You never know where your dreams will take you

I had an amazing weekend, even if it was a busy one. I spent Saturday with my mother looking for the perfect throw cushions for her couch, and found some amazing deals on supplies I can use for my art work. Then Sunday, relaxed with hubby and went for a nice evening walk with him and the dog. And today. Well, today was just something.

Today we woke up late, went to Ikea and had a late lunch, then spent over 2 hours looking through the largest Ikea in Canada. And we got my craft room furniture. Or at least, most of it. I'll post pictures of it this week, once I've finished assembling it.

And I managed to get an art journal page done on Saturday night. I cleared my desk and just got to work. It's been so hard lately to be creative when you only have a teensy tiny space to work in. So now that I have my craft room furniture, I have no excuses. All the same, I managed one page, and it pretty much sums up my weekend.

I hope you like it.

Cherish your visions, and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul. Goethe

Stay tuned tomorrow, because I have a big announcement to make about that new door that has swung wide open. Have a great week!

Exciting news! Yes indeed!

But I can't tell you just yet. It's a secret you see... but all will be revealed after Sunday. I have made one very hard decision recently about one aspect of my life. It leaves me a little sad, but relieved. And it's not a decision that can never be reversed, so that leaves a door open for a future time. In the meantime, another door has opened.

All I can say is that it's a new chapter in my life, and one I am very excited about! I hope that you'll drop by for all the news later this week! Have an amazing creative weekend!

Lazy Saturdays are wonderful

I adore lazy Saturdays where I can sleep in, or go back to bed, then get up, have some coffee and go to the art room to work in my altered book. It's so relaxing and that's totally what I need right now. A friend asked what the purpose of an art journal is. For me, it's a way for me to work with my hands creatively, try new techniques and put things together, and rid myself of stresses, focusing on positive ideas and mantras.

Here's my latest spread that I did today. I used several layers of gesso, spray inks through stencils, texture paste, scrapbooking papers, found papers, lace, washi tape, inked up canvas bits, stamps, metal embellishments, flowers, and the list could go on. I think you are getting the idea. I like my layers.

The full spread, using inks, stencils, texture paste, found papers and much more.

The left side of the spread

The right side of the spread

You can see them closer up by clicking them and going to Flickr. I would love your feedback, so please leave me comments here or at Flickr. Have an amazing weekend!

Challenging my boundaries

I've been taking online courses for the past few months, to expand my limited knowledge of all things paint and art. It's been quite fun. Sitting at the computer, watching videos of artists, reading information. What's that? No painting? Oh you noticed that ,did you? No, no painting. I have paint, really I do. I bought some last summer when I started to buy the courses, and check into the supplies lists, and then they just sat there. I was afraid to work with acrylics. Primarily because I haven't ever painted before, and you know what they say about being afraid of the unknown.

What if I ruined a canvas? What if I used up a lot of paint and hated it? I can't draw; what makes me think I can paint? And then Julie Prichard's course Act Natural was released and I found a course where I felt safe enough to try. The techniques are not meant to build on one another, but to be used with other techniques or on their own. So I didn't have to worry about getting started on Lesson 1 and not being able to complete my project by Lesson 9. I could just use one lesson on a project, and see how it went and move on. I liked that. So I did my first lesson, my collage canvas. And this weekend I tried out actually painting layers and glazes and seeing how it went.

And I loved it. I could try a few things and set it aside to dry without thinking about needing to do the next step. Heck I didn't even know what the next step was. That was the beauty of it. Sit in front of the painting after it dried and just feel it out, try something else, let it see where it takes me. 

And after a couple of days of painting, doing my first image transfer, some glazes, mixing colours for the first time, I can honestly say I'm pretty happy with the results.

So today I went to the art store and picked up some different paints to make the most arduous part of the project, the mixing, a little easier. I can't wait to try this out on larger canvases. This is a 12 inch by 12 inch canvas, but I'm ready to move onto something bigger. I think.

Fresh Eyes

Spring is finally around the corner (again) and I have felt the need to move to a fresh springlike palette of colours lately. Along with with bring fresh colours, I'm hoping comes a matching attitude. Hence the journaling on the page.

This spread is in my altered book, which I haven't used in a while. I started with collaging vintage and worn papers onto the pages. Next I put gesso on the page, followed by some paint that was spread with a brayer. I dropped some watercolour down on the pages and let them drip. After that I put down some modelling paste in area and glued down some tissue paper. Next came lace, papers, flowers, inky canvas and ribbon.

I really enjoyed the process, although I had no idea where the spread was going to go... I just followed the muse, and this is what she had to say.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

More than one way to look at life

I had so much fun this weekend checking out the art that was mad during the Art by Candlelight event. Several people did journal pages, or canvases, and my friend Samara did a bunch of tag art. I adored her outcome from the event and it inspired me to get to doing what I said I would do so long ago... try my hand at art tags. So I set myself to doing at least a few, in my artroom upstairs. I had already started to do backgrounds on some of them; a little something I started doing after watching Dina Wakley's Creative Jumpstart video. So here are the results of pulling out these 'started' art tags, and finishing them up. I found that once I got started, I didn't want to stop!

Afterwards, I was sitting at the computer, really wanting to do more art work. I wanted to do a canvas, or an art journal page, but didn't have materials close by. That is until I realized that I had my art journal travel kit in my work bag next to me. I don't carry a lot in my pencil case...some watercolour pencils, a water brush, a couple of ballpoint pens, some tags, and some inky paper from my art room. I had so much fun with my first collage, that I decided to do a collage page in my art journal. Specifically about how I wasn't about to let my physical condition get the best of me. And I entitled the piece Perspective. I'm trying to love my handwriting, because it's me, really, on paper. But I think it could be improved. At least my lettering seems to be getting better.

And this whole project got me to thinking...maybe I need to put a little more into my travel kit, but not too much. I have some neocolor II watercolour crayons that I can add. What do you all have in your travel kits, if you have one? Let me know it the comments please so that I can add to my kit.

Thanks and have a great week.