ArtyFartyAnnie

Hello my friends in Blogland, I'm still hopping backwards and forwards with Wanderlust, trying to finish up last month's lessons on the theme of "Faces" before I start on this month's theme, "Rivers". As always, I'm loving and learning from every lesson. For Week Seven, Marieke Blokland showed us how to doodle faces and then expand on these to create a mixed media art journal page. Here's my AJ page so far ... I still want to add some wordage, but can't decide what to say just yet, so I'm going to leave it there for now. It was fun doodling lots of different faces and definitely resulted in a different style to my usual faces which is brilliant. Here are some of my doodles, just scribbled in Inktense pencil which I then "activated" with a water brush to add shadow ... Thanks for stopping by today, have a peaceful and creative week, see you again soon! Love Annie xxx

Hello Everyone, I'm loving Wanderlust 2019 , enjoying all the different teachers with their varied styles and approaches and learning different techniques and ideas with every lesson. This month, the theme is "Faces". For some reason I jumped in and did Week Six with Marjie Kemper straight away (see the post immediately before this one if you're interested), then went back to Week Five with Kasia Avery. I will come back to this again but here's how it looks now ... Kasia showed us how to start by sticking down a face cut from a magazine, then painting over the top. Here's mine before I started painting the face ... After a coat of clear gesso, I worked with gouache, mixing all the colours from a very limited palette, which is something I need to practice more. I love gouache, to me it has the translucency of watercolours combined with the body and vibrancy of acrylics. I did use some white acrylic as well, then did the lettering with paint pens...

Hello Everyone, I've been catching up on my Wanderlust 2019 pages. Week Six was a lesson with Marjie Kemper which was lots of fun, really encouraging me to get out a few supplies I had not used in ages and just enjoy the process. At first it felt like I was just making a very colourful mess, but I was happy with the page that eventually emerged ... I enjoyed using sprays and then stencilling with inks in the same colours to create layers and I loved how the sprays worked over stencilled texture paste. Marjie's idea to use tags to create little pockets to hold secret messages was really cool. I didn't have a glamourous face stencil or stamp, so I used this skull, as a reminder that life is not a dress rehearsal :o) The next day at work, my hands were still black and blue with ink, but it was SO worth it!! Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon. Love Annie xxx

Hello everyone, I can't believe it's Friday again, a new Wanderlust lesson just came out - better quickly post a pic of my effort for last week, when Kasia showed us how to start with a collage and then add a soft cloudy effect with acrylic paint to create a backdrop for our chosen word of the year. It was so much fun making the clouds that I got a bit carried away and covered up most of my background papers, but you can still see the focal images which came from the gorgeous printable ephemera collection put togetherby Eliza Trojanowska for Wanderlust 2019. Anyway, here's my effort, featuring my word for this year ... The scribbled text reads, "What do you really want? What do you really need? What will the consequences be?" which is my mantra for 2019. Thanks for stopping by today, see you again soon! Love Annie xxx

Hello Friends in Blogland, My January ScrawlRBox was waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday and I couldn't wait to play with it. Here's what we got this month ... W&N Promarkers in three different shades of warm brown; Sakura Pigma Micron 01black; Sakura Pigma Brush black; F-C Pitt Artist Pen 1.5 white; F-C 9000 pencil 2H. We also got a couple of sheets of Canaletto 160gsm Liscia paper and a sweetie which I ate before I took the photo :o) This month's inspiration piece is by Italian illustrator Giobi. We are encouraged to use these supplies to tell a story and try to convey a memory or emotion. The challenge for January is "Growing Up". Over the last week or so, I've been noticing the days just starting to lengthen and new shoots beginning to appear, signalling that we will soon be coming out of the short, dark days of winter and we can start looking forward to the spring. Inspired by this feeling, I created a page for my journal, us...

