Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Natalya Aitkens Inspiration

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

 

Natalya Aitkens - Dryer Sheets

 

This was a technique that had a fabulous end result.

I love this! 

 

It could quite easily be placed on a canvas and its much bigger/different shape to the tutorial,

 but to be honest...

its going in my travel journal.  I think....

I may begin each section of each country we visited with a 'canvas-like' monument or scene that is like a title page - it speaks volumes in its own textured grandeur way!

 

 

oooh, texture texture texture!!!

What a treat to do something so different!

 

xx

 

 

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015, Art-Piaskownica, Our Beautiful World...

 

 

 Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

 Glass bead inspiration by Andrea Gomoll

 

Who would have known there was a world of 'skins'!!

 

I really hadn't taken any notice,  and though Andrea showed a choice of skins that could be used,

So with some glass bead gel...

 

mixed with green ink,   made these little leaves with wire stems...

 

-----------------------------

 

 

I haven't had  a chance to play with challenges for the last couple of months, though did have full intentions...however, getting stuck into and fully applied to Creative Jumpstart mixed media workshop with a video everyday... its been full on plus being summer with the need to be outdoors too! 

Though when I saw some great photography critera challenges... can do that!!

 

 

Art-Piaskownica

fotoGRA - światło

(Light)

 

The washing of some of the Nutcracker costumes...

they looked so pretty hanging on the line. 

I love Summer and don't want it to end!

You can see a blue prism extending up towards the left top corner changing to pinks, even yellow.

 

fotoGRA "ciepło"
(Heat)


I took this of my friend's birthday cake as we couldn't believe how the candles 'lit' up!

 

 --------------------------------

 

Our Beautiful World...

Dance

 

 

 Nutcracker...rehearsal

Paige

 

 

xx

 

 

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Diana Trout Inspiration

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

Patterned Panorama with Diana Trout

 

What a treat this turned out to be! 

Creating a 12x4 panorama with layers of paint, spray, ink, collage papers

(in my case vintage Asian papers)

All I could think of - the vision in my head - as I watched Diana work was

The Great Wall - my dh, daughters and I have such fond memories of climbing

 (and I mean climbing!) a 10kms hike on a part of the wall that was far away from the tourist part.

A lot of this section was derelict, some of the wall missing, and the rubble troublesome. 

The steps are not average sized, no - they are two feet tall with a width of 8-9in!!  And in some of the towers, the overhanging bricks swung precariously just waiting for their moment to fall.

Nevertheless, the thrill of its derelict state, to walk and climb on untouched sections was an experience never to be forgotten... This part of China will always be with us.

 

 

Some close ups..

 

 

And some progress photos....

 

 

 

 

So thrilled with this!

 

 

My messy desk shelves, everything at eye-level as I work including the photo taken on our hike.

I could have tidied it, but this is what happens isn't it!

 

 

Oh yes!!

And Happy AUSTRALIA DAY!!!!!

 

Aaaaand, yesterday was my birthday....

what a wonderful long weekend!!!

 

 

xx

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Nathalie Kalbach's Part 2 Inspiration

 

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Nathalie Kalbach's Part 2 Inspiration

 Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

Another journey in mixed media!  After my first (as I saw it at the time) almost failed attempt at the pages I did for Nathalies  Part 1 inspiration (explanation HERE), I put those pages to the side, and continued on with new ones.... which got a new home in my Project Life album :)

 I still needed pages to continue with the Part 2 of Nat's tutorial.... 

The tossed aside pages were brought back out, and with new eyes,  re-worked them.

What at treat they turned out to be!  Again, it was all about the sea. 

I looked in magazines for pictures, and I must not have had the right ones for the job because nothing appealed or the sizing not good.  So, I dove into the sea of my own photos and found one of Paige, back on, entering the sea, so cut her out, and also used her silhouette from the cut, and the more I added purposely the more a metamorphic process appeared.  This was thought driven, so every added pattern, every dash, spray, direction, colour set down  breathed new life and had a purpose, a reason, a magical moment or deep meaning behind it... 

