Practising Gratitude day 17: Welcome mornings

For 21 days in May I am running an art challenge blog called The Art of Practising Gratitude.  Today's post is here.  On my blog I will be showing what I did in response to the blog post.

Today's challenge is to stamp through a stencil.  Here are my prepared pages looking a little bland.

I used 2 Tim Holtz stencils to put colour onto the page.

I put the stencil back over and taped it down and stamped with a music stamp.

I wanted it to be the dawn chorus!

I stamped the words and added the Bible verse.  I wrote my journaling between the rays.

And here is my gratitude list.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

February Art Challenge

The very last challenge of February and of the twelve months we've spent together on 12 Months in View.   The Art Challenge is to make a mask inspired by the Venice Carnival.

I decided rather than make a mask that could be worn I would make a page in my journal.  When I was making my page at the beginning of the month I wiped the excess gesso off that page and spread it on this journal  page.

I painted over it with 3 colours of acrylic paint.

As soon as the acrylic paint was touch dry I used a baby wipe and a stencil to remove some of the paint.

I thought it was too bright so I scraped some grunge paste over it.  It would probably have worked with gesso as well but the grunge paste has a chalky texture to it and I thought it would be more reminiscent of the crumbling walls in Venice.

 For the mask I found this piece of paper which originally was watercolour with cling film.  When I was doing the February page I used this paper to dab of the excess ink.

I printed out a mask outline and traced it on the back of the paper.  This way I wasn't worrying about which bit of the painted side was best.

Then I went mad with stickles!

I stuck the mask down on the background and then drew round it with a black pen as it had disappeared into the background!

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice

12 months of photos

Every month on 12 Months in View we take a photograph of the same place, preferably at the same day and time.

I take photos of my back garden from my bedroom window.  Here's the view this month.

So now we have 12 photos.  How will you display yours?  You could print them all out and stick them in your journal.  You could make a mini book with them like one of those flicker books.  Or you could blog them!

In the UK we haven't seen a real difference between the seasons like we usually do.  In the last 12 months we have had a phenomenal amount of rain and unseasonably high temperatures in the Autumn and Winter.  So sadly the photos don't show the stunning difference we normally have through the seasons which I was hoping to show when I first thought up this challenge.

Here is my year:

Maybe you could choose another place to photograph and take one a month for the next 12 months.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

February

This is the last month of 12 Months in View starting with An Introduction to February.

I think the most important thing I learned at the Make It Personal workshop was to 'not think'.  It wasn't a new concept to me but putting it into practice has always been difficult.  However I managed it and took the same approach to this journal page.

I knew that I wanted to base the page on the words 'The day the music died' but hadn't any picture in my mind of how I would get to it.

I looked through a pile of papers I had and found some sheet music, a dictionary page and some stars that I had cut out from something else I'd done.

I glued the music paper and the dictionary paper into my journal.

I scraped Gesso over the page with an old credit card and then stuck down the stars.

I sprayed Dylusions Inks over the page.  The paper the stars had been cut from had been a play sheet painted with acrylic paints so the stars resisted the ink.  The gesso reacts with the inks so they are paler than if they are sprayed directly onto paper.

I wrote the words with a black Copic pen and then wrote again with an orange crayon.  I added the black and the white lines to the page.

I didn't think or plan while I was making the page and I am really pleased with the result.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Monthly Photo

Every month on 12 Months in View we take a photograph of the same place, preferably at the same day and time.

I take photos of my back garden from my bedroom window.  Here's the view last month in December.

The sun was out so I quickly took this one for January.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

January

Happy New Year

It's a new month and a new year on 12 Months in View.

I made a very simple and quick page for my January page and incorporated the flower of the month, the snowdrop.

I sprayed the journal page with Dylusions White Linen and then Dylusions London Blue.  I drew with a pencil through the snowdrop stencil.

I used acrylic paint to paint the flowers and the leaves and filled in the gaps that the stencil had left.

I printed out part of the Wordsworth poem, inked it and stuck it down.  I drew some lines round the edge of the page and put some squiggles.  

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Happy Flowers

On 12 Months in View today the art challenge was to watch a video and produce a page using the technique shown.

I started by painting my journal page with various colours of acrylic paint.

When this layer was dry I painted over it with white gesso and while it was still wet I drew into the gesso.

When the gesso was dry I drew on it with a black Sharpie and with coloured Pitt Pens.  Then I used a rub-on for the words and hearts.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice