The Stencilfied Journal Prompt 20

As you can tell below, our latest prompt for #thestencilfiedjournal told us to us office supplies to embellish our pages. I used little round tags as well as washi tape. All my spreads for #thestencilfiedjournal are done in a 9 x 14cm art journal.

I started by making the background, using acrylic paint with the large stencil from the September Stencilgirl®Club set and I added rubber stamping as well as collage with tissue wrap and vintage text. I stencilled on top of the previous layers using blue acrylic paint and  Stencilgirl® L471 Hamburg, designed by Nathalie Kalbach.

The little round tags were coloured on a gelli plate, rubber stamped and then stencilled with white paint using stencil L606 Soulful Scribbles Flourishes, also by Stencilgirl®. The pattern was outlined and then I added words to each tag. The tags were adhered to the background using the string they come with and washi tape.

Life Book Tag and Jar

It seems very frivolous after the terrible way this year has started to indulge in much art play. On the other hand living our lives as normally as possible is the best defence to difficult times and the attempt by other people to disrupt life as it used to be. So I'm showing you the latest additions to my Life Book 2015 class consisting of a tag that incorporates my word for the year and a Happy Jar (it's called Awesome in the class but I prefer Happy). You can see them both above standing on the shelf in my studio.

Here is a close-up of both and you can see that the text on the tag reads: Courage is the Thing. Courage is my word for the year 2015.  Little did I know when I made this just how much humanity as a whole would need this, as well as I.

As I mentioned in an earlier post there will be no explanations for how things in the Life Book 2015 project were made. You pay for the class and then get wonderful instructions via video and PDFs so telling you here would infringe copyright. You can still sign up for yourself here and there is plenty of time to catch up. The next video will be uploaded on Monday and then every Monday this year.  I'll just add that the image I sewed onto the tag is a detail of the cover of my Documented Life 2014 planner. The arched entrance seemed symbolic for the start of a New Year. It was printed from one of my Instagram pictures by Printagram.

And here are some detailed pictures of the collaging I did on the glass jar into which I will be putting little slips of paper with notes about moments of happiness. And yes, the first one has been added. Now I will just have to remember to add more over the year so that I can open the jar on New Year's Eve and read all about my happiness moments over the year. Hopefully it will be full by then.

I sometimes suspect I'm too cynical for these kind of activities so I have decided to give this a real chance this year and be conscientious about adding notes

Creative Abundance

In order not to fall into a creative abyss after finishing my 52 Journals project I registered for an online class about Creative Abundance. One of the reasons also was that Lenna had already signed up and it's so much more enjoyable to do these things with a friend. As luck would have it other friends then also decided to take part and I'm looking forward to getting the weekly prompts, suggestions and encouragement every Friday. We're already on our second week as we took the Winter Solstice as our starting point. If you want to join us, there's plenty of time to catch up with those 2 weeks and all you need to do is join The Creative Underground ning group and then find your way to the 52 Weeks of Creative Abundance group there, pay and that's it!

I will share some of what I do for this class here but only those things that are not too personal as I suspect some pages will become. This week's theme was the word Allow and Christi Wich who is our class leader wanted us to think about what creative action we could allow ourselves. She also provided us with instructions to make a tag on the subject. I promptly allowed (pun most definitely intended!) myself to go off on a tangent and although I did indeed make a tag I did it in my own way and mostly using my own imagery. 

I started with an image of one of my favourite statues about which I wrote a dissertation many, many moons ago. You can find this angel and the Holy Mary on the cathedral of Reims, France. I used a large tag, coloured it as shown using watercolours and then cut out the angel and sprayed it with silver metallic spray. I added the "jewels" and stamped the word ALLOW followed by "unrestrained beauty" cut from a magazine. Those words symbolize what my aim is with all my various art forms. The edges of the figure were emphasized with charcoal pencil and the edges of the tag were darkened too. To house the tag I made a pocket in my journal using part of a transparency with inspirational quotes (you can see the tag both in and out of the pocket at the top). The background of the spread is a piece of sparkly tissue paper and on the left hand side I added the dancing figure that is the symbol for the 52 Weeks of Creative Abundance class. I cut it out and used it as a mask and after spraying that page with silver metallic paint too the white figure stands out well. The ALLOW on this page comes from rub-on letters. The final addition was the William Blake quotation that reads: "To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower". 

I wanted to have one journal in which to do all my exercises and art for the Creative Abundance class and made a journal, also following an online class. I'm going a bit overboard on them now that we have broadband! You can find this class by Diana Trout here. I painted the journal covers with acrylics and added one of my own photographs (of a decaying sunflower) to the front. 

