DLP Week 25: Hometown Memories...

Week 25's prompt for the Documented Life Project was 'Hometown Inspiration' with the quote 'There's no place like home.'  I am working on a fibre art piece using this globe, and since I had it printed on paper I thought I'd play with it and add the quote in fun lettering. I coloured it using Inktense pencils and my waterbrush. Simple but fun this week!

DLP Week 24: Recording Memories...

With all the craze over adult colouring books these days, I decided to do this week's Documented Life Project page as a black and white doodled drawing that I can come back to and colour at my leisure. It loosely records memories from our road trip along the east coast of the U.S. last fall, the favourite being camping among the wild horses of Assateague!

DLP Week 23: Travel Inspired...

The week 23 DLP theme is about travel, with a "Take me away" prompt, so I just had to create a page about my upcoming trip to Amorgos Island in Greece!

Catching up on DLP...Weeks 21 and 22...

I've had a wonderful week away at an Amanda McCavour workshop (I'll post about that soon), so I thought I'd just pop in and post another couple of pages in my Documented Life Project calendar journal.

Week 21:

And Week 22:

DLP Week 20: Modelling Paste...

...or not! This week's Documented Life Project prompt was to use modelling paste and the theme was 'rising to the occasion'. 

I certainly feel that Yoshi, my Lions Foundation of Canada future dog guide puppy has risen to the occasion. She is an incredibly beautiful, gentle puppy and on Monday I returned her to Dog Guides so that she can begin her formal training as a service dog. She will be training to work with a person who has a physical or medical disability, possibly someone in a wheelchair, although not necessarily.

The "or not" comment is because I was so involved in moment, creating this page that I completely forgot to use modelling paste, and I love how it turned out, so I'm leaving it as is!

My friend Marilyn accompanied me for the drop off and took lots of pictures of this milestone event in the life of this fabulous dog guide in the making. Thanks Marilyn!

DLP Week 19: Stitching...

I'm catching up with my DLP journal and this week was all about using fun bright bits of papers I had lying around. The Documented Life Project prompt for week 19 was 'stitching' so I machine stitched together several strips of various under papers and Gelli printed papers. These became my lines on which I wrote the weekly quote, this time used exactly as it was. I also had a sheet of silly stamped characters that I thought fit the theme of 'a life full of laughter' so I collaged them in, traced over some of the lines in black to make them pop a bit more (I had initially stamped them in blue acrylic paint). Some scribbly doodles here and there and I called it done...sometimes you just have to play and not take things too seriously!

Monday was the day I dropped Yoshi off to begin her formal training as a dog guide. I was missing her, and thinking about all three of my foster puppies, so I created this collage of them to be used as my iPhone lock screen image. I love their faces, which capture the different personalities so well.

Wafer and I have been missing Yoshi, but we've had a wonderful week of cuddling and playing together, sharing our undivided attention with one another. We're proud of our girl Yoshi, and know she's going to be great at 'puppy university'!

DLP Week 17: Playing With Inks...

The week 17 Documented Life Project challenge was to use inks. I have a good collection of acrylic inks, spray inks, Tsukineko inks, Posh Rainbow Inks by Ranger, Inktense pencils (love these!!!), India inks...you get the idea...so this week's challenge was just about pulling out the media and playing. 

Yoshi and Wafer were most interested as I added the final doodles while enjoying the beautiful evening out on the deck.


Here are a few close ups, followed by the full page spread.  

Happy Mother's Day! 

DLP Week 16: A Lot On My Plate...

The week 16 Documented Life Project challenge had us using Gelli plates for printing, and the theme was "A lot of my plate". Ironically, this page is a couple of weeks overdue because...yes, I've had a lot on my plate. LOL

DLP Week 15: Cry Me a River...

I just love how some art journal pages evolve, almost on their own.

For this week's Documented Life Project challenge, we were to use acrylic paint (a go to of mine when it comes to art journalling) and the quote "Cry me a river".

I started by tearing up some 'under paper' that I had on my desktop, and those colours led me to randomly paint the journal page using Key Lime and Teal Zircon Silks acrylic glaze. I love the intense colours and that subtle sparkle you get with Silks!

I collaged those torn bits of under paper onto the painted page, and in the process I discovered that the glue I was using, when dried and rubbed off with my finger caused an interesting lighter marked area on the page.

I liked that effect so I started making glue circles in a slight arc near the top of the page.

After the glue had some time to dry a bit, I wiped the excess off leaving the circles you see. I added a bunch of doodles to the collaged papers and circles and then I started searching on Pinterest for quotes that related to the challenge quote (I didn't want to use the quote given, but wanted to find something that related to it).

I found this quote:

Cry a river.
Build a bridge.
Get over it.

That immediately had me seeing the collaged papers as pillars and the circles as the linking bridge...

        ...a few more words and an arrow and I was done!

DLP Week 14: It's Water Under the Bridge...

This week's DLP challenge was to explore watercolours and the challenge quote was 'It's water under the bridge.' I decided to stay away from anything too literal but still wanted to keep to the theme of the challenge.  

