Creative Blog Hop

Last week Felicia invited me to take part in a creative blog hop where we answer the 4 questions below on our creativity and invite another 2 or 3 bloggers to take part the following week.  It’s a good opportunity to get to know different blogs and how people come up with their wonderful creations.  Anyway, I said yes and then the following day Tracy also asked me - LOL.  They are both wonderfully creative and also encouraging people who take the time to say really uplifting things to others of us about our own creations.  Hop on over to their blogs and have a look – you will be inspired!

Down to business, here are my answers:

 

1. What are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I  am mainly having fun in my art journal.  Soon I’ll start making my Christmas cards which are going to be snowflake themed this year because I got a real bargain of a snowflake stamp while on holiday in Scotland.  I often make minibooks of encouraging scriptures as gifts as well, so will start on those soon too.  

 

I also help run a monthly craft group called Scrap and Yap.  We have a different theme every month so I'll make various cards on the theme for the month.  

 I love hearts!

 Heart-shaped petal flowers are a favorite:

2. How does your work differ from others in your genre?

I’m not really sure.  I just know I love to get messy with paint and stencils and stamps.  I was originally a cardmaker and loved fiddling with little bits of paper and stamping and gluing.  However, a year ago I discovered art journaling and am absolutely loving it.  I have never considered myself an artist and before art journaling had not worked with paint before!  Now I love all things painty but haven’t a clue what I’m doing most of the time, I just know I love it and its fun.  I love using bright colours, but also love picking one or maybe two colours and going with those for a whole page.   My faith is reflected in my work so my journal pages often have journaling about God and things of the spirit.

3. Why do you create?

Because its fun!!!  There’s also something creative in me that just wants to be expressed.  It wasn’t always like that.  I was hopeless at art at school, couldn’t wait to give it up and wasn't creative at all.  Then about 10 years ago I was very seriously ill and had to have an operation.  I came across a cardmaking magazine while I was recovering and thought I would like to give it a go.  Very soon I was completely hooked on all things papercrafty.  Having not been creative at all I now found I had this wonderful creativity in me.  I think God blessed me with this creative gift just when I needed it.  I didn’t have it before my illness.  Now I love to create :)

4. How does your creative process work?

Randomly!  When playing in my art journal I very often start with something that’s on my heart.  I’m a Christian so its usually linked to my faith.  I quite often pick a colour or several and start splodging, stencilling, stamping.  I like my page to reflect the mood of the journaling or the title.  Sometimes I’ll write loads of journaling, sometimes a simple title or quote says it all.  Often it all goes ‘wrong’, meaning I don’t like what I’ve done.  Sometimes I manage to rescue it, other times I’ve covered the whole lot over with white and started again which gives a really interesting effect.  I also use my journal to pray so its very much an expression of what is going on in my life.  However, other times I just like to try different things.

Now I’d like to introduce three lovely bloggers I have come to know:

Debbie loves making cards, scrapbooking and wonderful canvasses.   She has recently started art journaling and is on the design team for Scrapping Everyday Miracles.

Ophelia always makes me smile with her cheery posts and lovely creations.  She is an awesome artist and teaches too.

Shelly loves making cards and scrapbooking.  Her blog is called Inky Hugz which has got to be the best name ever for a creative blog!

Hop on over to their blogs, their creative blog posts will be next Monday.

Linking up at:
Create with Joy Inspire Me Monday
Creative Every Day

Make room for the new

I love watching the countryside change colour at this time of the year, seeing the lovely tones of red and copper and gold on the trees.  Of course, after that the trees look pretty dead as do all my beautiful roses and other herbaceous plants in my garden.  I have to wait for spring to see them all burst into life again with new growth, new flowers and a beauty which is new and wonderful every year.

This got me thinking how we also need to let the old things pass away or die in us to make room for new things to grow and blossom.  This could simply be an old routine or pastime which has to be given up to make time for something better.  It also applies to bad habits and bad traits in us which we want to get rid of - these need to go so we can grow into the people we want to be. As a Christian I believe that Jesus promises us new life when we surrender our own  lives to Him.   As I let my old things or bad side in me die, I allow room for my Lord and Saviour Jesus and all the good that He promises to grow in me.  Thank goodness for that!  Now I can  have more love, more patience, more peace, more joy, more good :)

Here is my journal page, inspired by autumn and all the thoughts above:

I did the leaves with texture paste first, then sponged Fresco Finish chalk acrylic paints all over the page. I stamped the script, then stamped the circles with acrylic which gives a lovely texture. 

