Kraftex watercolour book.

This month on Dragonfly Dreamers Monthly Exploration facebook group the theme is watercolour. I'm not a watercolour artist by any means but I do like to play with it and it sometimes finds it's way into my mixed media projects. 

So the first thing I needed to do is make a watercolour book to play in.

I decided to try a few new things while making my book. As a carry-over from last month's theme of  'use it or lose it', I decided to do the cover with some Kraft-Tex paper that I have had for a while but haven't tried yet.  It's an interesting paper that they describe as leather like and can be sewn like fabric. I was pleased to discover that it played very well with the watercolours.

Layer one.

I used Daniel Smith and Twinkling H2O watercolours. The first layer I painted with a very generous amount of water. While still wet I sprinkled coarse salt on and let dry completely before wiping off the salt. This gives an interesting texture to the paint. 

To learn more about this technique watch this video. For my book cover I didn't use the isopropyl as I did in the video.

Watercolour, isopropyl and salt.

Layer two.

For the second layer I used Lindy's Gang Magical powder with a stencil. This is a pigment powder with mica. Unfortunately it's not noticeable on the picture but it has a lovely shimmer to it.

French Link Stitch

Now to put it all together. For the inside pages I used a 140 lb watercolour cold press paper. The final size of the book is about 8" square. To stitch it together I tried a new technique called French Link stitch. To help learn this stitch I used a book I have called Little Book of Book Making by Charlotte Rivers and watched this great video by Jennifer of Sea Lemon.

French Link Stitch.

Finished book

I'm sure I will do a little bit more playing with my covers but for the most part it is done and I'm pretty happy with my first attempt at the French Stitch binding method. 

If you'd like to see what everyone is doing with the 'watercolour' theme this month come join us at DDMET.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Houses in isolation.

With all that is going on right now and the amount of time we are spending in our homes it only seemed right to have houses/home as the theme for August. I've had some wood houses sitting on my work table for some time now just waiting for inspiration and/or incentive to getting going on them. Of course that's not the only kind of houses I created this month. I love the theme of houses and can't stop thinking of different kinds to do now. I think houses will keep popping up in my studio long after the theme has past. 

This wood block house was nature inspired. I started off with crackle medium for some texture and used Nuvo Expanding Mousse for the mushrooms. It gave me some great dimensional texture. 

More crackle paste on the back with some nature die cuts coloured with embossing powder.

I call this one The Queens House. When I started it I was think maybe along the medieval or Gothic lines. 

It took me a few weeks to finally discover that it was the Queens house and then of course the queen bee had to go on the back. 

You didn't really think I wouldn't do a doodled mushroom house did you. It may get some colours in the future.

 These are a couple of house ATC's for trading. They are still up for grabs if you'd like to do an ATC house trade.

Do you do any house art? I'd love to see it if you do.

Keep Creating!

Wendy

June's inchie a day challenge.

   I hope you are finding some creative outlets during these strange times we are going through. I have been keeping busy creatively and trying some new things. 

   This month I gave myself a tiny challenge. Well, at least tiny in size. I was inspired by Belinda Fireman and her Self Love 365 Project. She did an inchie (that's a one inch square piece of art) each day for a year. I modified mine to try it for a month and my theme was Happy Little Thoughts.

   With just a few days left I thought I'd show you how it's going.

Happy Little Thought

I decide to do it in one of my art journals. This journal has Bristol pages and was great for using pens, markers and colour pencils.

Day 6 Hiding in the jungle

Day 20 Mushroom house.

Day 25 Bumble Bee

Day 8 Mandala

This was a fun project to keep my creative momentum going.

What kind of creative projects have you been doing to keep you going?

Wendy

Journey of a page

   This month on the Dragonfly Dreamers Exploration group page the theme is art journaling.  I have been playing in art journals for 6 or 7 years now. It is probably one of my favourite things to do. There are no rules and it doesn't have to be perfect because it's just for me. I use them to experiment and try new techniques and mediums. I use them to do online class work in. I use them for doodling, drawing...well for just about anything. I have quite a few I'm working in at any given time and I often work in more than one at a time. The sizes vary from small 5"x5" handmade journals to larger 8"x12".  Mostly I like to use ones with heavy watercolour paper but a few have different paper and one is all black.

