Moonshine : New Moon February

New Moons are for setting intentions. I'm thinking about nourishing my body (food as fuel), and how I can nurture my Inner Wild Child. Above some of my original gatherings - a photo of me and a dress tag - not included in the end but how perfect ♥ Will have to use it in a future spread. I was inspired by the memory of a page created in my art journal from 2015 using paint over collage and a printed photo of me as a child

I was also thinking about self-portraits....This is the result of those combined inspirations. I began with a lovely background of my favourite colours and a photo of myself (posed for this page) printed on copy paper for the paint over collage technique.

The angle of my original wasn't quite right so I added more hair and made the eyes larger and reframed the mouth so not open....I still know it's me under there!

Love adding paper serviettes as collage elements in my art. 

And this is my spread all finished - loving the colours ♥

You can find out more about Moonshine with Effy Wild HERE.

Self-Portraits

A day off for us today and I got a bit distracted looking at other people's art...Very inspired by Caterina who has a tradition of creating a self-portrait in her journal every January. I wish I'd thought of that! And then I realised that I have created self-portraits over the years - just not at the same time of year. These are the portraits that began with my actual face (using an actual outline of my face in some way) or something about them feels to me like they became personal.
I began my journey with creating faces in January of 2015. I took my first Life Book class then with the intention of learning how to create faces and this Beacon of Light was my first ever face! I feel like it looks like me because of the colours and symbols I used and the brown eyes and "curled hair" ♥

A week later, I was posting this : 

February 2016 begun with an image transfer of an actual photo of my face

Although I didn't begin with with my own face in this paint over collage in July 2016, this next one really feels like a self-portrait - I think it's the imagery, colours and brown eyes/curly hair

January 2017 - a repeat of that image transfer technique (even used the same photo to transfer)

And even repeated again in March 2017 for my vision board 

April 2017 - begun by tracing over a photo of me

November 2018 - another traced-ish beginning

Now for February 2019....I did actually start it today so I will share soon I hope.

Moonshine : Making is medicine

Our lesson for this new moon was about showing up, obeying impulses, painting intuitively, operating on instincts alone. I went into this art journal spread wanting to paint a self-portrait - fierce, proud, celebrating and nurturing my body as it changes. Change can be hard - it's been hard this past week when my body has behaved in ways that are not my normal. But I've got this. The new moon symbolizes new beginnings and a fresh start, making it the ideal time to make wishes, set new intentions, and plant new seeds. My new moon intention is to embrace the changes, celebrate my strength, be grateful for what has got me here today....
Also on my mind are the lovely warming days and gorgeous roses in my garden

"My Mum"

and picked on my table

"Compassion" with Alstromeria

I talked about this book in a previous post : 

It is really adding another dimension to my art, helping me to celebrate what is around me seasonally - in New Zealand that is flowering and sap rise, a high-energy time when the whole earth sings of growth and regeneration. When it's this time in the northern hemisphere they celebrate with May Queens and Beltane fires. We are half way between Spring equinox and Litha, Midsummer's day and Summer Solstice. I am happy to "pause" as we have also been asked to do in this class in November, but I'm not waiting for the long dark. Interesting to see how those rose colours manifested in my painting ♥ 
Show up - with all the above in my head, and the only plan a self-portait, I first traced(ish) a photo of my own face and then laid down some gorgeous iridescent fiery colour.

Obey every impulse...I ♥ stencils so I gathered some favourites

More iridescent paint all shimmery

Operate on instincts - so glad I was moved to use white too - so pretty

Then the universe (OK FB!) showed me these wonderful words from Victoria Erickson that fit my feelings perfectly. I cut down an old calendar page and fed it through my printer to get this lovely background colour ♥

I am trying to flow gently with the changes happening to me - this past week, art has helped so much when I've not been feeling my best : "Making is Medicine".
Not sure what next in the background (maybe it's done) so decided that the face needs my attention next, and that ended up including hair (stencils) and gorgeous floral serviettes to trim the dress and head

After playing around a bit with the poem, I decided that it needed to be cut up so as not to completely obscure the lovely layered background

A few minor touches, and here's the finished spread 

Get the links to all Effy's offerings for 2019 HERE (including Moonshine 2019), and check out the info about how to save by purchasing Early Bird bundles HERE.

FFII : Week 8

Here's my interpretation of the last lesson from Effy's 8-week online class Facing Forward II : the things we need to hear. She began as a tilted head girl drawn with charcoal pencil and then softened with a blending stump - 

I love the look of her over that base text in my recycled art book. So much that I didn't want to follow the rest of the lesson and add any colour! So she sat for a couple of days until I felt what she needed : some music, a few stars (to symbolise my word of the year SHINE) and some words

Here is the page complete. Click on the photo to see larger detail.

