What's new at The Loft - Episode 109

Hi  Everyone, sorry for the absence of late.  I have been focusing my attention lately on some other things that I will hopefully be able to tell you about soon.  And while I haven't had time to post some of my own work lately I wanted to share the work of someone else.

Bloknote TV

For those that watch You Tube videos on Art Journaling you are probably familiar with the work of Milliande and Suzi Blu. Both ladies are tremendously talented and their videos are inspiring, however I'd like to introduce to you Marieke Blokland.  Marieke is a graphic artist and illustratior from the Netherlands, who makes cute and entertaining Art Journaling videos that encorporate her home life with her art. I love her Art Journaling style as it is part whimisical illustration and part paper crafting, and are always colorful and fun. Marieke's videos make Art Journaling look so easy! 

Marieke doesn't have the quantity of videos out there that other art journalers have, but I think when you watch her videos you will see why.  And after a year an a half absence I'm happy to share a new video that  Marieke Blokland has posted on You Tube in November. 

And since we are talking of Marieke I thought I'd share a few of my other favorite videos from Bloknote TV as well.  Enjoy!!!

To see more of Marieke's videos you can visit her blog

http://www.bloknote.nl/

Thanks for stopping by and hope you come back soon!

What's new at The Loft - Episode 107

Art Journal Play

The New Year for me is about the renewal of a quest, the pursuit of a dream, and the beginning of new adventures and challenges.   Challenges can be inspirational, frustrating but also great motivators.  I had first hand experience with this when I did my ATC 365 challenge in 2010.  So aside from other projects I hope to get off the ground in 2012, I have also recently joined the Art Journal Everyday group hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs.

I have been following Julie's blog for a few years now and she is always a great source of inspiration.  Her Art Journal Everyday group is what I call a great no pressure challenge.  All it requires (which is not really a requirement, more like a goal to strive for) is for you to work in your journal for 10 minutes everyday.  You don't have to complete a page everyday, it could be as simple as just laying down a background, but the hope is to have at least one page to post to Julie's site and the group Flickr pool once a week.  You can visit my flickr pool to see my entries this year so far.

So instead of sharing those entries I thought I would share some other art journal pages I have done in the past. 

 The way I work is to lay down a background or start a foundation for a page, but if I get stuck creatively or I'm not happy with the direction things are going I move on and come back to it later.  So it goes without saying that I tend to have some "works in progress" in my art journal which I have shared below.  

I'll post pictures of the completed pages another time.

Art journaling is a great way to experiment with new products and techniques and a fantastic creative outlet.  I have never been one to keep a "traditional" journal as I do not like recording my own personal thoughts, but with art journaling I've found I can share something of myself  in a different way.

If you are an art journaler drop me a line.  Comments are welcome, so don't be shy about telling me what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 92

Transition and Evolution

Creativity is not to be located in one state of mind, one room, one type of person, one individual. Rather it lies in the transition points between different ways of thinking. If we close the doors, we will never hear the full story.  - Chris Bilton

I got involved in scrapbooking with simple motives.  It started with the desire to document our first family vacation.  And while I still love the concept of it, I have found myself drifting away from it more and more.  I had started to feel limited creatively and began to branch out in other directions.  ATC's consumed an entire year of my life and I absolutely love the art form.  My challenge of making one ATC card per day for an entire year opened my eyes to other mediums and materials.  It forced me to think outside of the box more than I have ever before and explore other art forms for inspiration. 

And since that time I have further stretched my wings and branched out into new areas, and have gotten back to a few creative outlets that I had long ago given up on. Mixed media and assemblage are some of my newer areas of exploration, along with art journaling. 

In scrapbooking I couldn't really bring myself to use journaling in any of my layouts.  I didn't like laying out my emotions or thoughts for the world to see.  I wasn't comfortable in sharing these with others.  In fact in all the layouts I had done over the years only one layout sticks out in my mind that used journaling at all, which was more a story than any emotional disclosure on my part.  And though I am happy with the layout and the story I told,  I wasn't comfortable sharing the memories for fear of judgement.

Art journaling for some reason is different to me.  I suppose it is because when I first started working in my journal it was with the intention of not really sharing the work with anyone.  I loved and still love the creative freedom of art journaling.  Of using art and language to relate thoughts and feelings in new ways.  And while the thoughts, messages, and emotions expressed are not always conveyed in my own words (I like to find meaningful quotes) they show what is in my heart.  And what has surprised me the most is that as my exploration in this medium continues I have felt less nervous about letting others into those areas of my heart which I have put walls up around.  The process has become somewhat of a therapeutic one for me in many ways.  It has allowed me to evolve and grow as an individual and an artist in my own little world.  My voice, while small is beginning to grow.

“Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people's souls.”

- Melody Beattie

Recent Entries 

Speaking of ATC's

Here is one I recently made on a mini stretched canvas

And stay tuned as I can't wait to show you what I'm doing with those 365 ATC's I made in 2010.


