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 21

I have not been able to keep up with posting every day and creating every day for the Art Every Day Month Challenge.  But I suppose the challenge is there for us to become aware of spending time more often creating something.
Even though today I did not get the opportunity to create at my own art desk, I did manage to create today.  I went to my daughters school this morning to participate at the craft group.  The school craft group is a group of mums that get together on a regular basis to create projects for the school for events like for example the school Carnival.   We make handmade gifts to be sold for fundraising projects.
Today we created our own thank you gift for being part of this group and helping out all through the year.  We made our own Christmas ornament.  It was a beading project.  What I love about this craft group is that we get to make projects that I normally at home would not do.  So it is nice to get taken a bit out of my comfort zone and create something different.  Well at least different for me.  I am normally more a paper crafter and I love to draw and use paint and inks.  Beading was a new challenge for me today.  But I really loved it, though it did test my patience.
Here is my result of today's effort:

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.

Quick Journal Page

Here is just a quick art journal page I did this morning in my Winsor & Newton A5 Art Journal.
It started off with a little bit of stamping I did a while ago on this page.  Today I felt drawn towards colouring in the flower and butterflies.  Then I did a bit of doodling around the edge of the page and some writing in the centre.  I coloured this with Prisma colour pencils.  They are one of my favourite colour pencils to colour and draw with.  The background appears to be coloured with green, but in real life it is soft yellow.  I have not learned yet how to adjust the colouring on computer software.

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.