The bigger circles were punched, spread with texture paste and then acrylic.  The little orange dots are a pebeo volume paint.

The tags had just one different leaf added with texture paste:

I journaled on the backs of the tags and stuck down with repositional glue dots so I can read what's on them at any time:

 

Sometimes its painful allowing old things to go, but its definitely worth it once the new has had time to be established.  

I'm linking up at:

Art Journal Every Day

Create with Joy Friendship Friday

A Birthday Card inspired by Wanda

I was inspired to make this card by Wanda Hentges Joy to the World project on the truly wonderful  PaperArtsy blog where we get a constant stream of amazing projects.  I loved the backround Wanda made using PaperArtsy Freso Finish chalk acrylic paints and a credit card which is one of my favourite ways of spreading paint around.  I just had to make a backround like this.  Wanda was making Christmas cards but I made mine into a birthday card for my brother:

The stars are loose and dangle on the ribbons.

This was simple and fun to make.  Check out the blog for more inspiration.

No to Glumness

There's something very special about autumn with the freshness in the air and wonderful autumn colours everywhere making it a lovely time of year to be out and about.  However, nowadays the change in the season usually means that chronic fatigue rears its ugly head.  I'm prone to bouts of CFS and there's something about autumn which sparks it off.  Fortunately I've learnt to read the signs and take steps so I'm careful not to do too much.  Even so, although its not in full blown mode I have days when I really don't feel that great.  Feeling grotty and having to rest more sometimes gets to me and if I don't watch it GLUMNESS descends.  I had to catch myself pretty sharp yesterday when before I knew it there I was.... glum :(  I had to say NO to glumness.  The only way I can do that is to start counting my blessings and be grateful to God for the wonderful family, friends, life He has blessed me with.

Playing in my art journal is a great help.  For this page, I started glum - glum tones, glum splodges, glum stamping, glum, glum, glum ...  LOL.  (Can you tell I'm not glum any more?)  Anyway, I looked at my page and thought, what on earth is this.  I thought I'd better cover the whole lot with white and start again.  So I splodged a big mass of white and quickly spread it and hey presto, it turned into the finished page.  The white splodges turned into my blessings which I wrotte white on white:

Here it is - not a work of art but a work of therapy which became a blessing in itself:

Its official, the antidote to glumness is to count one's blessings :D

I'm linking up at:
Art Journal Every Day 
Create with Joy Friendship Friday 
Creative Every Day 

Grow the Right Kind of Fruits

The pages in my art journal recently have all been about being and doing today what I'm hoping to be and do tomorrow.  I've been thinking about this a lot and thinking about the kind of person I want to grow into.  As a Christian I look to Jesus to show me.  He is all loving, kind, compassionate, faithful, patient, gentle... I could go on.  When we invite Him into our lives we start to become more like Him.  As we allow His Spirit to live in us these traits, or fruits of the Spirit, will grow in us.

This spread was inspired by Darcy Journaling month 8 over at the PaperArtsy blog.  Darcy has done this wonderful series of art journal pages with loads of really amazing techniques.  When I saw this month's I just had to try some of the things she did, in particular I loved the border made using a mask and I had to try the tree:

The backround is sponged distress inks, water sprinkled to remove some inks and paint added with the edge of a ruler:

I tore a mask and used to sponge a border with Freso Finish paints then stamped with the crackle stamp.  I drew and painted the tree, then added my home made texture paste which I'd coloured brown.  I didn't have any brown paint so mixed some up from a combination of the Fresco Finish paints. 

Darcy stamped on the texture paste on her tree but I added texture with a cocktail stick:

I added punched leaves in three different shades of green:

I cut out 9 different hearts from patterned paper for the fruits and journaled on the backs.  Then I added loops made from thread and hung them on the tree so they could dangle loosely.  I couldn't resist adding a couple of birds:

This was a really fun page to do.  I absolutely loved doing this!  Now I've got to get growing these fruits as big as I can!