The missing bits - part 2

I missed a page from last week on my catch-up blog post - how did I manage that? Never mind, just one more picture to add to this post. OK, so the missing Mission Inspiration page first, then all the missing Colour Me Positive pages. Get ready for another long post.

Mission Inspiration - November

I used some leftover Tim Holtz tissue for the lattice background, followed by warm green, yellow & orange paints. For the nature elements, I used some stickers from Daphne magazine - which is where I also got my focal image. You can't see the sparkle in the photo, but it is definitely there in real life.

Colour Me Positive Week 30 - Creativity

This was so long ago I couldn't remember if the background paint or the stamping came first - but looking at the actual page, it seems to be stamps first, followed by paint smeared on by fingers, then I used a card to make the lines. This page has a little sparkle too, but I'm afraid the photo must have been taken in dull light and nothing shows up.

Colour Me Positive Week 31 - Sparkle

The quote  made it obvious that this week's page should be about friends and as my BFF is also my sister-in-law that was easy. I took a photo from her 60th birthday celebration dinner, added a crown and a gold star. The background is a bit of a mess, but as usual, the page looks better in real life.

Colour Me Positive Week 34 - Best

I did this page for myself back in July, and it is perfect for this week's challenge from CMP. I used a page from a magazine to cover up some private journaling, and then painted out the unwanted text. See my previous post (http://jennyjotting.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/a-z-collages-finished.html)

Colour Me Positive Week 35 - Generosity

This was done sort of following a lesson from the Art Sherpa on YouTube, except mine is much smaller - done in my small Dylusions journal. The basic background shape is an arc from where you add paint in solid colours and also drip paint. It looks like a horizon with colourful buildings in the rain.

Colour Me Positive Week 36 - Travel

This gave me a chance to use a set of Tim Holtz cityscapes stamps that I have had for a while. I painted a very rough background, glued down a map and some photos of places I have visited. I painted over the map to reveal the word JOURNEY.

Colour Me Positive Week 37 - Change

Quite by chance, my nephew shared a post from someone with an amazing quote about choice and change:

Choice is the most powerful tool we have.
Everything boils down to choice.
We exist in a field of infinite possibilities.
Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of doors.
At any point we can CHANGE the direction of our lives by a simple choice.
It is all in our hands, our hearts, our minds.

My page was simply covered in feather stencils and then leftover paint was rubbed around (using a makeup sponge) in the blank spaces.

Colour Me Positive Week 40 - Future

Here I've used my favourite technique of covering up the background so that words or shapes pop out. Lots of bright colour was used with some glittery stamp pad ink too. The page was covered up by the turquoise paint and then given a few gold accents with sunray & harlequin stencils.

Colour Me Positive Week 41 - Simplicity

On this page, I've reproduced a Mark Rothko painting on which to place this week's quote. Rothko's painting always look deceptively simple but there is a depth in them that is quite profound. I haven't managed any of that depth and in fact did not try - I simply wanted the colour field background for the quote.

Colour Me Positive Week 42 - Free / Gone Fishing

Rather than 'gone fishing', I've chosen my favourite pastime - reading. The background is where I used up some excess paint. All I did was stencil & stamp some script over that. As well as some pictures from Mr Google, I have included one of my own with Gromit (of Wallace & Gromit) reading a book about dogs, and of course, a DO NOT DISTURB sign! Some small drawings of books & glasses finish off the page.

The End

Phew - I think that's everything and I haven't missed anything else. I will try to get back to a regular blogging schedule so that the posts are much, much shorter. If you've slogged through to end, thankyou - I hope you enjoyed the art.

Keep well and cheers for now.

The missing bits - part 1

Wow, I only did one other Journal 52 between August & November, but managed four Mission Inspirations and nine Colour Me Positives! That means that I'm going to split my catch-up posts in two - one for J52 & MI, the other for CMP.

How on earth am I going to keep up next year when I have additional (paid for) tutorials to watch and then make art for - I may have to drop something. Anyway, here goes.....

Journal 52 Week 44 - Heritage

So the challenges this week were for a spread inspired by Halloween, or one for Day of the Dead honouring your ancestry. I went down the ancestry path because we don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia. I made a background using stencils with fleur-de-lis and shamrocks to indicate my French and Irish lineage. I drew the girl with acrylic paints and used some black and white paint pens for detail. I wrote surnames of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in the girls hair,and added a couple of arrows to indicate the convict in my family's background.

Mission Inspiration - June

The hardest part of this month's challenge was finding some food can labels. I didn't want to use anything in my pantry, but I didn't really have any that I could "rescue" from the recycling. Luckily I had a small can of soup for lunch one day and then used a tea bag wrapper.

I wanted to make a page about the Murray Goulburn crisis where MG had not only lowered their prices for milk but had back dated it and forced many dairy farmers into debt. It was essentially a heartless decision by heartless men for heartless investors with no thought for the dairy farmers who started the co-op in the first place.