HI everyone, I knew I was going to enjoy the theme for this first month of Wanderlust 2019 - "Typography" and I have definitely not been disappointed. For Week Three we had a jam-packed lesson with Kelly Hoernig , who encouraged us to be inspired by art supplies and different styles of typography and shared SO many useful tips along the way that I will have to watch the videos over and over again! It's kept me busy all week and I have lots more ideas to try, but here's the first finished page in my journal ... Hopefully I'll have some more playtime over the next few days, so watch this space ... Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon :o) Love Annie xxx

HI everyone, For week two of Wanderlust 2019 , we had a lesson with the lovely Athanasia Papantonniou , who showed us how to create a very dimensional page, layering different types of media and various elements inspired by this month's theme of "Typography". I really really had a blast with this and I love how it turned out ...  Athanasia started by stamping on sticky labels and using pigment powders to add vibrant colours, these were then adhered to the page as the first layer. I didn't have any labels, so I used card scraps and punched them into circles ... It was so much fun making the circles that I just couldn't stop and ended up with loads. Some of them I turned into "danglers" to hang off my page, by sticking two together back to back with thread sandwiched in between ... What an inspiring lesson this was, and the next one looks just as good :o) Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon and have a lovely creative week!...

Hello everyone, Here's what came in the December ScrawlrBox - not my favourite so far, but there were a couple of things I'd never played with before so I had fun with it ... We got a pack of five Frixion Pens in pastel highlighter colours, as well as a black one, plus fine and ultrafine black Sharpies, some sheets of paper and of course a little sweetie! There was also a silver fineliner which isn't in this photo. This month's inspiration pieces were by Ann Pellegrino and the challenge for December was "Pastel Petals". Here's what I came up with ... It was really interesting trying out the Frixion pens - the ink disappears when you rub the end of the pen over it, but actually any kind of heat works, so for example you can wave a lighter over it. I also tried scribbling them onto some plastic and applying with a waterbrush, which gave a subtle watercolour effect. As I say, this hasn't been my fave ScrawlrBox so far, but it's alw...

HI everyone, I decided to treat myself to Wanderlust again this year as I find it so inspiring - even if I don't always have time to try every lesson, I will still enjoy watching the videos and there is so much variety with all the different teachers. This month, the theme is "Typography" and the first lesson for this year was with Kasia Avery, who hosts Wanderlust, along with her husband Jamie. Kasia showed us how she created a page in her art journal, starting with collaged papers and building up layers with different mediums, and thenshe encouraged us to have a go with whatever supplies we choose. Here's mine ... I started by collaging various papers - saved tissue wrap, old book papers, ephemera from the printable collection created by Eliza Trojanowska and supplied free with Wanderlust 2019, and some patterned papers from my scrap drawer. After a layer of gesso which I scribbled into, I added colour with water-soluble crayons (Derwent Art Stick...

Hello to all my Bloggy Friends, I've been almost totally AWOL lately, lots of other stuff going on and not much time to play at the moment, let alone blog about it, but I did want to quickly show you what I got in my last couple of ScrawlR boxes, because I am so smitten with these little kits - for £15 a month, you get a neat box full of a variety of pens, pencils and other art supplies, along with some inspiration to get you started. Here's the November kit ... Lots of things in here I haven't tried working with before - such as coloured biros, a graphite stick and an eraser pencil, along with some gorgeous coloured pencils, a white gel pen and several other useful items, plus a really nice quality plain paper notebook. The featured artist for November was  Taylor Brooker , and the challenge to inspire us was "Body Parts". Here's what I came up with, using only items from the kit ... I did use the coloured pencils to add some subtle tints of ...

Hello my arty crafty friends, This week, I got my first ScrawlR Box to play with and I thought you might like to have a peek inside. If you click on the link above, you can check out the contents of previous boxes. Here's what I got in the September 2018 kit ... I thought it was really good value for £15 including postage - if you add up the RRP for the separate items it's way over that amount - and I love how it's put together. This month, the theme is "Complete Blackout", so all the pens are black, but they are all different shades of black, with very different properties, so it was fun trying them out and mixing them all together. Here's my very first experiment ... The ScrawlR Box includes a challenge each month to inspire you - this time it was "Jazz Noir". As you can see I went completely off-piste, but that doesn't matter, it was just a starting-point. Opening the box was very exciting :o) Here's how it comes, with c...

