Winter Wildflowers

Posted: January 10, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Darkroom Door, Nature Walk, Woodgrain | Tags: , , | 4 Comments

The bright and beautiful flowers of spring and summer delight me as you know but so do those left standing through autumn and winter. On a snowy walk recently I was happy to see the brown tones that show up bold and contrasting against the snow. Queen Anne’s Lace closes up and dries out after summer but that makes it all the better to balance some snow like icing.

For this wintery image of dried stems against aged wood paneling I stamped the flower stems from Darkroom Door’s ‘nature walk’ first in brown archival inks so they wouldn’t blend when I worked on the background. I stamped the DD ‘woodgrain’ stamp over the top first in hickory smoke distress ink then a few more times adding black soot, forest moss and barn door distress inks. I blended as sparingly as I could to retain the texture of the stamp.

I added a sentiment from the DD ‘happy birthday’ set and now I am wondering if I can recreate the same aged wood effect on a journal page. This seems to be the way I roll at present; a journal page inspires a card then a card inspires a journal page.

By the way my Art Journal Adventure class has been postponed for now due to current restrictions here in Ontario but we will reschedule when possible. In the interim I will continue scheming and dreaming up themes and techniques!

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Gingerbread Journal page

Posted: January 7, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Art Journal, Brusho, My Favorite Things | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

Six years ago I was given a delightful and incredibly thoughtful gift. Four friends I met through teaching card making classes gave me an art journal. It’s a large Dylusions 9″x11″, a very generous gift in itself.

The journal was just part of the gift. What amazed and touched me deeply was that these friends worked on individual pages in this journal far enough in advance to have completed four different spreads before they gave it to me. Each person completed a 2 or 3 page spread describing Christmas traditions they were familiar with.

I have in my journal pages about Polish and German Christmas traditions along with a description and illustration of Mummering in Newfoundland and a depiction of the carol, ‘I Saw Three Ships’. The depiction is set in Bass Strait with a view of a King Island lighthouse, a nod to my birthplace! I was speechless when I opened the gift and it still brings me joy whenever I look at it.

After Christmas that year I began two different spreads in the journal having decided it was to be filled with Christmas themed art journalling. Although I began soon after receiving the journal I didn’t finish a page until last week. I am embarrassed to have let it sit so long but in the interim I have completed many journal pages in other books and have ideas aplenty dancing around in my head – like sugarplums!

Gingerbread baking and decorating is a tradition for me and a fitting choice for my first Christmas spread. I started making gingerbread in Australia in 1995 after hearing a radio interview with Jill Dupleix whose recipe I use to this day, more often than not with gluten free flour now. This year I made several batches, a couple with friends on a Sunday afternoon where much mixing, cutting and decorating was enjoyed.

I used my own cookie cutters to trace the shapes onto watercolour paper painted with dark brown and light brown brusho. The background ‘check tablecloth’ I painted with a mix of Dr Ph Martin’s deep red rose and hansa yellow. The gingerbread shapes sat for years with pale white patterns on them and it was only this year after trying quite a few white paints and pens that I was able to make the patterns bolder with a posca paint pen.

I finally added the recipe, glued the cookies down and added a title using MFT little lowercase letters (I think they are retired now but they worked to look like little gingerbread letters).

So that is the story of a wonderful journal, four kind and generous friends and an adventure started in 2015 which I am happily continuing even though I made a very slow start.

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2022 BuJo – January theme

Posted: January 5, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Darkroom Door, Dingbat notebooks, majestic mountains, pine cones | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

My plan for the new year was to take a different artistic route with my bullet journal themes but here I am with the same mask, stamp, blend approach. I still have fifty pages left in my current journal so I will continue in a similar style for now and make some changes when I switch to a new one.

I masked the edges of the page with painter’s tape for delicate surfaces but it was still a bit sticky for the smooth bullet journal page. I did press it on my clothes first but I think post it tape is a much better choice.

As well as a masked frame around the page I tore tape to mask snow hills across the page. I used the pinecones and needles from Darkroom Door’s ‘pine cones’ set and trees from the DD ‘majestic mountains’ set.

