Susan Carol's journal - page 2

As I said in my last post, the next journal in the circle journal/round robin - Susan Carol's - arrived, and the theme is friends/friendship.

Susan used a journal with rings that open to allow you to take the pages out. I like this aspect as it means I don't have to worry about the backs of pages picking up paint (somehow I manage to get smears and blobs on the backs of pages without even trying!)

This is the second page. The first one was warmer colours (see my previous post) but I was drawn to the blue/green combo for this spread. It started with a book page from a foreign language book on music. I had cut out some circles for the first spread and just pasted on what was left of the book page. I then gessoed over the whole page. Some washi tape blended the edges of the book page into the background and provided my colour scheme.

I scraped a bit of blue acrylic paint down the right side of the page and put a piece of ribbon that Pam sent me in with the tag for the tag swap for March over the top. There followed a bit of stencilling, some tape, and a greaseproof paper gelli-print of a flower. A bit of doodling and I was then ready to add the quote.

Now I just need to do the sign-in tag, but I won't post about that - it's good to leave something as a surprise :)

Round Robin journal

The latest journal in the round robin/circle journal arrived - Susan Carol's - and the theme is friends/friendship.

This is my first page for it. I need to do the other side and a sign-in tag.

Haven't done much else art-wise this week as Easter is approaching and there is a lot to do!

Lots of dots

I had fun making this background with a small piece of gelli-plate (yes, I cut one up!) used as a stamp. There's a great video of how to do it here. It's a great way of getting lots of colour and pattern on to a page fairly quickly.

Then add a few dots. The blue ones felt a bit stark, so the white outlining pushed them back a bit.

I find that I am journalling more words at the moment. Before I went through a season of doing a 'headline' and a few thoughts about it. That isn't happening for me now, so this page has three sections of journalling in squares.

There was a little space that was looking a bit empty, so the beautiful stamp that Pam Wildeboer sent to me fit perfectly, alongside a glittery circle.

Happy mail!

I received two parcels today! One was the tag swap from the mixed media community I'm in on google+ and the other was the next journal in the circle journal, which I shall blog about when I've done my pages for it.

The tag package is from Pam Wildeboer and it's full of loveliness. I've been bowled over by the generosity of tag swap participants. Pam sent me a couple of tags on the theme of International Women's Day, along with and ATC and a stack of other fun bits and bobs like ribbons and papers. She even made me my very own stamp with my name on one side and a house on the other!

I'm enjoying being in the tag swap. It's great to receive art from so many different women who all have their own unique style.

Mary not Martha

It is so easy in this 24-7 society to think that you have to be doing something all of the time. It is so much easier to be a Martha than a Mary.

And how much of our identity do we derive from what we do? It is one of the first things that people tend to ask when they meet someone for the first time.

So when you enter a phase where you are having to rest, it can be difficult.

This plateau I'm on is a Mary phase. A time of not just resting, but also of contemplating, consolidating, learning deep inside.

Logos365

I made myself a journal to use for my Logos365 - my word for the year - which is flourish. I've been adding quite a few spreads through Lent, some of which I wanted to share today.

This first one came out of my thoughts on a confession prayer which ends with the words: lead us out from darkness to walk as children of light. As I pictured being led out of darkness into a place of light, I started to think about how this isn't always the case. We are not always taken out of a dark situation, just as we do not always have our fear allayed. But we ARE given faith big enough to overcome. We ARE given light to push back the darkness.

This page came out of contemplation on growth and flourishing. I thought about the different forms of growth and how all of them are needed if we are to flourish. We can't just produce leaves. There must also be flowers if we want to produce fruit and seeds to increase the yield of our lives.

To help me to learn more about flourishing I am re-reading Flourish by Catherine Hart Weber. She talks about the meaning of shalom and how that encompasses flourishing.

And finally, if I want to flourish I need to stay attached to the root. Flowers only last for so long once they are cut from the plant. We can prolong their life with food added to the water, but eventually they will die.

Bubble tea

A page to capture a whole new experience - bubble tea. I've lived in Adelaide for five years now, and as I walk through Chinatown I see plenty of signs for bubble tea. Finally we went, as a family, to try it out.

I had passion fruit green tea, my husband had black milk lychee tea, and our daughter had black milk strawberry tea. All of these teas are iced and are served with a large-bore straw. My passion fruit tea didn't have milk but did have passion fruit pulp. Unlike fruit teas from a teabag, these teas taste really fruity. The ones with milk also contain little black balls of some gelly-like substance that has its own flavour, hence the large straws.

All in all, a fun experience. I would definitely have one again.

Have you tried anything new recently?

Circling in

There are only a few layers on this page - some stencilling, gesso, gelli-printed greaseproof paper, and more stencilling with pen outlining. It didn't take long.

And the journalling just flowed today.

fun with new stencils

So I spent most of the day Saturday making new masks and stencils, and yesterday trying them out on the gelli-plate and with spray paints.

So here is a photo-heavy post of my hours of play :)

Sometimes it is the clean off that makes the best prints. This print above is from cleaning the stencil once I've peeled it off the gelli-plate - using it like a stamp, really. There are several layers here and I really love the different colours and how they work with each other. I'll probably just put a quote on it in black.

This stencil will tessellate nicely although the pattern is already quite large. Perhaps I'll cut a smaller stencil, or maybe a stamp...

Here is the spray through a stencil with the 'stamp' effect of cleaning it off.