A Visual Journey 2015

A Visual Journey 2015

I have decided that this year I need to free myself from over thinking some of my designs. Don’t get me wrong, standing back, walking away and giving yourself some time can be a good thing but often I am making a small project and I start to procrastinate, try to change elements and over think so that my creativity goes out the window and I completely lose the thread. So I thought that if I made a Visual Journal/Diary/Sketchbook and practiced making quick designs at least once a week or fortnight it would help me to free myself from this constraining practice and would also give me the chance to experiment with techniques and ideas that I pick up when visiting your blogs or that I see on Pinterest.

So today is day ONE and I am looking to post something hopefully every Thursday and wondered if you would like to join me? Along the way I will tell you what my inspiration is or what I am trying to achieve and I will add a linky to the bottom of my post. There are no prizes and certainly no pressure to share every time I post but by linking we can visit other artists or crafters who would like to show us what they are doing and find even more inspiration between ourselves.

I bought this old book sometime last year and have been waiting for the opportunity to use it and now is the time. It's a fabulous hard back with gorgeous watercolour type paper pages. Some were cut and some were just torn when it was made so it attracted me straight away when I saw it on a market book stall.

I have started with a double page collage. First I prepared the pages by drawing round some of the words I wanted to show through then painted them with gesso and a little frayed burlap distress paint. When they were just about dry I places waxed paper between the pages so they wouldn't stick together and put under a heavy box to make sure they were flattened well.

My collage is made up of a variety of scraps found on my desk and as I started to design the layout and pick up each of the elements I was creating links to the book title, so that when I had finished putting it all together I added some words that I thought The Roadmender would see or be aware of when he was out every day. They've added the dialogue I felt this collage needed.

I added a little bit of stamping and consciously chose the tissue tapes to go with the design, but otherwise the pieces were all picked up from scraps that were left on my desk from previous projects. Can you believe that they fitted together so well?

The number 8 is foil tape on card and the piece I played with before making my my new year plaque (see previous post).

I hope you will consider joining in with this visual journey. Anything goes with whatever journal/sketchbook/ type activity is right for you. My Pinterest page explains it as -
'Keeping a visual journal is a journey of experimentation; giving time to be free in expressing yourself and not constrained by others expectations. Practicing design, layouts, composition, colour mixing, techniques, materials, mixed media. Creating your own exercises, titles, mood boards, taking yourself out of the box, finding yourself. Bring new ideas to life, to spark you off in new directions, to allow your own imagination and creativity to develop in complete freedom'.

Thanks for joining me today

hugs Brenda xxx

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  Please join our Visual Journal Link Up and thank you for sharing your inspiration with us.

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Happy New Year plaque

Foil tape plaque for 2015

Happy New Year I hope you will have a happy, healthy and peaceful 2015 and be able to enjoy some regular inspiration time to create and make beautiful art.

I am starting the year with something special I made to hang in the dining room for our new years eve party - a plaque to hang over the mirror with the year on it..

Process steps

Cut 4 ATC size pieces of card (2 ½  x 3 ½  ins) covered with foil tape and run each one through  the texture trades numbers set for 2015. I've used a mixture of Ranger foil and DIY foil.

Cut more pieces of card covered in the foil tape and run through a selection of embossing folders. And adhere the patterned pieces of foiled card patchwork style to an A4+ sized piece of greyboard.

Add strips of the foil tape to join some of the edges and to seal the edges.

Use metal tools to edge each piece and to add any other decorative features you might want to add,

Paint over the whole piece with black soot distress paint and before it’s dry wipe over with kitchen towel to take most of it off leaving black paint in the crevices.

Next take the numbers and again paint and wipe away the excess, let them dry.

Blend alcohol inks over, then drip some blending solution over then recessed areas and wipe off. I was aiming to get reddy numbers and a brown background. Drip the browns in the recessed areas and again drip a couple of drops of blending solution on. Pick them up and move them around so that the colours move across the foil. When dry I got a very small paint brush, the black soot DP, the brown alcohol inks and blending solution. I painted some black around the numbers to help them stand out more and then just played with the other supplies until I was happy with the blending and colourisation.

The numbers were mounted onto brown card and adhered to the board and a spread a little teak wood alcohol ink around the edges to frame it (just like I would with vintage photo or walnut stain distress ink on my papercraft projects). Add some snaps with the Cropodile and some wire to hang it by.

It was dark by the time I got to take this photo so it looks completely different to the one above it, but here it is hanging on the mirror, you can just see the reflection of some Christmas lights.

Thank you for all your support and wonderful comments last year, I so appreciate them particularly when my teaching schedule got so busy and I couldn't get round to see you all as well. But new year and fresh start, I am definitely going to try and do better.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Walt Disney

Enjoy your creative moments.

hugs Brenda xxx