The inks are all distress inks (listed below) and you can see a bit of bleed through the paper. The juicier the ink the more likely it is to show through. None of the ink went right through the page so it doesn’t bother me or stop me from using the pages. I used a black fineline pen to rule the lines and letter the headings.

After a year using this particular dot journal I am still a big fan of the quality but havent’ settled on the best way to keep track of work projects past, present and future. I also want to come up with a workable chore tracker, not nearly as fun as the project tracking but necessary!

As I look at my ‘to do list’ page above I’m not so keen on the little trees to mark the list items; they look like tree shaped rain drops falling from a pinecone!

I’ll be setting up a new booklist for my 2022 reading and plan to put all the birthdays on one spread too. That won’t guarantee that I will remember to send greetings but it might help.

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Rustic Birdhouse

Posted: January 3, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Penny Black, rustic birdhouse, Stampin Up | Tags: , | 8 Comments

When I do any art journalling these days I do so with a large sheet of watercolour paper on my work surface. It is not the most expensive brand and it does have a bit of texture, currently I am using Canson XL. As I create any blending off the edge of an element ink ends up on the large sheet. Excess paint or ink is wiped off on the sheet. I try out a pen, ink or marker on the sheet to make sure it is the colour I want and has plenty of juice left in it. Consequently pattern and colour builds up on the sheet over time as journal projects are finished.

The most recent page I made involved brown and black paints so I often wiped the brush off on the large sheet. When painting strips of paper for tree trunks I lay those strips on the large sheet. I ended up with a rough painted area resembling woodgrain so I cut it off the larger sheet and die cut birdhouses from it with the PB ‘rustic birdhouse’ die.

I die-cut the frames from deep red and petrol blue, blended ink on white die-cut birds then put together two birdhouses.

The large piece of ‘clean-up/practice’ paper provided me with unique patterned paper for the birdhouses. The embossed background was created with the ‘evergreen forest 3D folder’ from SU.

Happy New Year everyone, I’m looking forward to sharing all sorts of things here on the blog this year and I can’t wait to chat with you along the way.

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Wintertide Blue

Posted: December 30, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Penny Black, wintertide | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

This beautiful ‘wintertide’ stamp from Penny Black is a scene in itself and the first time I stamped with it I didn’t add to it at all. This time I painted extra trees in the background for a bit more depth and atmosphere.

I began by punching a little circle mask from masking tape and placing it on the hot pressed watercolour panel. I wet the panel then painted a mix of dark blues and grey paint over some areas, leaving a few white patches. While the paint was wet I painted trees in the background which ended up with soft edges because I was working wet into wet. I sprinkled salt over the sky area and let the paint dry.

Once the paint dried I removed the salt and used a stamp positioner to stamp the ‘wintertide’ image in black soot and faded jeans ink. The little trees to the right of the feature tree were too small in comparison to the painted background trees so I painted taller trees over the top. I did a little blending of ink here and there but the stamp is so detailed with its branches and white space I tried not to fiddle with it too much. This will be the last post for 2021, I look forward to sharing projects, ideas and conversation with you here on the blog in 2022. Happy New Year!

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Woodsy Winter

Posted: December 28, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Penny Black, woodsy | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

A winter scene for a winter birthday. Makes perfect sense especially when the recipient loves nature and spends as much time as possible enjoying the outdoors.

This card was a commission and I did plan it in my head before I began. I ended up making it twice, not because it didn’t work but because I smudged the black ink (final stamping step) before it dried! I started by blending the sky in evergreen bough and speckled egg distress ink then stamped background trees in speckled egg ink. There are three trees in the Woodsy set from Penny Black so I repeated them to fill the top of the panel then changed to iced spruce to stamp another line of trees further down and hickory smoke to stamp another line. Each colour was darker than the previous and the trees more prominent and forward in the design. Once all but the black trees were stamped I painted all their trunks just by blending the stamped ink. I used the same inks to paint shadowy dips at the base of the trees then when that was dry stamped the final foreground trees in black soot ink.

To finish I splattered white paint over the scene. The origin of this card goes way back to a card I made in 2012 using the famous Stampin Up set ‘lovely as a tree’.

