Art angel

I noticed it has been exactly one year ago that I posted last to my blog.  Since opening my facebook page: angelicartandcraft, I have been neglecting my blog.  I found it easier and quicker to create a post on my facebook page compared to writing on the blog.  I started my blog originally with the intention to keep a chronological diary of my creations.  I tend to work on different projects and in different art journals over time, and I also don't always date my work.  So I thought this is a good way to see what I have been up to over the course of a year. 

I have a love/hate relationships with social media.  I love the interaction and inspiration I get from seeing the artwork of other artists.  But I also find myself being sucked into a social media vortex where I can end up just looking and admiring other peoples art without getting any art done myself at all.  It was meant to inspire me, not stop me from creating art.  But we only have so much time in a day.  We need to choose wisely how we want to spend our time.  It is hard to find an even balance between making time to create and spending time online sharing what you have made or admiring creations of others.  This is one reason why I stopped posting on my blog.  I found it was very time consuming.  Time I rather spend making art.

Why am I called today to post on my blog?
People keep telling me to not just hide in my closet making art, but they love to see it and have told me that I should keep sharing what I make. 
I like to share the stages of my latest art angel I created, after I had another creative break.  I tend to have creative breaks, when the rest of my life commitments consume most of my time.  When I created this art angel on the weekend, it went through several phases.  Phases of what felt to me like the ugly stages.  Not sure if I still had it in me to create a face.  When I have not drawn for a while I can feel that my creative muscle needs attending to again.  It is like I loose the momentum each time I have a creative break, and need to start all over again learning how to draw a face.  I expected it was like riding a bike.  Once you know how to do it, you just get on your bike and ride again.  But to me it feels more like going to the gym.  Every time you have a break of any type of fitness regime, you need to re-train yourself again to get up to that same level of fitness that you were before you took the break.
I took photos at several intervals of the creation.  My art went through stages that I was not happy with, but I kept persisting and I am glad I did.  I am very happy with the final result. I thought the blog would be the best place to share the making of this angel as I can post the photo's in order that I created the angel, which is a bit harder to do on the facebook page.

Why I wanted to create an angel:
I am waiting in anticipation for the new online class of Kelly Rae Roberts to start in early October called: Spirit Wings.  I have been a big fan of Kelly Rae Roberts art for a while now.  It all started when I was gifted a Kelly Rae Roberts ornamental angel.  It was more then a year after receiving this gift that one day I decided to type KRR into google and found her website.  Here I then found she had written a book, called: 'Taking flight'.  I ordered the book and then it still took another few months before I actually read it from start to finish.  Whilst I was reading the book on holidays around the same time Kelly released her online class: 'hello soul, hello mixed media mantras'.  Once again I felt called to sign up for this class.  In my last post (15 Sept 2014) I shared some of the backgrounds that I created a year ago at the start of this online class.

This is my finished mantra painting that I created last year:

So next, as promised the making of the 'inspiration' angel, inspired by the art of Kelly Rae Roberts:

And here is the final scanned copy:

I hope that reading and viewing this post may be a form of inspiration to anyone.
I love creating art as it allows me to relax and forget momentarily about any other life commitments or concerns.  Whilst creating it gives me the feeling that time does not exist.  

Mermaid Circus fun and painted backgrounds

 

Mermaid Fun

I have joined the Mermaid Circus with Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore.
We are making a shaped journal and using collage in the creation of our Mermaid.
At first I found it very challenging to work within an already outlined area.
I was also not comfortable with using collage in my art work at first.  I have only ever used collage in creating backgrounds, but not in the subject itself.  But I persisted with the creation of this project with an open mind.  Whilst creating my mermaid I started to enjoy the process more and more.  In the end I was very pleased with the effect of the collage pieces to create the scales for the mermaid.  I really like the effect it has.  I will definitely incorporate collage into any of my future art creations again.  It also taught me that it is great to try new things and challenge yourself to create in ways that you do not feel comfortable with.  If you keep an open mind and just go with the process one step at a time and just enjoy the process rather then expecting a result, the whole experience can be quite rewarding in the end.

Painting Fun

I have also been busy playing with paint on canvas and watercolour paper.  Just playing around with paints and dylusions spray inks creating backgrounds.  The idea was to just play and have fun like an 8 year old.  Experimenting with different types of colours and combinations and seeing what happens.  I am very new to painting.  But I love all the paint colours available.  It is very nice and relaxing to just play for the enjoyment of painting itself, rather then doing it for creating a result.  Afterwards I scanned the backgrounds into my computer and used the images in Picasa to create a collage:

Before I started the painting session, I created the following intention for myself:

Having an intention before you set out to create,  is a great way to remind yourself during that session, what it is you set out to achieve.  Some days you might just like to play and be curious like a child.  Other days you might like to learn a specific technique.  It is great to mix things up a bit and have different intentions on different days.  As each will bring your forward to your next step in creating art and exploring the possibilities that are available to us.

