Pastel Christmas unPlanner Pages

A new year HELLO to all of you!

A new year means the end of a year-long project. It is hard to say goodbye to DLP. I have now participated for three years, and it'll take some adjustment in my brain space to not have these art prompts. I am not quite sure what I'll be creating in 2017 yet.

Meanwhile, here is probably the last post for my unPlanner! 

To know more about how you could make an unPlanner, see the project challenge and artists HERE.

I chose a pastel Christmas theme, with pinks, purples and blues, using PaperArtsy fresco chalk acrylic paints. They are like icing on a cake!

For my divider, I painted a Bethlehem scene with NeoColor2 crayons and the fresco chalk paints. In the circle, I wrote out the Christmas story from Luke 2. The scene was inspired by a children's book illustration. The "stars" were made using stencils:

April 2016 - Private Collection 16.2

and one of Mary Beth Shaw's new planner stencils, 

 Planner Winter Stencils4

My watercoloured doodled calendar got a colour treatment too, with some stamping and simple journaling. Whew! Only 3 days in all December was spent by ourselves! But it was good, very good. :)

I have the monthly view calendar available as a printable if you're interested in using it in your own planners. See HERE. 

I played for hours on my December, and I just want it finished now, so I left some parts simpler. 

I made a scalloped pocket to house the PACs by using a scallop punch and stenciling with the same circular stencil as used for the "stars" on my divider. The background is similar to the page on the right in my Dec 4-10 weekly view photo above.  The ''be strong and courageous'' phrase echoes my 2016 OLW: Strength. See my January post to see how I documented it in the beginning: 

I procrastinated with the art challenges this month, but sure had fun when the ideas finally flowed.

The one above is actually the prompt for November, but decided to include it in my December: use something from the bottom of your purse. I had wrapping from a Hershey Kisses candy, so I made little "beads" from the foil wrapper to attach to the ribbon, and used the little paper slip that comes with each candy. I like it!

For this one above, the prompt was to use crayon, so like many of you in the fb group, I used Inktense pencils, sopping up the pooling colour with a silk ribbon before it dried, dying it and making the colours look pastel instead of the vivid look you get by using water sparingly.

 I used the paper from the reinforcement stickers as a stencil on top of the watercolour wash background.

The phrase is one line from the Holy Sonnet XV by Donne. I was so struck by the words from the poem when it was beautifully recited during our church's Christmas Eve services, that I knew I needed to include it in my unPlanner somehow! The rest of the poem is printed on the back of the previous PAC. 

This PAC is for the very last prompt of the year: to use GOLD. Well, I was so pleased, as I was already using gold throughout December! I kept it simple using this beautiful stencil by Gwen LaFleur, called Decorative Curvy Ornamental Stencil. 

I was feeling nostalgic of this whole project, so I tried to use as many as the unPlanner kit downloads I could. See the days of the weeks at bottom of page? Those are from the weekly view ones. :) 

I sewed a page protector to the backside of the List 10 to house my double-sided tag.

Loving the Geometric Sky stencil by Mary C. Nasser!

The "crown" trim is made using an old EK Success punch. 

More candy wrapper "beads".

The ribbon, I sent through my sewing machine and made it ruffly and messy. :)

Flower stencil fun with the November 2016 StencilGirl club stencils by Mary Beth Shaw. LOVE LOVE it.

"This stuff" is from the unPlanner kit download kit. 

And there it is. The end of 2016. It's been so fun and rewarding. Loved connecting with like-minded creatives on the Facebook Group and on Instagram.

 What next? I did sign up for Inspiration Wednesday 2017, so you should see posts about that in the future.

Thanks so much everyone for your encouraging words the whole year long! I will miss this!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

November in my unPlanner Part 01

Hello all! 

I have had some fun in my unPlanner again with a new colour palette: blues, greys, whites, blacks. We have full-fledged winter temps and snows up here in Canada, and I feel that suits my journal. :)

To discover other unPlanner ideas and see the project challenges and themes, sign up for The Documented Life Project 2016- The unPlanner at the Art to the 5th Academy or see the blog HERE.

The first part I've done is make the divider, and below is a photo of it open. 

This was my project for my StencilGirl Creative Team post over at the StencilGirl blog. To see my step-out tutorial, check it out HERE.

I enjoy the depth of this piece, using blue-black and varying shade of grey. 

If I had to sum up one thing I've learned from art journaling this year, it would be this: create depth with varying shades of colour!

Photo below, page on left, is a page from the unPlanner kit. The photo after this one, you see the other side of that page completely covered with black paint. I will do the same here. Page on right is my prepared pages for the rest of the month, where I journal daily.

A process pic of decorating the pre-made pocket page. Of course, StencilGirl stencils were used. ;) The "ladder" at the top part is a club stencil by MaryBeth. See it HERE. The "snowman" is from a stencil with three varied sized ovals. See the stencil HERE. The other stencils used are THIS and THIS 6x6 stencil.