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Vintage Candlelight

Posted: December 21, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: candlelight, Footnotes, Karin brushmarkers, Penny Black | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

It has been a while since I created a vintage style card but the pretty ‘candlelight’ stamp from Penny Black has worked well for this technique. I embossed the image on hot pressed watercolour paper in gold powder then used Karin brush markers to paint the candles and foliage before switching to distress inks for the background.

It probably wont surprise you that I used a limited palette for the colouring. I used a mix of red-209 and magenta red-170 to paint the candles, a mix of rosewood-272 and magenta red for the candle sticks, a mix of rosewood and lush green-228 for the leaves and straight red for the berries.

As usual I had not planned my background before I started but the colours on the candlesticks already looked vintage so I blended antique linen around the edges of the panel first then blended right up to the stamping. I stamped the music stamp from the PB set ‘footnotes’ in vintage photo then added more blending and splatter with the same ink. The stamp is tall so the card is A6 (4½” x 6¼”).

As the days are so short right now I am enjoying lighting candles and sometimes the fire. Hope things are cosy where you are.

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Brilliance and Joy

Posted: December 17, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: berries, Dies, jumbo joy, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Today’s cards are similar to a recent collection I posted stamped with the delicate pines stamp. I created eight cards this time and repeated some designs because I’m getting down to the wire with these last cards.

I stamped the ‘brilliance’ foliage stamp on a large 11″x14″ cold press watercolour panel in rustic wilderness and peeled paint inks. I blended the leaves with water and with a gold wink of stella pen so some have some shine.

I played around with a few options for colouring the berries but ended up leaving them green. Red paint pen was not bad but not better and vanilla sparkle embossing powder didn’t work either, so green and natural they stayed. I used a few dies from Penny Black and a sentiment strip from Taylored Expressions and eight more cards were completed. Some were sent straight away and didn’t even make it to the photo shoot!

I have received some lovely cards this week from across the city, country and world. Thank you so much for brightening my day and inspiring my creativity.

By the way, we have added another Art Journal Adventure workshop at Crop A While on Saturday January 22. Click here for more information

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Rustic Wreath

Posted: December 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: blustery, Darkroom Door, Dies, Nature's Song, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions, Woodgrain | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

When I am designing classes, both online and in-person it can take many days and many samples before I settle on a collection of projects. This card is one that did not end up in a class but I love the rustic textured look of it.

I used two circle dies to cut a kraft ring as the base of my wreath. I stamped the background with the Darkroom Door ‘woodgrain’ stamp and a few brown inks. To create the holly leaves and berries I painted a few strips of watercolour paper with greens and also a strip of red then hand cut the leaves and punched out the berries. To fill out the wreath I used some Penny Black die cut twigs and berries in brown and gold.

The sentiment is from Taylored Expressions; I used the very handy stamp and die sentiment strips combo. My daughter joined me on Monday afternoon and we had fun decking the tree and living area. I now have a decorated wreath hanging over my fire place and greenery hanging either side of the front door.

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Christmas baubles

Posted: December 13, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Alcohol Ink, bird ornament, Dies, manger, paint pouring, Penny Black, Taylored Expressions, weathered | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments

Here are a few more cards made from patterned panels I had sitting around. The panels were very pretty experiments using brusho, paint poring and alcohol inks but at the time I made them I didn’t have a plan for them. Last week they came into their own when paired with Penny Black dies and a few of my favourite embossing folders.

The background above is from an acrylic paint pouring day I had with a friend. The result looked like peacock feathers but works well as a northern night sky too.

The purple panels above and below right were brusho & cling wrap on photo paper another technique taught to me by a friend.

The blue background below is alcohol ink; you probably recognise the patterns made possible with just one or two colours plus some isopropyl alcohol.

The dies are listed below and the embossing folders are a mix of currrent and retired. Above is ‘weathered’ from Taylored Expressions. The tiny squares folder is a retired Spellbinders one (SEL 006), the woodgrain is Tim Holtz/Sizzix also retired but there are plenty of new options around. The Tim Holtz/Sizzix Snowfall fade folder at the top of the page is still available and I often reach for it.

I enjoyed using some scraps and samples that were too pretty to throw away to make simple but unique Christmas cards. I think I almost have enough for this year so I will start next year’s stack early!

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