Art Journalling with Donna Downey

On Monday I hopped on the train up to Birmingham to spend the day getting messy in a workshop with Donna Downey, run by Creative Moments. I was really looking forward to it as I love Donna's pages which she posts for "Collage Monday" and "Inspiration Wednesdays " over on her blog.

It was a fun day and I learnt lots of new things. The workshop was product led, which meant that Donna encouraged us to play with specific materials (gesso, paint, gel medium, moulding paste, gelatos, stamps etc.) to get us to explore what we could do with them. I love this type of workshop.

Donna also gave us some interesting art challenges. This was the result of the first one, along with the abstract picture that inspired it.

This was a finished page, where the background was another challenge. I'm not sure about the writing on here though and I may go back to it with some gesso to cover it up. This is something I've learnt from reading Donna's blog and Julie Fei-fan Balzer's blog... If you're not happy with it, then change it!

Here are some more pages from the day...

Cardboard box castles

We have been making castles in our house. The blonde one had to make a castle as a school project which was followed by a castle exhibition at school. The kids work was fantastic with a huge range of castles including cardboard ones, lego ones, ones from a kit and huge, pink, sparkly ones.

This was our castle. We included a portcullis made from cocktail sticks and I found some iridescent tissue paper which made water in the moat.

We made a door in the back of the castle so we could see into the Great Hall. We got a book on castles from the library to help know what to out into the castle. My daughter thought this was cheating! I think we need to work on learning research methods.

This was our Great Hall. The blonde one really enjoyed colouring in a peel-off sticker on acetate for a stained glass window. You can see her colouring in, which make the tapestries on the wall. We used Fimo to make a table, fire pit and candle stick.

A very large cardboard box arrived in our house recently and was too good to waste. The Boy and I had a fun morning painting and sponging...

All three kids like playing in it now!

Psalm 139 canvases

I have been thinking about making this series of canvases for a little while and I am taking part in an online class over on Big Picture Classes called "Scrapbooking your Faith" with Courtney Walsh. It's a really inspiring class and it gave me a little push to get these finished. Last weekend I spent a very enjoyable day with my friends at my local crop sticking, inking and painting and managed to finish these in one day (including some more playtime in the evening).

If you'd like to know more about the details in the canvases and why I put them there, check out this post on my other blog.

On the front cover

I'm so excited as my first project for Sewing World magazine has made it onto the front cover - hurray!

The evolution of "Love"

When I opened up my latest box of goodies from Quirky Kits I knew I wanted to make a page combining the yellow diagonal stripe paper, the blue chevron envelope and the pink stripy paper bag the kit came in.

Once again I have used a photo of the ginger one on a yellow page. She has a very sunny disposition and photos of her always look right on a yellow background. She has been learning to write and she loves it, always jotting down notes and trying her best to write stories. The main thing she writes are cards for us, "Deey (dear) Mummee, luf... ". We love the way she wrote "luf" but it has quickly changed to the correct spelling. I didn't want the moment to pass without recording it and she helped write out the words and an alphabet for the page. She was sitting next to me working on her own scrapbook while I was putting this page together.

You may notice I have bought a roll of hearts washi tape (from here). I love it, and so does the ginger one, who used quite a bit on her scrapbook page too. The stitched hearts work well over the layers too.

Teddy bear's picnic

Over the past week I have been practising my crochet again. My sister gave me a lovely Amigurumi japanese crochet book for my birthday a couple of years ago. It's been on my to-do list for ages, but when two families I know both had their third babies on the same weekend, then it spurred me forward to have a go. I was pleasantly surprised as the patterns were written in a way I haven't seen before, but they were very easy to follow, even for a novice like me. I finished the first bear in two days.

This is baby Reuben's bear. He's travelling about half an hour away.

This is baby Eva's bear. She's travelling almost to the other side of the world.

Happy travelling bears. I hope you bring lots of smiles.