I have not had time for a proper update for a few days, but that does not mean I have given up on my projects! Since last time, I have taken photos daily, gone for a photo walk in a frosty forest, written a little bit on a story almost every day, made some samples for wedding invitations for some lovely friends that are getting married this summer, celebrated my 2-year anniversary with my boo, and generally making some plans for some exciting things in my life. Feels pretty awesome! I completely approve of this projects, it’s so much fun!
Can you believe it’s almost been a month?
Tonight I wanted to try some more masking techniques, and so I decided to turn my last experiment inside out. So I cut out a bunch of clouds and adhered them to thick cardstock with some 2 way glue (easy to remove after adding all the colour). I had to help hold them down a bit when I worked with the distress inks, but other than that it worked just fine! Here’s how the cards turned out:
Some happy cards to give away to happy people! Love how they turned out! But I’m feeling like I need to invest in more colours regarding distress inks. Like, all of the colours…
Today’s prompt was to make a unique print, and cut an image out of a potato (But, I’m sick to death of potato prints. There’s just something about the mixed smells of potato and ink… *shiver* So I used an apple instead). I wanted to use the shape of the apple itself, since it’s simply so beautiful. Also, unique organic print for almost no money. Pretty neat!
I tried to do a couple of prints with different inks on some watercolour paper. Most of them came out really well! I worked on them some more by blending some distress inks, and also used a bit of watercolour and mists. I got 3 prints I really like a lot, and think I will use them as backgrounds in my 2012 book soon, and also in my recipe binder. Here’s an example of one of them:
Today’s prompt in the diary was to create something with tea, or with a teabag. And believe me, I tried a lot of stuff. It all looked horrible. Let’s just say that tea is NOT as pretty or great to work with as say, glittery glitter. At least if you have loose tea leafs, it’s not an easy material to work with. At best I managed to make a basic embellishment with a certain structure, thanks to tea leafs and glue. In the end though I settled for making a card for a friend with a little tag I’d saved from a tea bag, which looks like this:
Not very inspired, I know, but I really love the tag. AND; the tag still smells of apple pie, so when you go at it with your heat gun the whole room smells like dessert. Not a bad thing! Happy friday everyone, and have a great great creative weekend!
Really quick post as it’s getting late, I just really wanted to share these cards I made. Today’s prompt was to make something camouflagey or something that could melt into the background, so I scanned these pages from one of my favourite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and made these cards. Also I made the flowers from the same print,so that they match the background. The adorable robots from Maya Road got to stand in for Marwin, the Paranoid Android. Off to bed now, but here are some pics!
I’m moving on in my project to make something every day for 365 days, and today, day 9, the prompt in Noah Scalin’s diary said: Do something with your breakfast.
Sadly I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning, but it is a Monday, and I was tired, so I treated myself to a wonderful, warm, creamy, frothy, wonderful latte. And then I called it breakfast.
The coffee was indeed so nice and perked me up so much that I felt compelled to write an Espresso Story (as story that should take no longer than an espresso takes to drink, in 25 words or less). This is how it turned out:
The Zombie Apocalypse
by Jennie
Over my dead body, I said. And look at me now…
New day tomorrow. Day 10! Will I last two weeks? I hope so… Maybe I should just keep drinking coffee.
Day 8! One I’ve been looking forward too. The prompt for day 8 could not have been more perfect: Make an old book into something new.
I’ve been wanting to alter a book for a long time, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I grew up loving books with all my heart, cherishing them, taking good care of them… to alter and change a book has felt a bit big and scary, you know, like I’m crossing a line. But no more! This beautiful old thing, that is sadly falling apart anyway, will get a new life as an album documenting this year (The title is “The Conquest of the World”, which of course I feel is very fitting):
I’ve been researching for a while on how to do this thing, so today’s prompt really… prompted me get started! One resource I’ve been looking at is Noel Hyman’s vids at Paperclipping . Noel (and her husband Izzie) makes really high quality vids, and Noel has a lot of good ideas and is very pedagogical. I highly recommend having a look! I feel much more confident now, having seen a few examples. Other than that I try to find examples on Youtube from mixed media artists.
The book plate is filled with little cogs and pebbles and beads, and I’ll fill it in with some glaze to encase it all, but I wanted to take these photos first, since it takes ages for it to dry properly. The word in the book plate is “Create”, which is my One Little Word for 2012. I’m so excited about this book, and hope to fill it with lot’s of stories, memories and photos from this year. Onwards and Upwards!
Hope you liked the photos! Thank you for stopping by. Keep creating!
Righto; Week 1 of 52 over and done with. When I embarked on this project on January 1st I was honestly a bit worried that it would be another bright-idea-when-your’e-hungover-the-day-after-new-year’s-eve sort of thingy. Sure, it’s only been a week, but on the other hand I could have quit on day two…
So, the prompt for day seven: Make and use a stencil.