Our very first assignment for the Creative Abundance class was Stillness and while doing the exercise I took a photograph of our wonderful apple and cinnamon candle, printed it off, added it to my journal, and found the right words for my thoughts about stillness in the same magazine as I used for the Allow tag.

Marie Antoinette Tags

After the ATCsyesterday, time to show you the Marie Antoinette tags, again made for a swap on the Marie Antoinette Swap site. This time the tags had to be fabric and as I had made a large fabric background already I used this to make the tags too. The other requirement was to use either images of Marie herself or something Paris related. As you can see I used transparencies of the Eiffel Tower on two of the tags and 3 small fabric images of it on the other tag, combined with Marie. Of course, Marie Antoinette herself never got to see the Eiffel Tower as it was build well after her time in Paris, and she probably also never ate cupcakes but after the Marie Antoinette film they too are for ever associated with her, so I added them to the tags too in both a large image and in the shape of the yummy cupcake ribbon! Delicious. Some sparkly embellishments were the final touch.

These tags are completely different from the tags I made for Lenna's tag swap but I enjoyed making them just as much and I have to be honest and admit that the texture on these fabric tags lifts my heart just that little bit more than just mixed media ones. And (I'm whispering this!) I love the girly colours! Probably the reason I love the swaps on the Marie Antoinette group.

Finished Tags for Lenna's Swap

The last post was so long and I therefore decided to put the finished tags in a separate post. It will be pictures rather than text. If you want to know about how to make these tags, read the previous post with all the necessary information.

The front of one of the tags. Another tag is shown at the top of this blog.

The front of the tag envelopes

The back of the tag envelopes.

My tags for Lenna's Swap.

When Lenna announced a new swap on her swap blog it was almost a given that I would sign up. That's the really wonderful thing of having more time to play now that I'm no longer a member of the Alpha Stamps Design Team. But this swap still has a bit of a connection with Alpha Stamps as we are all using the Envelope & Tag books available there. The books contains 10 tags and we will receive one of our own back and 9 tags from other people. I've actually made 12 (an extra one for me to keep and one for Lenna). The swap is also about techniques and when you sign up (go on, go sign up, you know you want to!) you will receive a PDF file full of marvelous techniques clearly explained by Lenna. Or you can of course do your own thing which is more or less what I did, although I did use Lenna's clear tape transfer method.

And by the way, these tags were produced in our new shed. John might have thought this would be entirely his domain and was already referring to it as "his shed" but when I knew I was going to spray, glue and stamp and that I had at the same time a quilt on the go in my studio it suddenly came to me that there now was an alternative place to do all that messing about. So now we have a "Frieda and John" shed with a line drawn the middle. My half is already adorned with pictures and a dyed shirt I wear for painting etc. I've also put down the oil-cloth table covering I made ages ago, and the old Lloyds Loom chair bought at an auction. Now let's get on with the tags step-by-step.

1. Glue vintage text pages in a variety of languages and from a selection of vintage books to the tags.

2. Cover tags with white watered down gesso. Let dry.

3. Spray the tags with a variety of colours using Crafty Notions Creative Colour Sprays.

4. Spray with a variety of colours using Moon Shadow Mist.

5. Using acrylic paint in a variety of colours stencil through sequin waste (heart shaped!) and doilies.

6. Apply fluid acrylic paints in a variety of colours using sponge brushes.

7. Finish by brushing on Iridescent Gold or Iridescent Copper fluid acrylic or both if you fancy!

8. Spray the back and front of tags again with Crafty Notions Creative Colour Sprays and Moon Shadow Mist in a variety of colours. Do this to the envelopes of the tags too.

9. Using Lenna's instructions that you will receive free when you sign up for this swap, make clear tape transfers (I used images from Altered Pages and European Papers collage sheets) and glue and then stitch them onto the tags using gold thread.

10. Stamp on tags and envelopes with travel related stamps using Black Staz-On and Vintage Sepia Versafine inkpads. Add postage stamps to tag envelopes.

11. Find suitable vintage text about travel, glue on and rub with gold Metallic Rub-Ons, using your finger.

12. Set eyelets into tags and attach fancy yarns.

That completes the techniques I used for making my tags and in the next post I'll show you detailed pictures of some of the tags. At the top of this blog is an overview of the finished tags. Somehow these tags have a very travel related theme. Tags always remind me of suitcases so I simply went with that particular flow.