Hello Crafty Peeps, Yesterday our little craft group got together to join in with the Craftathon for Breast Cancer Care - we have £70 to donate to this very worthy cause and we had a lovely time ... We were making mini books and I love how they all turned out so differently, even though we were working from the same kit. Julie very kindly hosted our mini Craftathon and we completely took over her dining room for the day. Here's the table before we trashed it got started ... Julie had made us these sweet tissue holders as a memento of the day which was a lovely surprise ... It was extreme crafting to get the book done in a day, but we had lots of fun ... ... and we were sustained by delicious home made cake :o) Cake break #1 ... ... and Cake Break #2 ... We started on the easy pages and worked our way up to the more tricky ones. It was satisfying to see them start to stack up ... We tried out a few different tools and techniques to crea...

Hello everyone, The temperature has dropped a bit and we've had a good rain here in my part of the UK, but today it's blue skies and sunshine again, which is wonderful. I've been up since 3am, unable to sleep, so my chores are done and I have more time to play :o) I'm still loving Art Journal Summer School, it's encouraging me to play in my art journal every day, even if only for a little time. This week my favourite page was this one, following a lession with Marieke Blokland, the host of AJSS , who showed us how she creates her "dolls" ... Marieke also showed us how to add a fantastical fairytale background, inspired by a photo of a castle or other building we've seen on our travels. My background is drawn from the view I see from my window every day (we live in a cottage in the grounds of an old Hall). I stood in the kitchen doorway as it was getting dark one evening, and made a ten minute sketch, just to capture the feel of it. These nex...

Hello! Last week in Art Journal Summer School, Nathalie Kalbach encouraged us to create an art journal page inspired by a photo scavenger hunt, with each photo providing inspiration for a different element of the piece - colour, texture, lines, pattern, shapes, and words. Here's my finished page ... My photos were all taken in and around our own house and garden. Here they are if you would like to see them ...

Hello! Last week in Art Journal Summer School, Marieke challenged us to be inspired by the Parking Lot .... or by something that you wouldn't usually take pictures of when you are on holiday or visiting a new place. I decided to create a page inspired by one of those billboards, where you can see layers and layers of old posters, which have been torn off and replaced over and over again, resulting in a fascinating accumulation of textures and colours, with lots of fragmented words in different fonts ... These kinds of billboards have caught my eye many times, but I have never thought to take a photo, so I didn't have a reference. However, luckily for me, many other people have clearly had the same response, taken a picture and posted it online, so I was able to print off some images to give me some ideas. I sketched the rough shapes and words in pencil, then used NeocolorII crayons to add colour, then went back in with a black Inktense pencil and white Aquarelle penc...

Hello lovely friends, This year I signed up for Art Journal Summer School at Bloknote Academy . I've been having a great time dabbling in different techniques, styles and approaches and it's worked out especially well with the unusually sunshiney summer we've been enjoying here in the UK. It's been lovely to be able to sit outside to play and quite liberating to use only what is in my AJSS kit ... I've been working in my home-made journal, which I made from a vintage children's book and watercolour paper. The lessons are very varied and inspiring and all reasonably short, so I'm finding that I dip in and out and keep coming back to work on a page some more when I have time. Here are some of the pages I made during Week One, all still works in progress ... I included some of the original book pages in my journal, because I just love the look of them. We're into Week Three now - already half way through my AJSS adventure! Thanks...

Hello! I have some fun ideas for using up paper scraps to share with you today, with a video tutorial and a sneaky peek at a project I'll be making with some friends later in the year when we get together for a Craftathon for Breast Cancer Care in September. The kit I put together to make a mini album included 18 sheets of double-sided patterned paper and I ended up with one full sheet and quite a few small scraps left over. Here's the prototype mini book, with some DIY photo corners, pen clips and paperclip flags I made with some of the leftovers ... If you would like to see how I made them, check out my YouTube video ... I'll be doing a tutorial to make the mini book a bit later, along with some instructions and templates you could download if you would like to make the mini book. Maybe you would like to join us for the craftathon - check out the Facebook page to find out what it's all about. Thanks for visiting me today, see you again soon! Love A...