Southern Girls Challenge - Patterned Paper

The challenge over at Southern Girls Challenge Blog is to use patterned paper in our projects.  For me it was really easy project to make.  I have been playing around with my homemade gelli plate and I had heaps of patterned paper lying around.  So I took a small blank 7 Gypsies notebook that I have had in my stash forever and filled it with my printed patterned papers.  Here is the front cover.

And here are the pages:

So now I have a little art journal with the hard work of the backgrounds already done for me.  All I have to do is decorate the pages.  These papers are so easy and so much fun to make.  I think I am addicted.

Please pay a visit to the Southern Girls blog to check out the challenge and to see what the other members of the Design Team have made.

The Mirror Crack'd Challenge - Water

The theme at the Mirror Crack'd for November is Water.       

Splish, splash, splosh!   

Water is such an integral part of our lives, the weather, rain, snow or storms. The landscape, the ocean, rivers and waterfalls. In our homes, cooking and cleaning. So many sports involve water, leisure and pleasure! 

 Show us your inspiration, what will you create? 

We are intrigued, will it be a scrap page, a canvas, a card, a 3D project or a tag?

Our host is Jan, and she will be choosing our Winner and Top 5.

Instead of a physical prize this month we would like to offer our Winner a Guest Designer spot for a future challenge.

My project for this challenge is a decoupaged paper mache hat box.

I painted the box with various shades of blue streaking the paint to look like water.  Then I decoupaged pictures cut from a calendar around the box. 

For the lid I used a whole page from the calendar.

Check out the projects from the rest of the Design Team and please enter a project of your own, We all love to see what you come with.

Imagine If DT Project - Journal Pages

This project for Imagine If is a bit different to the others I have done recently.  I am not sure if many of you know that in addition to her wonderful chipboard products Jo also sells stencils.  So I decided to complete a project using some of these gorgeous stencils.  I am currently taking part in an art journal swap.  This is the first time I have really tried art journaling and I must say I am loving the creativity of it all.  Here is the finished page.

The theme for this page was a song or video. I chose the theme song from Disney's Pocahontas.

To begin I used the bleeding tissue technique on the background.  This entails wetting the pages and then laying down pieces of tissue paper and then wetting them again.  The dye in the tissue remains on the page when the tissue paper is removed. It has given a pretty soft colourful effect which is what I was trying to achieve.  I also coloured another piece of watercolour paper using the same technique. 

I then took a large Faces stencil from Jo's collection and using textured paste coloured with black paint I stencilled the face on to a calendar page. 

 In the movie when Pocahontas is singing the song her hair blows back and becomes intermingled with leaves and other bits and pieces.  This is the look I was striving for.

In the background I used a piece of textured paper to stamp "mountains" and then I used another stencil of Jo's which has a variety of trees and branches on it to stencil fir trees onto the background.

Once the background was done I glued the face down to the page and then I ripped up the extra watercolour paper into strips and began gluing them around the face. 

Then using the Tree stencil I stencilled some branches into her hair.  I stamped some leaves and some swirls and added the line from the song, coloured her lips and eyes and I was done.

 

Pop over to the Imagine If website and check out the wide variety of stencils that Jo has to offer.  They are so versatile and can be used for so many projects. 

 

 

Facebook Secret Art Journal Swap

I have been taking part in an art journal swap with other talented ladies here in New Zealand. We each chose a theme, mine was inspiring quotes and I asked for some texture on the page. Boy did they deliver.   It has taken almost 10 months and I finally got my completed journal back.  I am thrilled to pieces with it.  The artwork I have received back is amazing and the ladies have put so much thought and time into each page it is humbling.

To begin here is the cover I made for my art journal from an old book.  I also used the book pages glued together to make my art journal pages.

We also had to make the first double page spread in our journals. Here is mine:

 

Now on to the gorgeous pages I received from:

 

Louise

 

 

Brenda

 

 

 

Fiona

 

 

 

Frances

 

 

Joan

 

 

Karen

 

 

 

Kath

 

 

Paula

 

Sonya

 

 

 

 

All of the pages I received back are just stunning and I am so happy I joined the swap.

 

Here are the pages I made for my swap partners.

 

 

Here is the page I made for Paula whose theme was "In My Garden"

 

 

Paula also asked for an extra page showing our garden. since I don't have a garden to speak of I did a page representing my dream garden.



This page I made for Fiona

 

The next page I made for Brenda.

 

 

 

Here is Karen's whimsical page:

 

 



I loved this page with the Tim Holtz birds I made for Kath.

 

 

For Sonya's pages I tried my hand at a Teesha Moore style page.

 



 



Joan's pages were about taking the time to....

 

Frances' theme was"Anything Goes" and I found those to be the hardest pages to do. Too many ideas in my head until they settled down and I decided on this:

 

 

And last but not least, Louise's pages. Her theme was a movie or a song and I chose this one:

This was a fabulous a swap to take part in and the fact that we all kept in touch via a Facebook page set up for the swap made things so much better and kept us all focused and interested especially with the sneak peeks that kept popping up.  I would thoroughly recommend a swap like this for people just beginning in art journaling and those who have more experience.  I have learn't so much through this process and it has pushed me to try things that were outside my comfort zone.   Now I am off to get ready for the next swap.