Thankful and excited!

My blogging seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit.  Last week we went away for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary.     We did a bit of a detour so that I could get a photo of this amazing viaduct.

I've been really busy leading a book study on His Kingdom Come and planning new classes.
And that's what I am excited about.  I am working on a new altered book class called The Promised Land.

The class will have sections on how to alter a book and then a whole section on how to use that book for a study of these verses:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land - a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey;   Deuteronomy 8:7-8

And why am I quite so excited when I haven't even started filming the class yet?   Well, amazingly on Sunday I found the negatives of photographs I took in October 1995 when Andy & I went on a trip to Turkey.   At the time I was researching The Promised Land plants for an embroidery course I was on and I was fortunate to see and photograph olives, figs, pomegranates, date palm and grapevines.   On Monday I sent them off to be digitised and they came back yesterday on a CD and I now have all those photos to use for the Altered Book class.  I just need to find the photos I took last year of wheat and barley.

In amongst the photos was this one - showing Andy sitting on the pontoon waiting for a watersports class.   Wasn't he cute?

I'd better get back to my planning.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bernice

Junk Journal Swap

I decided to take up Sandie Cottee's invitation to take part in a Junk Journal swap.  You can find out more information about how to do it here.   There's still time for you to sign up.

First I made my covers.  I used the board from the back of an art pad and stuck scrapbook paper on it.

 These are the inside of the covers.

I thought this project would be a good opportunity to use up some of my scrapbook cardstock stash.  Here are the 5 double-sided pages that I haven't altered.

And here are the pages I altered.

And the other sides.

And I put together a little collection of bits and bobs to send as well.

I hope whoever receives my pages in their junk journal enjoys using them.

All I need to do now is package them up and post them off to Sandie.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

A Culture of Honour

Starting with an introductory post on July 31st and then running for the month of August A Culture of Honour is a creative Bible Study mostly based in 1 Corinthians.  To ensure you get all the information go to the Culture of Honour blog and scroll down to the bottom of the page and sign up for the emails.

I decided that for this study I would make an altered book in the way that Mary Brack makes them.  She has tutorials on her blog which I downloaded and used.  I love the way Mary does the writing in her books and she learned that from Hope Wallace Karney.

When I was clearing my parent's house I found this old hymn book.

I followed Mary's instructions and cut out the pages.

And then cut along the front and back covers to remove the spine.

I cut some pages from a Mixed Media Journal and collage both sides of the paper.   I used old maps, old book pages, music and scrapbooking papers.

And cut the excess off when the collaged paper had dried.

Here are all my pages.

And the other sides.

When they were dry I put them all under a heavy pile of books to flatten out over night!

Then I put a very thin layer of gesso over every page.

I made myself a template for putting the holes in the cover and the pages.

And assembled the book.

I will be showing how I do my pages on this blog for each session of the study.

I hope you will join me for A Culture of Honour.

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice

Practising Gratitude: A completed project

Thank you so much for following along with The Art of Practising Gratitude.  The challenge blog will remain live so if you haven't finished, haven't started or would like to join in now you can.  The Facebook group will still keep going as well.

Here is my completed gratitude list.

You may remember that missed out a couple of pages in the altered book.  I also had some pages left at the end so I have put some colour and patter on to the pages so that I can write on them at a later date.

The left out pages.

The pages at the end of the book.

And a view of all my pages.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Practising Gratitude day 21: Give thanks

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 we could choose our favourite technique from the last 20 days so I chose to use the paper napkin technique.

The next pages in my book  had lots of found words

so I turned to the next page

where I glued down the umbrella paper napkin.

I added my journaling in amongst the umbrellas.

Come back tomorrow to see my complete journal.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Practising Gratitude day 20: Walk

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 was to use whichever watercolour technique I hadn't used on day one.  This meant using the salt technique.

I made sure I had lots of water and colour on the paper.

I used sea salt.

After I had scraped off the salt.

The prepared pages in my book.

I used the feet stamp and Distress Ink to stamp footprints.  And stamped the word with black Archival ink.

I cut up the painted salted paper into strips and cut them into 'signposts' and stuck them down.  I stuck down the Bible verse.

I wrote my journaling between the 'signposts'.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Practising Gratitude day 19: Love

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 was to use Liquid Pearl through a stencil.  I decided to use a tag that I had 'printed' with the shaving foam technique.

Here are my prepared pages.

I put the Liquid Pearl on the stencil and then scraped it through.

I used the same stencil and Distress Inks to add colour to the left hand page.  I stamped the word and added the Bible verse.

I stuck the tag into the book and wrote my journaling.  I thought the pages needed something extra so I stamped the hearts.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Practising Gratitude day 18: Laugh

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 was to use paper napkins.  I love this technique and I have quite a collection.  I sorted out a few that fitted my colour scheme.

This was the next set of pages in my altered book but I decided that it didn't really fit with today's theme.

So on to the next pages.

I took the top layer of the napkin and tore it into two pieces.  I used matte medium on the page and put the tissue down and then gently put another coat of the matte medium.

I stamped the words and stuck down the Bible verses.  I started to list the things that make me laugh in amongst the butterflies.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Practising Gratitude day 16: Show appreciation

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 was to use another of Carolyn Dube's videos as inspiration.  I used washi tape to tape some newspaper to cover up the left hand page and some toren out pages to cover the edges of the stencil and then sprayed Dylusions ink.

I pressed the stencil onto pages in another journal to save wasting the ink.

I also pressed what was left onto the other page.  I wiped the middle with a wet wipe.  Yet again I had a problem with the absorbency of the paper so it didn't work quite as well as in the video.

I stamped the large butterfly.  The turquoise ink had soaked into the page so instead of following Carolyn's instructions I used a damp brush and two colours of Distress Ink and coloured the wing tips.

The left hand page looked a bit colourless so I used the same stencil and Distress Ink.  I stamped the words and added both the Bible verses.

I journaled around the edge.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice