05/52 Bite-sized books...

Hello

Welcome to week 5 of 52 bite-sized books!  I'm busy busy busy in the background with secret projects at the moment, so its nice to be able to show you something -  especially when its as happy as this little book!

One of my favourite colour combinations is hot pink and black and I've used it throughout this book!  

Here's the flick through of the pages - and there's a 'surprise' when the cover is under UV lights! love it!

I love adding pockets to my journals - and I've added a few to these bite-sized journals so I've made a short video explaining how I do that - you can find it over on my You Tube channel....

Thanks for popping by.

01/52 Bite-sized books... or snack-sized signatures....

Well hello!!  

Happy New Year!!!

New year, new project.... 

52 little books - these photos show the 35 I've made so far, I thought I'd give myself a headstart and get a feel for the project.

Each book measures approximately 2.5inches square-ish - give or take 1/2inch or so - made up of the bits and pieces that I can't seem to throw away because:

* they're interesting
* "aaw I loved this paper and don't want to throw it away"
* it looks useful
* I'd die cut extras
* I like a challenge

These 'books' - more like pamphlets really - are made of 3 pieces of paper/card (may or may not be accurately measured/folded - I'm embracing imperfection) folded in half and stapled in the middle... keeping it simple.

52 books - one for each week of the year... they are the signatures that will build up to be a book - not sure how I'll bind them together - that's a decision for further on in the project... very much depends on how big the project gets...

This will be a lovely project to work on through the year - giving a home to all the little bits and pieces that end up on my desk... and one a week is very achievable. Their size makes them easy to work on when I have a spare five minutes or need to find a home for the previously mentioned 'bits and pieces'.

Here's 1/52....

Thanks for popping by..

Doodle something BIG!

I hope you are all keeping well.... In the UK we are in week 4 (I think, I'm beginning to lose track!) of the lock down.
I've been keeping busy and one of the things I was finding myself doing was clearing things out, destashing... prioritising...
This inevitably results in me getting distracted (in a good way!) and finishing projects.. or in the case of this BIG papermache letter  START & FINISH a project!  I bought it in New York a while ago (along with a matching M (for Matt))... I decided the time had come to decorate it - its been through a plane journey and two house moves I think it deserves to be prettied up! lol

I've laid it out here with a smaller a J I decorated a while back (its a wood shadow box design) - it was a sort of trial run...

This big J measures around 2ft from top to bottom and is about 2inches deep - its quite sturdy and suitable for stamping on to... so that's what I did!
I stamped all over the front and sides starting with the big images - my JOFY big doodle flowers were great for this!

I then filled in the spaces with smaller designs - leaves, flowers, cicles.  I left enough space between images for a bit of doodling, I 'grew' some of the images by doodling around the edges - you can see how in the photos below.

I stamped in Snowflake Fresco Finish paint because its a REALLY good white opaque paint, and added additional doodling with a Uniball Signo pen.
I like to doodle in white or black because those two colours are easy to match between different mediums ie black pen with black paint.. I think a blue or brown would be trickier to match up.

I enjoyed working on this project so much!  It was a little tricky to stamp over the edges and around the curves of the letter but the end result was worth it... thoroughly recommend giving this a go - you could doodle onto any object really.

Thanks for stopping by, stay safe.

Not just a block of wood...

... its a substrate for doodling!

I really like working on these 'offcuts' of wood... I like the texture of the wood, and the weight of them - and they are easy to use as substrate because the wood is nice and smooth to work on.

I started with a block of wood painted Slate grey...

Planned where the position of the mask/stencil making sure that it would wrap nicely around the sides of the block... (This stencil is PS085, one I designed for PaperArtsy - you can buy/order it from your local PaperArtsy stockist)

I sponged 2 colours of paint (Guacamole & Chalk) across the surface of the block blending as I went along...

I really like the resulting contrast of the grey, green and white....

Couldn't resist breaking out the white pen and got busy doodling on top of the Slate - it makes the design much more delicate...

Its hard to know when to stop doodling... lol

Thanks for popping in...

Art Journaling....

... is a great way to 'play' in a constructive way... I use the Dylusions small journal a lot - I have a couple of the other Dylusion journals but the size of this one seems to suit me - in the same way as my thinking/planning journal (yes I have separate ones for that) is a 25x25cm spiral bound journal - I think the square shape fits my 'thinking' - not portrait or landscape... (and it obviously works for me  as I have a shelf holding 30 sketchbooks of that size - so it must a good fit! lol)

I think some of you must know what I mean - when you try a new journal, a different shape, or binding and it just doesn't feel 'right'... I once tried a rectangular journal where the binding was on the short edge.. shudder - that one just felt sooo wrong - I think I got about 5 pages in and gave up... it was stifling...

Aaaaanyhoo back to the small Dylusion journal - the thing I like about it is when its closed it is quite small (book pages are 5x8 inches) & rectangular but an open spread basically looks square - now you understand why I like it - its SQUARE!!!

#easilypleased

You might've started to wonder why I'm telling you all this... its just leading into showing you a spread from that journal...

look - no stamping!! none whatsoever.. not even a little bit in the background!

Its all sketches and doodles - and I think there's a little bit of stenciling under all the doodling and painting...  I worked on it (on and off) over the space of a week because each time I opened the journal and looked at the pages they seemed wrong... unfinished... unbalanced...

So I just kept working on it until it seemed 'done' - another set of doodles around the flowers... another flower.. just kept going.. and now its done.
I love the neon pink and 'Mermaid' blue colour scheme - and the black makes it pop!...

So, here's my 'advice' for the day - if I can call it that - try not to give up on a page: add something new, remove something - paint over something that bothers you and replace it something else...
If all else fails take a photo of the page (for reference - learn from what you did) and then glue the pages together! lol  I've done that several times because I don't want to keep seeing the spread when I look through the journal.

I'll post another page tomorrow.. with less waffle! lol

Thanks for stopping by

Doodling....

I bought this plywood box 'J' from Hobbycraft with an idea to fill it with a layer of buttons (using up some my stash of buttons) but wasn't happy with it.
I had a lightbulb moment while making my JoFY Bingo Week15 project (HERE)... I could stamp and doodle inside the 'J' !!!  Stamp my doodle images to doodle around!!
Couldn't get started fast enough! lol

Here's how I did it - nice and simple!

The J is about 3cm deep (22cm tall) but I wanted the contents (buttons was the plan) to sit higher so I cut lots of bits of cardboard and arranged them in stacks inside the 'J' so the base was raised by about 2cm... (you could lay contents in the base)

Drew around the plywood shape and cut it out..

... and laid it on top of the stacks...  When happy with the height and fit I glued everything in place.. (PVA will do the job)

Next I painted it in my chosen colour - I went for dark grey (PaperArtsy Fresco Finish 'Slate') but later changed it for black gesso.  Set it aside to dry.

To create a base for the doodles and stamping:  I drew around the letter on black cardstock...

I chose to stamp with white paint ('Snowflake' Fresco Finish - brilliant opaque white!) because I knew it would match white gel pens that I was going to use for additional doodling..
I started with stars from JOFY70.. leaving a nice amount of space around them.. (for additional stamping and doodling..)... and followed with the large doodle flower from JOFY64, and flowers from JOFY54

... and here is the stamping finished...  you can just see the outline of the 'J'...

The 'J' was cut out and I doodled into all the open spaces - but not inside the outline of the doodle flower from JOFY64

Here is the finished 'J' - the top edge of the sides of the structure has also been painted white to outline the 'J'

Detail of the doodling and stamping... I really like the monochromatic colour scheme.. (it reminds me of Mexican 'day of the dead' artworks)

We went to America (ahem) number of years ago and I bought this large papermache 'J' - I 'had' to have it!  

So it came home with us, along with its matching 'M' (for Jo and Matt (my husband)) because I was going to do 'something' with them.. they've come across the Atlantic and been through two house moves -Now is the time - its now or never - I am ready to work on the big 'J'.

I can feel a bit more doodling coming on! (I'll keep you posted!)

There are lots of paper mache letters available, & you could do stamp and doodle onto all sorts of objects - inside objects (a friend recently gave me a wine box to work with - thats definitely getting a doodled interior!)... they'd make great christmas presents! (oops did I drop the 'C' word... sorry - I was hoping to get through a blog post without mentioning it again).

Thanks for stopping by

Size doesn't matter...

... when it comes to art journals... this one is at the smaller end of the scale....

This is my mini midori style journal, made with off-cuts left over from when I created a batch of leather bound journals for christmas 2017.

I've added a pencil to show the size of the journal - pages are approximately 5x5cm - not as mini as some journals out there but mini enough for me! lol

Its really a tiny junk journal created with 'HappyScraps' - those discarded pieces that are too nice to throw away...

(this is a flower from JOFY61, and I've doodled around the edges to make it larger.... nice!)

 ooooh doodling in white rather than black

Still enjoying working with watercolour paint - and I really like how different they look on different surfaces  - above is on canvas and below is on Smoothy card...

I coloured this page with Tombow brush pens (I like those A LOT) and then added some neon gel pen marks - it all looks quite subtle and 'normal' until its placed under a UV lamp!!!!

Here is the same page - left is daylight, right is UV light - crazy!!  Love it!
(could easily write secret messages only seen under UV light....... lol)

Working in this book was a lot of fun - no pressure - the pages are a bit 'goldilocks' - not too big, not too small - they were just right!

Have a go at working small - its fun - trust me! 

Thanks for popping by!