Effy is an incredibly generous teacher and she gave us a bonus technique to finish with. I shared my try at that as part of my weekly journaling in my previous post. I forgot to take process photos unfortunately. First I traced over this photo of me to transfer with carbon paper

Then used a charcoal pencil and smudged it with a blending stump - when I sprayed with fixative though the blue carbon showed through! I had to disguise that by adding colour so she's ended up a bit more mixed media than first intended. Good learning though. A friend still recognised her as a self-portrait.

Sad to see this class end - I've spun it out as long as I could!! Thankfully I am still part of her Book of Days class and our second session starts 1st May. Enrol for the year of Book of Days, or the second session (May-July) AND Facing Forward II HERE.
See all the blog posts about the faces I've created in this class HERE. See my Flickr album for all my art from classes with Effy HERE. 

One Little Word 2017 : March Vision Board

I'm taking Ali Edwards' One Little Word OLW workshop. The monthly prompts encourage you to connect with your word throughout the year and I'm excited to see what happens with SHINE in 2017. This month's prompt is to make a Vision Board. We did this last year and as well as being a fun project, I was inspired to set it as my background on my computer to remind me about Transform for the rest of the year : 

This time I started out with an initial idea of myself with a halo effect of all my elements of SHINE : Share, Healthy, Inner work, Notice, Enjoy. I began with an image transfer that I shared here with my dream affirmation board from a class with Tam in Life Book February 2016. It started very patchy but I know it will be fine

This base became this : perfectly imperfect ♥

Word gathering 

Decided to start with a gold background in keeping with "Shine", and then added tapes and stencils for my base (background words on right are because I am using an altered book for my art journal)

Then I started to add all my words - I found some lovely quotes about Shine that I could include. Click on any photo if you want to read it larger.

I like the combination of different bits of imagery and lovely words all over the varied background elements

Close up of the main words

It was a fabulous exercise - all that thinking about meanings of my word while I sorted through inspiring magazines, and I enjoyed the mixed media elements I included. Lots of positive messages for me in my finished vision board spread

See all my posts about OLW 2017 HERE, and my Flickr album which includes any art featuring my word as well as the class prompts HERE. It's become my desktop background

Daily Journaling Week 2

I'm following the prompts of the original Documented Life project from 2014. Week 2 : Selfie (with your one little word if desired). When I turned to my next spread in my journal, again there was already paint on the page.

One of the things I thought about in times past was to use this journal to focus on faces. So my first thought : I wonder if this coincidence means I should try drawing a selfie? I loved Tam's lesson about building a dream and affirmation board which I saw during the Woman Unleashed retreat. I had already done a lesson like this last year with her during Life Book 2016 :

This current journal is only 1/4 the size of the original project, but I enjoyed it so much I thought it would be fun to use the same photo of myself printed smaller and see what I could do on a smaller scale. Here's the initial image transfer

DId the face first - after working in a large journal for so long a small face was a challenge

I still have a little of the tissue with gold stars left, and it was perfect for my garment and I used a new stencil to add my word 

Once I added the background and detailings around her head plus the tape she's done

Here's the comparison of outcomes from the same lesson - feel like I want to do another large one now! Click on the photo to see it larger.

If you think you'd like to have a go at this, Tam's instruction video is available at the retreat until 15th January - sign up here. You need to join the retreat and then skip to Tam's name on the Schedule (I also enjoyed Alena Hennessy's art lesson)
I had added some of the background copper to the journaling page opposite, and then toned it all down with a layer of apricot paint for writing

Last week's journaling turned out like this : 

This time I ruled lines across the page for journaling, but then made a block for Saturday/Sunday. I quite like to include photos and the narrow strips aren't good for that. But maybe I'll mix it up this week....

I feel like I need more space, but perhaps this will be good discipline to just dwell on my happiest thoughts. The original project included flaps on every page. I do love tags and since my space for daily thoughts isn't large I need to think of creative ways to keep track of the weeks. Maybe if I think I'm going to have a full week I could attach my art on a flap. You'll have to keep checking back to see how this develops ;-)
You can see all my posts about this daily journaling project HERE and my Flickr album HERE. Do let me know if you are blogging about daily journaling so I can come see :-)
There is a FB group for 2017 - run by different people but to keep the concept going : it's called Life Documented 2017. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to use those prompts purely because of the timing of their uploads. I'll let you know...