Wednesday 4 July 2012

Freedom Art Journal

I've been interested in Art Journaling for several years but up until about eighteen months ago, I've been an intrigued bystander rather than an active participant. However, over on UKStampers (the best crafting forum in the world!!) I got drawn into this arty hobby when Efemera started a weekly challenge with prompts to get the creative juices flowing - I was hooked! More recently I have joined a Circle Journal group on the forum and have created a journal which is making its way around the country being filled with artwork by a number of talented crafty artists (or is that arty crafters?) I've decided to blog my pages - I was going to wait until the book came back but I'm impatient ...

Here's the cover:


And the inside pages explaining why I created the journal and my requirements from the rest of the group:


I chose the theme of creative freedom to see what that means to people - to me it's doing exactly what I want within my art and not worrying about the 'rules'.

My own pages within the journal are here:


I cant wait to get the book back full and see what everyone else has created!

I'll be blogging the pages I've created for the other journals soon. Hope you like my creation!

JulieD x

Monday 2 July 2012

Book of Secrets and It's Spawn ...

Back in blogland after a prolonged absence and various personal problems turning my world on its head - thank heavens for this amazing hobby I have - it keeps me going through all the ups and downs....

Anyway, on a crafty note - a while back my friend Gwen (of Stamp Pad fame) and I did an online workshop with Andy Skinner called the Book of Secrets - check out the link here, it's brilliant and I created this...


It started out as a wooden box/book with a variety of chipboard shapes and other embellishments and with various clever techniques ends up looking like an ancient metal artifact - brilliant!

Here's another view:


We had a great day working on the project together with plenty of treats, a cooked lunch, dessert and even a sneaky glass of wine (well we would have done if we'd been to the pub for lunch wouldn't we?!) The most bizarre part of the workshop was painting cling film with Vasoline but you'll have to sign up to find out why!!

After loving the workshop, I decided to transfer the techniques to another project and so was born the Steampunk House:


Hope you like them - I certainly enjoyed creating them... Now that I'm back I'll be blogging more often and hope to put up some journal pages soon - my latest passion!

JulieD x