 

  What do you see?

 

 

xx

Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Catherine Scanlon's Inspiration Part 2

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

There was two parts to  Catherine Scanlon's tutorial,

 And this one involved piping paint through a little jacard bottle onto tissue  paper

and I have to say that I loved this - and will definitely do more.

My first thoughts were to keep it simple...

and to make it relevant - make a piece that I can use.

It fell into place.

I go to bed late, well after midnight, and usually by then

I'll be finishing up some sort of crafty project.

By midnight, one of the last things I do is make a pot of Chinese Pu-erh tea (brought from China) in a little brown clay pot with a little clay Chinese cup. 

 I love it and drinking this tea in this way completes my day.

 

I've made this the subject of my project for Catherine Scanlon's Part 2 only I sketched it myself and water-coloured it (not brown).

The tissue paper was adhered to a piece of vintage Asian paper and

measures only 8x5" Its just the right size for a journaling page for our travel journal...

 

I've added some gold leaf to give it some shine. And the little red tea label trimmed in gold is part of the foil covering from one of the tablets of Pu-erh tea.

 

 

Cant wait to do some more of this

 

xx

 

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Catherine Scanlon Inspiration

 

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

This time our tutor is Catherine Scanlon

and I've always been a fan of her fabulous work!

 

There was quite the journey with this one:

a very shaky start with expectations not quite making it,

wise words from a fellow participant/long time blogging friend Deb

and  lessons learned.

 

Catherine's inspiration is to use paint and a plastic bagging technique and once dry to find shapes that would be picked out and outlined into pictures

(somewhat similar to picking out shapes and images in clouds)

Her example was amazing flowers,  Deb's flowers were elegant

and mine....

Weeeeell I couldn't see any beautiful flowers - only joined up  big dried blobs that looked like

clumpy turtles!

I know we could have chosen to see any shape or image.. but I wanted flowers too!

So after outlining my 'turtles', and still frowning at them...

(also admit, was tired from work, and today unwell - didn't help),

I had another go at them, this time adding some stencilling with spray paint and colour to the turtle 'shells' to help them look 'better'.

 I still wasn't convinced.  My mind was still with the flowers!

 

So, after lamenting to Deb and emailing her the before and after photos...

 

 her wise words made me see the whole thing in a different light...

She said (and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing it here) in a nutshell:

" …….you love the sea, maybe that is why you saw turtles"

 

Epiphany!

(Have you ever had that happen?)

 

Outlined turtles
swimming over kelp in the sea

 

Added stencilling....

 

 I really do like them now :)

Lesson learned.... start without expectation... see what happens and  go with the flow....

 

xx

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Julie Fei-Fan Balzer Inspiration

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer  inspired us to create our own stencil from a photograph with the help of some Markers and Spray Paints.

 

The coolest thing!

 

And today I got possession of some more colours of spray cans of paint.

I'm totally in love with these!!!

 

 

So here's my stencil cut out ready to go with some neutral grey spray paint...

Working between what goes and what stays - positives and negatives, and where to cut so that it still remains joined together can be tricky!

 

 

and with a good spray over the right hand side of the page,

and then flipped the stencil over and with a brayer rolled the remainder left over paint on the stencil onto the left hand side

 

oh what fun!!!

 

Now all dressed up!!

 

 

 

xx

 

 



Happy 20th Hannah!

 

 

I cant believe it!

Where did the time go....

and how did Hannah turn 20 so soon!

 

She's so happy to be out of the 'teens'! LOL

 

So shopping spree today...

and where of course...

 

her most favourite bookstore in the world...

 

 among other places, she had a ball...

 

and being the no-fuss girl she is,

just dinner out with the four of us at a favourite Italian restaurant...

topped her night...

 

here she is with her sister for a birthday pic!

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH!!

 

XXXXXXXXXX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



Let's December Daily - Wrap Up Post....

 

 

Pop on over to

Let's December Daily

 

to see all four design team members share their thoughts for their 2014 December Daily's

and also what they 'think'  will be their 2015 ones!!