As one farmer said - management and executives of MG were either complicit in putting this particular strategy in place or were ignorant of it. Neither made them look like competent business people!!

I don't often get political - but this made my blood boil, especially since the man in charge then left with millions in his pocket - definitely COMPLICIT.


Mission Inspiration - August

Obviously using map fragments pointed towards a travel page or quote of some sort. I ripped up a map of Victoria for the first layer and used a butterfly from a colouring book with thread trailing out behind it. I think I missed step 8 - but who can tell?

Mission Inspiration - September

I think I did all the steps for this one, but did everything in the wrong order and my paint layer was way too thin and my girl does not stand out as well as she could. I used watercolour pencils for her face, acrylics for the feather stencils and StazOn ink pads for the stamps. It's all a bit of a mess!!

Mission Inspiration - October / Colour Me Positive Week 43 - Dreams

This month I completely missed the bit about using a baby wipe for the black gesso - so mine is painted on thickly. This was one month where I found it hard to fit everything into the design, so it all looks a bit messy - again! But, big bonus, I was able to use this for week 43 of the Colour Me Positive challenge.

Well that wasn't too bad - just the rest of the colour Me Positive pages to do now. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Cheers, Jenny.

Lots to catch up on

Well, since my last post I've been in hospital for an operation, had six weeks off work, gone back to work for three days a week instead of four, had my garden tidied up and found a cleaning lady. I've also completed lots of my mixed media challenges and signed up to "Let's Face It 2017".

I attended another cousin's funeral in September - very sudden heart attack, but on a brighter note, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I went to another cousin's 75th birthday celebration.

Fabulous day had by all. She is quite blind so another cousin organized a petting zoo where she could hold the baby animals, and a didgeridoo player who demonstrated various didjeridoos and explained about how they were made and how that made them sound. A very unusual birthday indeed!

So first of all, hospital - I had a cyst on one of my ovaries, or so they thought. Turns out it was attached to my uterus, so I ended up having a partial hysterectomy. That meant at least six weeks off work, particularly as my job involves some medium to heavy lifting. It also involves no heavy work around the house - no lifting, carrying or reaching up! As I live on my own that was hard because you can't do very much without lifting, carrying or reaching for things.

Luckily I have a very nice sister-in-law who took me grocery shopping each week and the hospital social worker organised a cleaner and bed-maker for me (mattresses are heavy). I got to sit or lie around for most of the day reading, watching telly or snoozing.

While I was off work, the other cataloguers split my work between them and E who I replaced, came back two days a week to do one library. This was good because it meant that I could ease my way back into work for three days a week, which I am still doing as I cannot decide if I want to go back to four days or stay on three (if I can manage money-wise).

The garden was done by one my co-worker's sons - he is a landscape gardener but makes "pocket money" doing weeding and trimming for family and friends. Luckily, I qualify as a friend and he put in a good days work clearing the weeds, the overgrown shrubbery and hauling away the mess. Next project, the little bit of garden next to my garage - body corporate property but I want a say in what gets planted!!

This last week, I have completed five pages for various challenges which I will post here. Anything else I will catch-up on in a separate post.

Colour Me Positive Week 44 - Laughter

I decided on a collage for this one because I have not done one since I finished the A-Z collages. I downloaded some images from the internet and found more in magazines. One page had some spray ink on the edge, so I decided to paint both of them first. That just meant I had to wait for the pages to dry!

Colour Me Positive Week 45 - Attitude

The base for this page is some leftover paint applied with a brayer. As one of the colours was Burnt Umber, it was a bit dark and too brown. I lightened it up with some stencils and then because it was still a bit brown, decided to use the technique where you paint over most of the page - a favourite of mine as it hides a multitude of sins.

I spent part of my recuperation re-reading J.D. Robb's "... in Death" series which I just love. I have them all and every few years, I start at number one and work my way through all the titles to date. The main character, Lt Eve Dallas has a favourite saying that I think expresses attitude with a capital A - Bite me!

Journal 52 Week 46 - Dear Leonard

The challenge posted this week was to honour Leonard Cohen who had passed away the previous week, but I am not such a huge fan. However, last week Leon Russell also passed way and being a big fan and a contrarian, I changed my challenge to Dear Leon. I listed to a CD in the car and chose the song "If It Wasn't For Bad", because I knew I had some really gothic images in a fashion magazine I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Colour Collages - Green

Lastly, I finally completed the first of my colour collages which I first decided to do back in July when I researched names for various different colours. The palm leaf kicked off the green theme, then I just found images in my Royal Auto magazines - they just keep giving and giving.

It has been a very productive week - just as well, because I need to make up for the lack of productivity in the past couple of months.

Another post soon with the rest of the challenges done since my last blog posting.

Hope you are all happy and well - all the best for now.