Daily Journaling Week 9

I'm following the prompts of the original Documented Life 2014. Week 9 : collage something you recycled. This part was easy - did you see my haul of recycled magazines from the book sale last week?

Additionally, on the blog for Life Documented 2017 HERE we had a fun demo of adding a clear tip-in with a window. Obviously I needed to add a flap again to my spread - I flipped through one of my magazines from Jan/Feb (just happens to be that one in the photo top left!) and after finding a suitably summery picture, glued it to my flap, and punched a circle window in it. 

I attached it on the inside with plain masking tape since I will go over that, and then edged the collaged image with pretty tape on both sides. I decided to start the inside spread with a pretty sunshiney base to reflect the wonderful weather we've been having this past week or so - Summer love at last. I don't believe it's the first day of Autumn - hopefully we won't feel that for another few weeks - I'm guessing {hoping} that we'll be able to wait until at least the equinox March 20 before we begin a change of season.

I had several choices for my clear element : pretty plastic wrap (recycled), a scrap piece of printed vellum, and a transparency previously stamped with staz-on ink

I decided this would go over the window of the tip-in (flap) - here's the patterned plastic I chose lifted out of the way

Then I had way too much fun adding some other elements from my recycled magazine and altering some for my purposes :-)

Here you can see the finished flap folded closed to reveal the plastic and flower beneath

And here open

Happily - this was one of the places I added an extra couple of pages secured with a silver hair band - happily because I was able to slot in the card I was given for speaking at our club night

Here's the entire spread with card and extra flap

There's a lot going on in this spread and it was really fun to incorporate all the prompt elements. Only a bit more journaling for me to add to finish the week as we begin March. Looking forward to seeing what I can create this coming month. You can see all my posts about this project HERE and my Flickr album HERE

Play Day with Alcohol Inks

2 friends and I have a bit of a tradition of having Play Days for our birthdays....most recently we made paper mache tea cups. I shared mine HERE. On a recent Saturday we got together again, and the first thing we did was share our completed ones :

This time the birthday girl's choice was to have fun with alcohol inks. We set up

and then started with some simple monoprinting on photo paper

These make lovely backgrounds which may be doodled upon or stamped : 

Then we tried a technique which I've been dying to try for ages : blowing alcohol inks with a straw. See a video on YouTube for blowing patterns onto transparencies HERE. This was my first try on photo paper ( I think I put the blending solution on the surface before I dropped the ink) - also note the cool underpaper from the previous monoprinting :-)

and it didn't seem to be enough to do just one....

And here's what I did on the transparency - this was just a little one

but it was so much fun I decided bigger must be better - so hard to stop!....

I'd also seen this blog post where CeeCee had used this technique on vellum, so I figured it would work on Tracing paper

and it did

It was also cool on glossy cardstock

There was a fun effect that Zsuzsa had shared on her blog HERE. She dropped the inks over stencils and then removed them once dry. We tried this first on vellum : We used paper cut-outs as stencils, and also dripped some blending solution to encourage the ink to move (we may have used the straw as well to help move the ink around - just for fun!)

And then on a transparency - which I didn't think was quite as pretty

but note the piece of ceramic tile in the first photo that I'd pressed on top to get some of the excess ink - I finished it off with some copic markers and it now rests on the sill by my art desk (it's my word for 2016)

This post talks more about ceramic tiles and making coasters for gifts.
This next technique is also using a transparency - go HERE for the instructions. You need to alcohol inky up your transparency/acetate, then stamp on it with archival ink. 

Once dry, you can rub the ink off for a very cool ghostly effect 

When the play day is finished, you have all these cool 'bits' that you can add to your journal

or turn into cards

and keep a stash to add a certain "something special" to future projects :-) Even the under papers are cool - as a background in your journal

or for card making as seen in my previous post

I really encourage you to get at least one person or a small group together to play with some art supplies. In my experience, I am far more likely to push myself to try something different, and in a group setting it's much easier to laugh at the things that don't turn out, to move onto something else instead of getting discouraged, and to learn from others by seeing what they're doing.
We've also had a play day where we used alcohol inks to colour metal. Check that out HERE. 
And although there's not been much time for art, I continue to capture my life with photos and add them to my journal

If you look back at the last few posts you'll see the Mothers' Day card, the bereavement cards, and the background under paper photographed above is in the bottom left hand corner. Click on any of the photos to see them larger. You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. 

Week 44 : DLP 2015

Just wanted to quickly share my solution for my daily journaling for last week's challenge first. I decided that I would use tracing paper again and sandwiched it between the edges of this page and the next so that it becomes a flap. I can now read the journaling

and then flip it out of the way to see the spread without it.

This week's challenge was still under the theme of translucent papers (and also included dryer sheets and fibrous papers)

The first thing I did was to get some of my strawberry and rhubarb teabags, add hot water, and then add some of the tea to some coffee filters as well - delicious smell and colour

With our journal prompt of "just create" it was also appropriate that this week's Life Book lesson by Tam was about "Following your happy". As the first part, she shared a warm-up exercise where she encouraged us to consider all our supplies and think about which ones make us light up inside. Next thing was to use them without thought to composition, rules or a finished product. Just play and follow your happy! This is exactly how I like to start creating my pages so I followed that philosophy to start this week's spread : tissue/serviettes, stencils, spray, lace

Now to add more of what I love - stamping flowers and a butterfly, and a cute teabag label with the perfect sentiment

Then it was time to add the same stamping to my dried teabags and coffee filter

and then cut them out and apply them to the page

you can see their translucence with the backgrounds affecting their colour a wee bit. I loved the edge of the coffee filter so that had to be applied along the edge of the page as well

Here are a few close-ups of yummy texture and layers

it all makes me happy

I like the 3 different flower effects

And here's the completed spread

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. You can see all my posts about this project HERE.