   

   Often when there is left over paint from other projects or students work, I slap it into a journal page without any thought as to what I will do with it. So my journals have quite a few pages in this ugly stage. Last week I asked people on my social media to choose a page for me to finish. This is the page they chose and it's journey.

This page was probably the nicer of the three to chose from. At this stage it's just left over paint that's been slopped on and a bit added with a stencil. I often don't have an idea when I start a page but for this one I did. I knew I wanted a kind of jungle leafy look and a face peaking out. But first I needed layers.

Since it already had some stenciling started it only seemed natural to keep going with more layers of stencils. This is all done with acrylic paints. It's amazing how fast doing some layers of stencils can bring the page together.

After the stenciling I was drawn to the circles so I accentuated them a bit with pastels and graphite.

At this point I did something that I almost regretted. I took some paint and scraped it across the page here and there. I did not like this as soon as I got it on and this stuff dries fast. I quickly took a paper towel and took some off. It didn't take it all but the effect worked after all. This is the light coloured splotches(technical term) you can see. I could live with it now.

Then it was time for mark making. For this I used pastels, Marabu Art crayons and some graphite. 

And then there are all the details. I spent quite a while, over a few days playing with the rest. For the leaves I used mostly acrylic paint and some Posca paint pens. I used Caran D'ache Neocolor II to do some shading and blending of the background. More marks were added in spaces that needed them.  It was a very fun page to do. 

I hope you enjoyed hearing a bit about the process of a journal page. Are you an art journaler?

Keep Creating!
Wendy

Monthly Explorations

   It's been an interesting year so far to say the least. I've been taking some time to reboot and work on some new projects over the winter and just when I am ready to get back to doing some workshops the world has turned upside down. Now it's time to rethink the next  steps to take.
   Being an introvert makes the social distancing an easy thing to do for me. So I'm choosing to take advantage of my extra time alone in the studio to play and catch up on things. I hope you're able to make the best of the situation and give yourself permission to play.

   One of the things that has kept me busy this year is my Monthly Explorations Themes over on my FB group. In January the theme was Doodling, Mark Making and Drawing. What's not to like about that!

8"x5" journal page on Bristol Smooth

9"x11.5" Dylusions journal page.

In February the theme was Stencils. I love my stencils and use them often. There are so many ways to use them. Here are just a few.

Since it was February I had to do a few heart cards. I made my own heart stencil with a heart die I have and then layered other stencils on top of it for the patterns. I used Distress Inks and Oxides for the colours along with some light modeling paste and Finnabair Icing Paste for the texture through stencils.

Multiple layered stencils.

This page was done with a lot of layers of collage material, paints and stencils. The mushrooms were a new stencil I got recently from Stencil Girl. I used Nuvo Expanding Mousse through the stencil. This was an new product for me and I loved the way it puffs up when heated. Once dried I coloured the mushrooms with Finnabair waxes.

9.5"x8" double page in small Dylusions journal.

This is another page done with lots of layers and even more stencils. But here the stencils are used mostly in the background instead of the focal point as the mushrooms were. 

9.5"x8" double page in small Dylusions journal.

  And now in March the theme is Watercolour. This is not a medium that I play with much or know much about so it really is about exploring and learning. 

  I made myself a small book with 5.5"x5.5" watercolour paper pages to do my playing/experimenting in. It is a nice size to try out something new.

   I did a few pages of rocks. They were great for practicing some mixing and layering of colours.

Watercolour rocks.

   These little swatch doodles were inspired by a fun Canadian Artist, Cee Cee's Creations. You can find many of her videos on Youtube. They were very fun to do. I'm sure I will be doing more of them this month. 

Watercolour swatch doodles.

  If you'd like to see more come over and take a look at Dragonfly Dreamers Monthly Exploration Themes. And of course you are always welcome to join the group.

Keep Creating!

Wendy