Thank you for allowing me to share with you.  I'm glad you came by and hope you come back soon.

What's new at the Loft - Episode 90

Truth be told I got very behind in this class.  I loved the class, and really enjoyed the techniques I've learned, but it was very labor intensive, and I had way too much going on to keep up.  My own fault of course, but I am glad that I have a year to watch all the videos and finish all the projects.  Julie's class was amazing and she really gave a lot of information and was definitely worth the money.

Here are more projects that I had to do for the class.  The first is a mixed media clutch purse.  The project called for us to first paint up some canvas.  Luckily I had several large sheets of painted canvas leftover from Alisa Burke's Graffiti Chic class.  I had been saving them, hoping to one day find a project for them.  Julie's class was the perfect project to put these painted canvas pieces to good use.

Here's how my purse turned out.

Here is the front

Here is the back

We also had to make a mixed media strip pillow

So I took a lot of scrap fabric, a lot of paint, and a fresh Sharpie marker and here is the result.

 Another project we had to create was fabric ATC's using a transferred image.  Most who know me will tell you how much I love ATC's, after all why would I make one a day for an entire year, right.  In a weird coincidence it also required us to do an image transfer which is one of my favorite techniques to use when I art journal.  So this project was right up my alley.  I used white muslin that I glimmer misted with sunflower yellow and vintage pink.  After it dried I cut these two butterflies out and used gel medium to do the transfer.  The preferred method to do a transfer on fabric is to use a transparency, but I didn't have any so I did a direct image transfer, which makes the fabric a little stiff where the transfer was done.  I then made a mini quilt sandwich with batting and another piece of muslin for the back, then took it all over to my machine and free motion stitched the scrolls and outlined the butterflies.  Lastly I used a zig zag stitch around the edges.  And here is how it came out.

Speaking of Art Journaling

It has taken me a while but I finally got around to finishing the Art Journaling page I started when I posted about it way back on March 30th.  I had only finished one side of the page so here is where I left off.

and here is where I ended up

Well that's all I have for today.  Comments are always welcome so feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 85

Sorry for the long absence.  It's seems like lately I've been so busy, but my level of creative output has significantly decreased.  What's worse is that I'm not sure how that has happened.  I'm trying to get back into the creative swing of things though.

I'm happy to report that although I still do not have a studio to work in, I do at least now have a designated work area in my kitchen which I love.  This spot I now call my own allows me to be more organized and gives me a place to leave "work in progress"  It's a small space but one in which I am very grateful for.

You may have noticed that there is a few changes to my blog site as well, most importantly it has a small gallery of the latest photo's added to my flickr pool.  I've just finished a new photography class called Photo Manipulation 3 with Susan Tuttle and I will be posting on that next time. 

Also I'm excited as I've started a new class, "It's Sew Easy" with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, so look for upcoming posts on that as well.

SO WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING:

I did this painting for my hubby at a crop in January.  It was intended to be a Valentine's gift for him, but he saw it when I came home so the secret was out.

I have always wanted to try Art Journaling, and with the release of the new Strathmore Visual Journals and the free online workshops Strathmore has been offereing I finally took the plunge and created some pages.  The first workshop with Pam Carriker was about reusing your own art work in your journals.  I am not an artist in the true sense of the word, so I didn't have a collection of sketches that I could pull from to recycle, but I did this cute painting back in January and used it in a page for the workshop.

The workshop was great for giving even a simple sketch new life.  Here is what my journal page looked like recycling this image.

The above is 140 lb cold press watercolor paper.  Without a well of my own personal art to pull from I started working with magazine images and gel transfers. I also wanted to try different paper surfaces to work on. 

Here are some other pages from this journal:

The journal I used above had a surface area a little small for what I wanted, so I move on to 98 lb mixed media journal that was 7 x 10".  The size is great but downside to the 98 lb paper is that after awhile the paper wears down, and if you add too much water when removing the paper backing on a gel transfer you begin to rub holes in the substrate.  I will continue to use this journal and experiment, but I think next I will try the Strathmore Visual Journal in the 140 lb watercolor paper.  I have the smaller 5 1/2 x 8' journal but would like to try their's is 9 x 12" journal as well.

Here is some of my work in the mixed media journal:

Here I layered gel transferred magazine images

Altered magazine painting

Here 's a close up of the details

Here is one I've just started of a gel transferred magazine image.  You can see the white areas where the actual substrate paper was wearing away.  It gives a more distressed look, which is great if that is what you are going for, however when you got do a spread on the backside, the paper is considerably weaker.

I'll  be working on the Strathmore Visual Workshop #2 with Linda Blinn soon, and will keep working and experimenting in both journals and will share more pages in the future. 

I hope you enjoyed today's post.  Please send me your feedback.  I love to get comments so feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.