As I do each week, I used washi tape and some collage components to create my calendar/journalling area. This way, even if I don't get to the art on the rest of the page right away, I can still record my daily entries at the end of each day.

I used additional washi tape to create a border around the remaining part of the page spread.

Searching the Internet, I found this wonderful butterfly that I was able to resize and print in a variety of sizes. I used Tombow markers and my waterbrush to colour them. I then layered the larger ones with a piece of old sheet music and a map page from an old atlas so that when I cut them out I'd have three layers.

 I had a lovely piece of tissue paper with script on it, so I stabilized it with some fusible interfacing, misted it with a spray bottle and then painted it with a variety of Winsor & Newton watercolour paints to create a beautiful, watery wash.


Once the background had dried, I took my layered butterflies and the background sheet over to the sewing machine-this is why I had to stabilize the tissue paper.
I machine stitched the butterflies to the background sheet by sewing over the body of the butterfly, leaving the wings free.

This was then glued into my journal, leaving the border to show around the edges of the 'water'.










I think this is a beautiful quote.

"Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a lot of darkness and yet become something beautiful."

To me it ties in to the idea of the past being water under the bridge...it doesn't have to undermine the beauty that we can still have within us.

DLP Week 13: My Unique Elements are Blooming...

So for this weeks DLP 2015 I decided to play around with marbling on paper using nail polish to create my unique 'custom elements'. Chalk that one up to experience...it's a first and a last. It turns out its a very stinky process (I guess I could have figured that out) and the results were not terribly satisfying! However, not wanting to waste anything, I went ahead and used the flower shaped post-it notes on which I had tried the technique and added lots of doodles with paint markers and black and white pens.

  

What's that...

...yup, I smell Spring in the air!

DLP Week 12: Inspired by a Friend's Silliness!

This week's DLP challenge was about focus, but all I could focus on was the silliness of a friends photos of his dogs. He's my stylist, and obviously has way too much fun on Sundays when he goes in to clean his salon. The 'girls', Sasha and Bella, play dress up and have photo shoots in the chair! Love these sweet dogs!

DLP Week 11: I Can't Stop...

Do you ever find yourself in a mood to doodle...always being able to add a little more detail...a few more marks to the page?

This week's Documented Life Project challenge was to use a border, so that's where I started. I randomly drew a border using the inspiration of lines from a French curve. I traced that line using a parallel pen to get thicker and thinner parts to it.

I always start the page by using washi tape to create the journalling part of my page, so using the washi tape for colour inspiration, I painted the outside of the border line in the pink. The inner area  was then randomly painted in patches of the other colours represented on the washi tape.

Again using the parallel pen, I did some marks along the border edge line and then added a few circles within the larger space.

Using a combination of black pen, white pen and paint markers I continued doodling and adding text around the border...Help me...I started doodling and I can't stop!

DLP Week 10: Make Your Mark

I've got no process or description this week, just the spread as it stands on it's own, intentionally 'scratchy' and quick. 

As always, it's not too late to join the FREE Documented Life Project fun!

DLP Week 9: Give Me A High Five

 This week's challenge for DLP was to use at least five layers...well, that's not really much of a challenge since I tend to build up many layers on each journal page.

I started by using some torn pieces of Gelli prints, collaged on the page. Theoretically I guess that's only one layer, yet the Gelli prints already have multiple layers of texture created with various found objects.

To give that wonderful pop of black and white that I love to include, I pulled out some washi tapes.

Then, using black and white Signo pens I added some doodles and drew a couple of silly characters.  In hindsight I should have drawn an odd number but, oh well ;o)

Finally I used some Copic markers to add some colour to the two 'ladies'.

DLP Week 8: It's Worth Repeating

Sometimes things just don't go as planned...

Funny that the text I had used on this page makes sense with the 'journey' I took in doing this page! I started by laying down some layers of Gelli printing and then glueing torn paper of the words in the message onto the page. That's probably where it started going wrong because I was then forced to work around the text. Anyway, the doodles of the little doily type flower motifs kept popping up and I ended up adding them in a variety of ways (thus the 'repeating' theme). 

At one particularly ugly stage (and often there are those ugly stages in the process) I was losing hope of being able to salvage the page so I added some smaller text at the bottom...

Not a great spread, but a good 'journey' none the less.

If you're interested in joining the fun and FREE Documented Life Project, it's not too late to get on board!

DLP Week 7: Going Under Cover...

I love how the weekly prompts in DLP 2015 get me thinking outside of the box and trying new things while incorporating some old favourites that I haven't used for a while.

This weeks challenge was to 'cover up the good stuff' so I started by using Sakura Gelly Rollers to journal some thoughts in overlapping 'patches' of script on black gesso.










I then used some hand-marbled paper and a piece of scrapbook paper to tear strips to cover some of the journalling.












I cut some hearts out of the lining of an envelope that had the word love repeated in a variety of fonts. I drew in the lines suspending the 'love' hearts using a Liquitex paint marker and with a black water-soluble stabilo pencil, I added some shadows to give more of an illusion of depth and layers. A red Neocolour II crayon accented some of the circles on the marbled paper and the doily heart.



Finally I added a bit of doodling in black and white and called it done!