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 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 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 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 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!

Doodling and Exploring a New Technique...

A little while ago I watched a YouTube video done by my friend Carolyn Dube, in which she used pan pastels and stencils to create a journal page. It looked like a lot of fun, and I needed a quick 'art play' so I gave it a try. I used my Stencilgirl peacock feather stencil, designed by Kae Pea along with colours that you'd expect to see in real peacock feathers.  I just love those colours!

I wanted a really soft, almost slightly blurred background so I used a very soft brush to gently brush over the page, pulling out from the core of the feathers. I probably should have stopped here since I love this...but I didn't...

I then grabbed the stencil and a permanent black pen and I traced the stencil a few times, filling it in with little cross hatch marks.

At this point I added my text and then put another feather up at the top, this time using only part of the feather.  Random swirls and dots filled in some of the border areas before I did a bit of journalling in the space under the two feature feathers.

I'm not sure why I had such a hard time getting good photos of this page, but the black is really dark (unlike the deep grey that you're seeing in these images).

The end result isn't as wonderful as the vision in my head was, and I sort of wish I hadn't covered up that beautiful background.  Oh well, I know how to recreate it!

Doodlicious Fun in a StencilGirl Framework...

I'm featured over on StencilGirl Talk again today, where I've used Lizzie Mayne's Half Moon Slant stencil to create a framework for some lettering and doodling fun.  This is just a sneak peek to entice you to come on over and see what I've done...

Doodling with a Friend...

One of the things I love about doodling and sketching on the deck at the cottage is that I've always got company!

We call this little guy "Out Back Jack"...'cause he lives out back.  He loves to visit for black sunflower seeds or peanuts, but even if I don't have any he comes up and sits on my knee or sketchbook and just visits.  He's so tame I can pat him!

 I'm working on lesson #4 for Doodle Arts and Letters, another Joanne Sharpe online class.

I used my Marvy II markers to colour this because I forgot to pack my twinks!

Finally A Little Art Journalling...

If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I enjoy doing some art journalling and I find Joanne Sharpe's online classes to be fun.  Well, in spite of my arm being in a cast, I went ahead and signed up for her latest Doodle Arts and Lettering class.  While I had the cast on I was watching the lessons, interacting with the other participants on Facebook and waiting for June 20th to arrive so I could get my cast off.  Well, that day came but the x-rays and pain indicated that I was not yet healed.  I'm now wearing a splint, but I've figured out that if I've very careful about not bending the wrist at all, I can take off the splint for short periods (about 15 minutes a few times a day) so that I can do a little bit of doodling.  And so, I have finally finished "My Grade 2 Art Girl"!  This was a lot of fun.  I can't wait to be able to get back to more of this once this crazy scaphoid finally heals!

Doodling Your Way...

I'm really enjoying the online lessons in '21 Secrets'.  This journal spread was inspired by the lessons of Cathy Bluteau.  It involves using collage and doodle and it was a lot of fun to pull out some of the little stickers, homemade washi tape, etc. to add some extra layers.  Some of the flowers came from beautiful napkins I've collected over time, as well as a birthday card my Mom gave me this year.  I wish that you could buy those beautiful napkins individually instead of having to buy a whole pack.  They often have such pretty flowers on them and they're perfect for collage!  I've also started collecting interesting elements from flyers and magazines...so much easier than having to store the entire magazine!

Spring Is In the Air!

 Last night, while listening to TV I was doodling in one of my art journals, and clearly Spring was on my mind.  I'll probably add some watercolour to this to give it some colour, but today's goal is to keep working on the quilting of my rust dyed piece.  I started working on it briefly last night, as you can see in this photo.

My goal is to finish it this week, but we'll see what other distractions pull me away from it.  Some days I feel like the crow, attracted and/or distracted by anything shiny, but in my case it's anything at all...shiny or not.  Look, there's a distraction now...