29 Faces - Face 5, 6 and 7 & an Art journal page

I am a bit behind with creating a face every day for 29 days.  I find it quite tricky to keep up with any challenges that involves creating something every day for consecutive days.
I try to get in my art room most days and do at least something small towards a project that I am working on.  I often have many projects going at the same time.  As a result I don't always finish everything I am working on.  Sometimes it can stay half done for ages.  But at the end of the day I guess that does not matter.  As long as we are busy making something that inspires us on a regular basis to give us joy.

Here are first 3 faces I sketched in my sketching journal with pencil.  I like to sketch faces to practice different face shapes and hair styles.

Face 5:

 

Face 6:

 

Face 7: 

 

 

Art Journal page:

 

For the following art journal page I created, I was inspired by the Art Journal & Tutorial videos by Iris Impressions.  The particular video that inspired me for this page is called: 'She did her best'.

Here is a link to one of Iris's blog post that includes this tutorial:/http://iris-impressions.com/2014/08/art-journal-tutorial-videos/

 and many more great inspirational videos created by Iris.

Today she has posted another great tutorial on her YouTube channel called: Access your Joy.

Water colour flowers

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Card diary

Yesterday I had a lovely time at Papertrenz.  In Sue Smyth's workshop we started making this mixed media Card Diary.  This is what I have completed so far in class.  My homework now is to finish decorating the inside pages and adding the embellishments on the cover of the book.  The flowers on the top of the cover are just lying loose there at the moment to show you.  They were originally plain white flowers which we coloured with gesso and spray inks and paint.  We will eventually bind this book with a cinch binding machine when completed. 

Another background

I started another background for another journal for the Jennibellie workshop.  This time my daughter joined me.  We both used the same scrapbook papers and then both used the same colour paints.  But the results are different.  We had a lot of fun creating these background pages.

Then we started making some embellishments that can be used later in our journals:

I also folded my background I created the other day into a journal.  It is now ready to go for drawing, collaging and adding embelishments.
If you like to find out how to create and fold this journal go and hop over to the ning site of Jennibellie.

Defining the pages

This morning I have folded my pages and defined them with putting gesso on the edges.  Now this is drying.  Can't wait to start the next step.  But I have work to do now.  Normal life must go on, but at least I can go in my art room now and do a little bit each day.  I really like the idea suggested by Jennibellie to create lots of embellishments and tags etc and put these in your inspiration station ready to go for when you want to create in your journal.  Making embellishments can be nice quick projects to do that can be a lot of fun and still give you a lot of creative satisfaction.  As she said in one of her videos: you need to peel the apples first before you can make the apple pie.  I keep thinking about his saying now every time I just like to go in my art room just to do one little thing.  Even if I only have time to stamp one butterfly and colour it.  That is one embellishment that I can add to my stash.

Creating again

Hi Everyone
I am back again.  I have not been creating for a while since the end of last year.  Christmas cards were my last creations.  Then I went overseas for a while and since I have been back I have been too busy with work to give myself time to create.  I find once you have not done any creating for a while it is hard to get back into it again.  Just like exercise.  I love walking and riding my bike, but when there are periods of rain and it is too wet to go outside, exercise seems to suffer.  I love creating when the weather is cooler.  It has gone into winter now, even though you would not think so.  It is rather warm for winter this year.  We still have not had the fire on yet.  It feels like spring outside.  But my urge to create has come back.  I was introduced by a friend to Jennibellie.  She has a free inspiration workshop at the moment on her ning site.  I started to watch the videos and have been very inspired by her to start creating again.  Just making simple backgrounds and art journal pages.  I love drawing but find this very time consuming.  It is not the thing I can just quickly do in between all my other daily chores.  At the moment I am looking for quick projects where I can have a bit of fun with paper and paints and stamps and inks etc.  Just to satisfy my creative urge.  I love to be surrounded by colours and pretty papers.

Here is my background page I did this morning as part of the Inspiration Station class.

What do you do when you have not been creating for a while?  What gets you inspired again to get out those paints and papers and pencils and stamps etc?
Thanks for stopping by, have a great day :-).

Art Every Day Month - Day 26

I have been very busy, so I have not been able to create every day.  But at least I have been able to create a bit on the weekend.  I made some Christmas cards and put a few more details on a little art journal page which I had started last week.

