♥ Art Journal Update ♥

 Happily playing in The Documented Life Project art journal.

 Loving the process more and more! 

Week Two of February: 

Loving the intensity of the Derwent Inktense pencils. I also use Generals watercolor pencils, especially the yellow and greens. :)

We had a lovely week of learning at my house. Read-a-louds, history, music, math, gymnastics, science co-op, Monet art study, Olympics, bible study, loving on Grandma and Grandpa, and out with friends. Speaking of Claude Monet, I am EXTREMELY inspired by his works. Want to attempt a piece using his methods.

The title page background for week 2 pictured above is a Gelli-print. For the pattern, I used a stencil I made for myself.

Week 1 of February

This project has a new challenge you can do every week. I haven't done every challenge, but I DID do Week Six - Open your Pinterest board and be inspired. I chose to do a simple zentangle. 

by Carole Ohl. This is the most inspiring tangle I think I've ever done. {{shout-out to her - check out her blog here: Open Seed Arts!}} Instead of black lines, I chose my go-to Sharpie markers, which seems to be THE marker I use throughout this project so far. :) 

For my February week-at-a-glance title, I used an old book page as the background. I sprayed yummy colors of Dylusions ink on one side, let it dry, and noticed that the back was much prettier and cooler than the front, so voila, an accidental art piece. #iamanaccidentalartist. :P 

 The rose didn't start as a rose, it kinda grew into one. Initially I just wanted pretty splotches of watercolour, but they started looking like flowers...:)

Journal Cover

Many have asked about my process, so here it is:

Step 1: Scribble circles with watercolour pencils in a random fashion, drawing different sizes and colours.

Step 2: Load brush with water, and "plop" down the water on top of the scribbled pencil, slightly brushing the water in. Don't brush too much, as then the water will not settle as much, to create that mottled watercolour look. Be sure to was the brush when you move to a different colour.

Step 3: Let dry completely. I think I did the watercolouring one day, and the doodling the next day.

Step 4: With a black marker, draw around the edge of each coloured circle. Then do another circle around the first round. Colour in the small spots between circles with marker. I used a black Sharpie ultra-fine tipped marker. Make sure you use a permanent marker, as at the end you will seal the art. (This piece of art is the cover of my journal, so I wanted to protect it.)

Step 5: For the script background, I scribbled the lyrics to a favourite song of mine: Speak Life by Toby Mac.

Step 6: To seal it, I used matte medium and brushed it across the entire page.

Some of my processes of designing my planner:

Day dots: Punched circles out of book paper, scribbled circles, doodles the numbers, and painted the inside with watercolour paints. :)

Another pic with the days written in and some more lovely washi tape edges. :)

For most of the day strips, I am watercolouring them in. My journaling is varied: sometimes I use black, sometimes other colors. Once in awhile I draw a frame around the journaling to seperate it from the other notes. The splotches are made using Dylusions ink spray.

This spread was from January. Kinda made it look a bit busy with all those splotches on ink spray. The dots are simply pouncing wet round sponges on the dye ink-based Dylusions ink spray. Added some washi tape here...

For the January week-at-a-glance title, I made art of the memory verse my kids were memorizing and using as copywork in our homeschool. :) Used a stencil by Balzer Designs and the Dylusions ink spray for that dotty there...The yellow-green splotches is acrylic paint simply smudged onto the pages. 

My daughter and I were doing art together one day, and I happened to look over, and spied her making a cute banner out of washi-tape! I had to copy that! Thanks, Sweets, for the lovely idea! 

My Selfie

Week 2 Challenge was doing a selfie. So, made a scrapbook page with some of my IG photos. Other items and techniques used: Gelli-printing, stamping, twine, stencil and modeling paste for the chevron strip to the right of the picture strip, paper snippets from an old book, doodling, and more! I uploaded and printed my IG photos using Printsgram.

Some close-ups:

paper snippets from an old book, date stamp, if the first time doesn't work out, stamp again, and this way you're looking artsy...

stamping, washi-tape, modeling paste, stencils, book pages

doodling and stamping

Some of the textures were created using a Tim Holtz stencil on the Gelli-plate. LOVE IT! The flourish is my first hand-carved stamp. :) The little blue circles are made with a marker and a circle template. Loving my yellow twine...

Sorry for the extremely unorganized blog post. 

Happy playing and make today a great day, loving one another always!

♥♥♥Anna♥♥♥

Crocheted, Sewn, Glittered, and Papered Christmas Trees

My sis and I volunteered to provide centerpieces for two tables at our church women ministry's Christmas event this past December. 

We "pinterested" (ya like my new verb?) for weeks, and then came the day we needed to actually put something together. 

We collected anything in our homes that we thought might work to put a nice display together. We met at Sara's house to start on it. I brought my old Partylite Christmas houses. Sara had all sorts of odds and ends collected too.

We were not inspired at all with these things, (not to say they didn't look nice). But, something was missing. 

We procrastinated for several hours! 

(There's such a wealth of stuff to do when my twin and I are together, ex. educate and train and mommy children.)

Again, we went back to handy dandy Pinterest. I searched there for "paper trees". 

Then, hit GOLD! 

I found this gorgeous tree on the Crate Paper blog:

 And these burlap and fabric rose trees from the Shanty2Chic blog:

Our minds clicked. Ideas abounded!

We used

felt

glitter

burlap

punches

old book pages

cream alpaca wool

old handmade paper

Bo Bunny dot paper

eggplant colored wool

dollar store paper doilies

specialty scrapbooking paper 

with glittery purple music notes

Stampin' Up punches (scallop and flower)

candle sticks

candle holders

and more.

Hey, I created a tree with my text! Tee hee!

Sara created the cone shaped trees using poster board.

We crocheted loooooooooooooooooooong chains with the wool.

We punched, snipped, curled, and glittered papers for the paper trees.

We punched paper flowers using a flower punch using the old book paper. 

(This paper is from my Lizzie Kartchner on-line class project I did a year or two ago. That project you can see at this link.)

We cut, twisted and glittered white felt. (The tall, white rose felt tree is my favorite.)

The hot glue gun was our best friend for this project, since it adheres anything fast and strong. We found cheap votive candles and the "snow" at Michaels.

We found a cheap curtain at Jysk for the table cover.

Using old handmade specialty paper from my scrapbooking stash and quilt batting, we sewed place mats.

After many delightful hours of creative fun, we ended up with this: 

Did I tell you we used Pinterest to gather our ideas? Great place, I highly recommend it. :)

Happy creating! Blessings to you.