Monday 31 March 2014

Stars - Mixed Media Monday

Happy Monday, friends! That means it is time for another Mixed Media Monday.

I am still participating in the Journal52 Art Journal prompts, I am about 2 weeks behind but hope to get upto speed soon!

Here is my page for Week 11's Prompt, which was Stars: to take inspiration from the nights sky.

Shoot for the moon, even if you miss - you'll land among stars.

I started my going over my page in purple and then blue paints, the paints I used were quite thick and also had a metallic shimmer to them, which added to the night sky look.

This next picture should show the metallic shimmer a bit more:


I used stencils and gold paint for my stars and free-hand painted the moon. 

The quote was printed from a free PDF Printable I got HERE. I just minimised the poster sized pages down to fit onto 1 A4/Letter sized page, and cut each word out with pinking scissors. I also water colour painted each cut-out word with blues and purples to give a bit of colour. 

Just a simple page, but I am happy with the results and I love placing inspirational quotes in my Art Journal to reflect on at a later date.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to be back soon with some more artwork.

Monday 24 March 2014

3 for Journal 52 - Mixed Media Monday

Hello friends! How are you this Monday? I have 3 pages to share with you from my Art Journal today, all as part of the challenges at Journal52, where each week we get a different prompt to creative with. Here are my pages for the prompts from weeks 8, 9 and 10. 

Week 8 - Found Poetry
For this prompt it was suggested to use an old book page or magazine and highlight words in the text to use as the basis for your page, to create a poem or story. I clipped parts out of a book page and made up a bit of a story/scene. Then illustrated it.

The clippings say;
Overnight imagine escaping from the real world. A fairy story. 
A drumroll of thunder wakes me, go back to sleep. 
I paper pieced the bed, pillow and blanket, and went around them with markers. 
The girl image is a stamp from Paperbag Studios. 
I just used lots of random stamps from my stash in the 'dream bubble'.

Week 9 - Colour Swatch Inspiration
As you can guess, the inspiration was to come from colours. I used a Blue/Green/Yellow colour inspiration with a touch of purple and white. 

 I used stamps from Unity Stamp Co.
The quote to the left says:
Happiness is a direction, not a place. 
and the quote on the girls dress says:
'She decided to leap'

Week 10 - Create for a Cause
This prompt was about causes that you are passionate about, or even to ask if there is a cause to your art/craft. 

 I decided to embrace the reason why I make Art and Craft.  
'Cause it makes me happy!
 I used lots of bright colours for my background, and added some stencilling and doodling as well. I wanted this page to be bright and fun, and full of things that make me happy. Like rainbow colours, flowers and butterflies.

So there you have it, 3 pages from my Art Journal all for the latest 3 prompts over at Journal 52. I hope you liked seeing my pages this Mixed Media Monday. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Friday 14 March 2014

Photo Friday - Beach Pics

Hello Friends - Long time no blog! Apologies for that. But I have some photos to share from some trips to the beach I have took recently, which I thought you might like to see:


This is the main beach down at The Jetty here, you can see it's looking across toward the Jetty boardwalk that you can walk out on, and the Marina behind that.  


On the right side there is a rockwall/breakwall:


As you can see there is a lot of neat plantlife growing along the beach here. They bloom with these beautiful pink flowers, which I discovered are called beach morning glory!


It's amazing to me that they can grow so vigorously is the sand with the salt spray of the ocean and full sun - you wouldn't think much plant life could handle such environment, let alone one that gets such beautiful flowers:

I so love going to the beach and communing with nature.

The small island you can see in this picture is called Muttonbird Island.

There's usually always some seagulls around...

Here are also two photos I got up around the Marina area, where on clear days you can see small and medium sized fish swimming about:


and last but not least, a neat boat, 
with a seabird trying to find a way to eat a rather large fish he found:

Close up of the seabird and his large fish:


I hope you liked seeing my seaside photos this Photo Friday, and I promise to go blog hopping through all of your awesome blogs this weekend! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Monday 3 March 2014

Hearts and Clowns - Journal 52 - Mixed Media Monday

Good Afternoon Friends! I hope you have had a great week since I checked in last. I have been keeping busy here, and should have some photos to share on Friday.

But today, I have two pages from my Art Journal to share.
I did these as part of the challenges happening over at Journal52. Where we get a different prompt challenge each week. I'm a bit behind, and have 2 more challenge weeks to catch up on. But here are my pages for Weeks 6 and 7...

Week 6's Challenge was "Love Letters"

I immediately envisioned a large envelope with lots of hearts flying out of it! So I went about putting that thought onto the page:

 I used paints and water to make a semi water-coloured pink background. I Sketched my envelope, and added script text stamping, and postage mark stamps on my background, to add to the letter theme. Coloured my envelope in with Gelatos and Big Brush markers, cut out my hearts with some book text, and coloured them the same, and outlined them.
 I was going to find a quote about love letters to put on the page, 
but I couldn't find one I liked, so just left it as is.

Week 7's Challenge was "When I grow up"

I struggled with this one, and didn't know what to do for the theme. I decided to start with just a blank face, and try and build from there. Well after that, I came up with the idea to create a 'Pierrot' clown. In completion, I felt the character looked quite forlorn compared to the zany outfit. I tried to find a quote to express the contrast of the happy clown facade we put on, especially as adults, compared to the (sometimes) opposing reality. So I just made up my own quote to tie-in the theme.

 I kept my background simple, just painting through a arrow/triangle stencil, 
and doodling around them when the paint dried.

So, there are my two pages for weeks 6 and 7 of Journal 52, and that's it for this weeks Mixed Media Monday. I hope you liked seeing them, and I hope you have a great new week! Thanks so much for stopping by!