I circled the part below to show you which part of the large stencil I used. :) More photos to come in my next blog post when I have the pocket pages complete. That's my plan, anyway.

Photo below is one of the items in that pocket. I painted a tag white, then glued photos to it. 

I discovered a fun app called Prisma, and spent too many hours playing with it! It transforms photos into different styles of art with filters. My favourite filter is the Wave and Candy. I discovered it from Miranda, through her weekly project called the 18/52 Art Journal Project. 

Scroll to bottom of post to see two more photos of my unPlanner.

The second photo on the tag is of my son and his silver velour cape.

Here are some more photos I tweaked. :) I might include a few of these in my unPlanner as well.

Before, of our tree in our front yard:

After, using the Wave filter:

Candy filter

Before:

After, with the Wave filter again.

Before, our shortcut through the trees to the mailboxes.

After

Before, some of the roses in my garden:

Before, photo of the brayered backgrounds I used for my August unPlanner pages:

After:

This last one is giving me ideas of painting backgrounds! Need to try!

Spent a good half hour driving around in the country yesterday, taking photos of the beautiful scenery around us. 

This altered version reminds me of some famous painter...but I can't remember who!

Well, it was fun to share what is happening in my unPlanner! I'm looking forward to making the PACs and the fun List10 this month. Hope I inspired you to work in your unPlanner or other artjournals!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

October 2016 unPlanner Final Pages

Hi, peeps! I'm back with my final October pages in my unPlanner.

For more information on the unPlanner project, visit Art to the 5th Academy. It's an art journal project with monthly themes and weekly prompts. :)

I had one empty spot left on the left from my daily journaling , so I filled it with similar images and colours as the rest of my pages. Dots, circles, squares, and then more shapes on top of that, stenciled, seems to be my go-to this month. 

For the right side, I made a pocket again to house the PACs. I used a kraft envelope, cut down. See my other version of this style pocket HERE. The pocket is decorated with various shades of greens and yellow through THIS stencil. Added the same pretty yellow trim as I did last time and a strip of black and white patterned paper.

For the spine, I used Carolyn Dube's Circles Layer Me stencil, adding doodles with paint pens.

Much to see here. Scroll down for closer-ups.

Peeking out behind the PACs, are small pieces of paper I decorated with paint, tucked into page protectors.

Here is the other side:

This features a black tag that came with the unPlanner kit.

I just starting stenciling with some older StencilGirl club stencils on a black tag without planning the overall look, just adding colour and shapes with the stencil. Such versatile designs! This particular stencil has circles and squares, and loopy lines, giving you options you might never have thought on your own!  I added more stenciling in different colours, smooshed some paint on, covered one area with another stencil, added another stencil over that, some finger painting, more stenciling, add paint dots, attempt some "shadowing", and on and on. :) 

My favourite part of this whole tag? The ovals I made pop with shadowing! 

Another favourite part is the lower right area, where grid outlines float above loopy darker areas. I'm learning so much about layering. I find that I don't see the magic until I have looked at it quite some time.  

Adding dots with different coloured paint pens makes everything pop too.

I can't leave circles out, so added one over a spot that I didn't like.

Next I looked through an old book (turned into an art journal), searching for some words that fit my mood or thoughts at the moment. Looking back, I wish I had left out the "proud" part. 

I still had some dyed silk ribbon left over from March when I used a similar colour scheme in my unPlanner. Loving that look!

And a pic of the envelope empty.

Mini Diagonalz stenciled in with dark green paint over a gelliprinted text paper backs the envelope front where the PACs sit.

A purple punched out piece sits all proudly on the back of the black tag, visually "separating" the background from the pocket page.

My PACs: I decided to not do some of the challenges this month, instead concentrating on more of the journaling; I just did two of them.

Moon and cityscape:

Week 43 challenge was to repeat a pattern. I did several repeats of pattern here, like I usually do, so a very easy challenge to do. :)

Driv'n by the spheres - perfectly fits me, don't you think? :) This challenge was to start with a doodle. I found a piece of watercolour paper in my stash with some of these doodled circles, left over from the 2014 DLP project, so I cut it to the PAC size, and voila! The diamond doodled paper top left I cut out from a previous ICAD project I started, but never completed.

The challenge for this PAC was to hide something, so my "hidden" part are the multiple layers I covered up in the process of coming up with something I liked. LOL. The loopy flowers and the tiny circles is from a stamp set by Rae Missigman, called Boxy Blooms.

The next pages feature my Monthly Pocket Pics, consisting of favourite photos of the month of October.

A ruffle made with ribbon, painted, then sewn on to page protector.

The green area, in photo above, bottom right area, was stenciled with THIS cool stencil. So fun. I never would have thought up those kind of shapes myself! 

And there it is. October is done and documented. :)

Below are the links to my other October unPlanner posts:

October 12th

October 20th

Thanks for stopping by!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