 

 

 

It's time to put

Let's December Daily

to bed until November...

check it out before the snoring starts

 

teehee!

 

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Jenny Holiday & Aaron Nieradka Inspiration

 

Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

Jenny and Aaron's tutorial involved creating with a painted wooden box  (more like a shadow box) with a mixed media covered piece of foam anchored to the back of the box to look like a piece of cake... (you can see a pic of it on their blog)

sooooo very clever and totally convincing!  It looked real!

 

Anyway,  feeling inspired by this, and with no wooden box at hand,

shrunk down to miniature!

A match box! 

Not the teeny weeny match box, but the size up - its about 7cms long.

 

And opened....

 just like a little gift....
I decided to do a little heart of foam, painted with heavy gel medium and then covered in red with some burnt umber edgings...

 

 

This was something really different to do.


 

 

 



Project Life 2015 Week 1

 

After creating with two mixed media pages yesterday,

I've divided them up into PL sized cards and used them

for Week 1

Not great light to photograph in at the moment - dark and gloomy and pouring with rain :(

 

It really didn't need much embellishing, cos the mixed media stencilling is busy enough

 

xx

 

 

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Nathalie Kalbach's Part 1 Inspiration

 Creative Jumpstart 2015

 

After being spirited along with having so much happiness from what I created in the last post,

I got down and messy again.

Nathalie Kalbach's Part 1 Inspiration
 

Weeeeell, it all started with a failure, tossed aside, and started again!

 

Truth be known, I did rescue that failure with some great steps in the latter part of Nat's video and it worked!!!  Will leave that for a future post because Nat does a 'Part 2' later on, and I think it might work better then..   I 'could' have used this (below) for her Part 2, but I've loved it so much, I've got other ideas for it (will show you tomorrow :)) 
So happy, happy, happy!

 

 

So... here's my second go at  Nat's tutorial (Part 1)

 

I love colours of the sea.....

 

 and with this stencil, it works a treat

 

 

With what's left on the stencil,

is pressed by a brayer onto another piece of gesso-ed paper

(I've used very heavy watercolour paper)

So there's a bit of dealing with positives and using the negative too.

 

 

there is lots of other details and great tips included in this process

 including washes of ink, stamping etc,

and loving it I am!

 

 

 

Big messy smile at the end of this!!

 

Now to get the 'stuff' off my hands! LOL

 

xx

 



Creative Jumpstart 2015 - Jimmy Leslie Inspiration......

 

 

This is my fourth year of workshopping with

Creative Jumpstart 2015

all collaborated by Nat Kalbach.

This year one main manufacturer is used: Liquitex

 

I love doing this workshop, it 'makes' me get out mixed media and really have a go especially to start off the new year, still on holidays, and enjoying the relaxation of Summer.

 

 

This is my first project inspired by Jimmy Leslie, who explains product and how to use it extremely well.  I found myself scribbling notes and then going to my desk and construct my own interpretation of what he said about the products and what he used, rather than what he actually visually did.

I think this kind of approach is going to work well with this workshop  :)

 

I didn't take step by step photos as it was late last night and photographing it would not turn out well.

 

 Gesso on the background(including using a music stamp seen very faintly and numbers stamp), then painted some circles in, cut out some fabric butterflies and used Matte Gel to stick them down.  Used markers to add colour and definition.... and......

 

 

 oh boy!!! 
Do I love the spray paints with stencils!

 

 

The wash left on stencils were rubbed into a little art journal for later use.

 

The '2015' are just drawn freehand and coloured in and shaded with the paint markers

This is now going to be the title page to my 2015 Project Life album
(very big grin!)



Looking forward to the next project - got some ideas already!


xx

 



Let's December Daily Day 26th

 

 

The final pages are complete

for my December Daily...

 

Be sure to visit

 

LET'S DECEMBER DAILY

 

 

I've still got the last few pages in my 30 day's of lists book to complete and share....

so will have them posted soon!

 

 

Not much is happening on my blog... but there sure is a lot happening in the background...

will post them soon!

 Promise :)

 

xx