

I'm linking this post to:

Roses of Inspiration #37
Wow Us Wednesday #239