My first thought was that this felt very trendy. But also very retro. Making your own stencils and using them for collages or prints on textile was very popular when I was a kid. Then it sort of got a bit goofy. But now it’s trending again, and there are a lot of beautiful stencils made by popular brands today. Tim Holtz is a good example. And it’s sort of being taken to the next step.
Well, I haven’t done anything like it in a long while, and certainly not by using any cool techniques, but since one of the purposes with this 365 project is to learn a lot of new stuff, this was sort of perfect, I think.
I’ve been following Julie Balzer for a while, very talented mixed media artist with loads of great ideas and designs. She made this excellent tutorial that I found only a couple of days ago. Go check it out and don’t forget to give some thumbs up:
This was perfect for this prompt for several reasons.
I got to use up some of the plain tags from my stash, that I bought many years ago
I got to practice using my distress inks and my blender tool
I got to mess about with sprays and mists
And i now have several pretty tags to use for gifties in the future. Yay!
So, I went ahead and prepared two stencils, as prompted. I drew and cut them out by hand. The first one similar to the one in the tutorial:
I followed the tutorial as best as I could, and the result felt very rewarding. You can’t see it on the photo, but on the purple one it says “Nobody Rains on Your Parade”:
Also I made this stencil with hearts on it. It’s not long before Valentines, after all:
I tried some different inks, colours and sprays, loads of fun! You really should give it a try:
In the end I think I ended up using distress inks and stains, chalks, watercolours, mists and color wash. Oh, and some stamps and water resistant stamp pads of different varieties. I also tried using a little leafy twig as a stencil, sort of. But since the result got kind of fuzzy I drew a pattern on top with some Sakura pens. I might add some more details later, or maybe an embellishment.
The prompt for day 5 in the creative diary was a bit of a problem for me: “Do you collect something? Make something with your collection or borrow someone else’s”.
Now: Who doesn’t collect something? And what counts as a collection? Do you collect cutlery just because you have a full set for a dinner placing? Does my books count? I have surrounded myself with large amount of books my entire life, it’s just a habit really, not a concious act of collecting them. They just… accumulate. What’s the difference between collection and accumulation? Is my box of My Little Ponies in the basement a collection? They are a large number, I won’t give them up but I am not actively getting MORE of them.
Having a collection was not the problem. I have a collection of video games,of books, stamps, pens (used to have bucket loads of different pens), wine glasses, recipes, photos, underwear, accessories, notebooks…
My problem is my habit of organizing my stuff. So, as I went about to try and do this prompt I started sorting boxes. And throwing stuff away. And moving stuff around. Which is great, but not so creative. It’s a sad thing that sorting pens or paints or the likes makes me relaxed and happy, but that’s the way it is.
At least I ended up finally re-organizing my stamps, the rubber ones with a cling mount and the acrylic ones. My old storage system used to take up a lot of space, and was a pain to take with me anywhere. Now it’s way more efficient and take hardly any space at all!
Clearly an unexpected side effect from this project…
So, any way, in the end I decided to do something with my recipe collection, and to make it simple I just added to it. I haven’t done that in a LONG while, so it felt good to finally get around to it, and not only keep a bunch of printed recipes I like in a pile.
The Scrapped Recipe Album is a thing I started many years ago, just as I discovered scrapbooking as a hobby. It was something me and my mum did together, since we both share a great love for cooking. Some recipes are almost like photos, a very clear memory. In this album I keep ordinary as well as special recipes, but only the ones I love the most, and they always have a story or memory connected to them.
This time I scrapped a recipe of how to make blinis (tiny Russian pancakes), something I made for the first time this new years eve. It was mine and Jed’s first new years in our new home, and of the 3-course dinner we scraped together this dish was the tastiest, at least in my opinion. Although I think Jed like the white chocolate panna cotta more *s*.
I left a small space for a photo, to add later. Some serving ideas are hidden under the little tag.
So, anyways, that was my Day 5 for Create 365. I hope to get some time to sort out some more recipes soon, I miss it! Over and out!
Today I didn’t follow the daily prompt in the creative diary. It had to do with going outside, and since there is a storm going on right now I didn’t feel to compelled to do that, hehe. So instead I stayed in my crafty corner and put together a layout based on the journaling I created yesterday. Since the project is about creating something every day, with no boundaries or rules, and I managed to do an entire layout in one sitting (I’m not a fast scrapbooker) I’m pretty pleased with myself. Yay me! Day 4 is done!
Reflection: It’s weird how I find myself constantly using yellow and blue, when these are my least favourite colours. What’s up with that?
Another reflection: It took me a LONG time NOT to put a lot of extra stuff on this layout. I realise it’s not very well balanced and that the upper left corner could have used something, maybe, but in the end I, after rummaging through my entire stash, I settled for splashing some blue watercolour up in the corner. So there you go. Sometimes it’s more about the story than the pretty shiny things, I’m learning *smile*. And this layout was really about the journaling and the story in the photo.