Stamped Images Moroccan Butterfly by Kaszazz

Even though I have not been creating every day.  Please go and visit the blog: Creative Every Day, to be inspired by lots of artists who have managed to create every day.  I have found some wonderful blogs through this site and seen some amazing art works being created.  Go and have a look.

http://creativeeveryday.com

Art Every Day Month, Day 18

I recently decided to start blogging more to make myself accountable for my commitment of wanting to create more often.  I like creating to be a way of life, rather then just a hobby I do in my spare time.
Up till now I would see creating as something I do in my spare time when all the chores and all the work is done.  With other words creating would come last on my to do list.  Lately I have decided to make creating a more important part of my life.  I notice that I feel great when I create.  It makes me feel calm and at peace.  It is like an active meditation.  In meditation we try to just be aware of one thing at a time and when our minds wanders bring it back to the one thing.  It might be a word or our breath or the awareness of how our body feels.  While creating our full awareness goes to our project in front of us.  I feel it is a great way to switch of from the world around us for a little while and go within.  Express ourselves through the media at hand.  They say we benefit most from meditation when we practice it regularly.  So I figured the same will apply for creating every day.  Then on the weekend I stumbled onto this blog: Creative Every Day where Leah runs: November is Art Every Day Month.  What a coincidence.  Even though it is already half way through November I decided to still give it a go for the remainder of the month.  And I am glad that she says we don't have to post every day, only when we get a chance.  As the idea is to bring more creativity into our lives not to feel overwhelmed or pressured.

Tonight I started another 13 x 13 page whilst cooking dinner at the same time.
Here is the start of the page:

I started with some spray ink which I had watered down, some stamping, washi tape and water colour crayons.

Then for the next layer:

Some more stamping, a bit more ink, and finally I had to stop after this as dinner was ready:

Added a bit of scrapbook paper and some paint.

When I work on these little 13 x 13 pages I often put them on top of a page of my bigger art journals.  That way when I use spray inks and stencils the extra spray will cover on the page in the art journal.  This then can be part of a background of a future page in my art journal.  The page below is the page that was under my project today and also under my project of my previous post.

13 x 13 Art Journal Page Peace Love Calm

I really enjoy creating these small 13 x 13 cm art journal pages.  Gives me the opportunity to let myself be creative for a little while.  I love playing around with my art and craft materials.  It makes me feel peaceful and calm inside.  The Dylusion Spray Inks are just devine.  They are so great to use with stencils to make a background.  The stamp set I used here today for this project is called: Inspirational Flight by Kaszazz.

13 x 13 Art Journal

I have decided I am going to create a 13 x 13cm little art journal.
I love creating but find I don't always know what to make or what journal to use for which creation.  I have lots of different journals.  Different sizes with different types of paper etc.  As I never know quite what I am going to make I always find it difficult to decide which journal to work in.
So this weekend I decided I am going to work on just loose pages and bind them into a journal later.
Most my journals are A5 or A4.
I love working on a larger page as it gives me the opportunity to work in more detail when for example I am drawing eyes.  But I find the big page also puts me off from doing just a quick page.  As I know the bigger pages are more work and take more time I tend to put off creating as I have so many other chores to do.
So I decided I am going to create a small 13 x 13cm journal.
Having only a small square to work on I like to challenge myself to create something more often.
I find it very relaxing to create.  I also don't want to put any expectations on myself of what I am going to create or how much time I spend on each 13 x 13 page.  Some days I might spend a few hours on a 13 x 13.  Other days just maybe 15 minutes.

Well  here are my first 2 pages:

I created this little angel on Sunday.  I just started with some journaling on the piece of card stock.  Then applied inks over the top.  Then pieces of scrapbook papers, some white paint.  Drew this little angel over the top and did some stamping.  This first page took me a while to do.  I found it difficult to draw eyes in such a small area.  I am used to drawing faces on pages of A5 and A4 and find I can put more detail in the eyes on the larger space.  So I found it quite a challenge to draw a face on this smaller size of card stock.  As I had used scrapbook paper for layering and part of the textured paper went through her face it made it also challenging to draw the eye in that area.

Today I created this one:

A quick 13 x 13 page.  I used watercolour paper.  Applied some inktense pencils.  Went over it with a water brush and then did some black writing over the top.  Doodled a line around the edge and a bit of stamping to finish off.  This one did not take too long for a working day, but gave me the joy to let my creative muse play for a couple of minutes before I had to get to work.

Hope I can keep up this challenge I have set for myself.

Angelic Art and Craft

Here is my first blog post.  I like being creative and have been card making, scrap booking and art journaling for a little while now.  I thought I start sharing some of my creations with you.  I always love looking at others peoples art work.  I find it very inspirational.  Putting my creations on a blog will be like an online journal for me.  Also blogging is something new I like to try.  Today I created this mixed media page.  I used spray inks, stencils, paints and washi tape and markers.