Monthly Archives: February 2012

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Five

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Moving

In case you landed here somewhat randomly, I am taking part in the challenge issued by this book: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life by Noah Scalin. I decided to take the book (which I didn’t like an awful lot) and create a daily art journal by altering it. There is no particular theme – I am simply attempting to come up with quick techniques in order to fulfil the criteria. There’s very little planning taking place and I’m being pretty slapdash about the whole project. What I am discovering is that doing this is having an affect on the rest of my art and writing and rather than causing me to have less time to create, it seems to be providing the kick-start I need to keep working – nah, I can’t use the ‘W’ word, that would stop me right in my tracks – so, to keep playing. Onwards and upwards.

Today’s masterpiece is ‘found poetry’, or rather I took some words in the text of the book and tried to make them meaningful. I isolated them with a marker pen, then laid down strips of paper fabric all over the page. To adhere the strips, I used my trusty Scotch ATG double-sided tape applicator. I really like it because you can roll off little boogers of adhesive for the wee, small areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It says, “Moving the rules every day. See time, then choose. Even stop; look and see from (a) new perspective.” Okay, I never said it was going to be pretty, did I? Or make sense.

 

 

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Four

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Waiting for Summer

After playing about with the weaving last night, I returned to my first scabby pages and gesoed them and left them overnight to dry. As it is the weekend, I simply left the journal nearby and returned to it on and off throughout the day. Thinned acrylic paint with gel medium instead of water and sloshed on a greeny-blue wash. Added collage and rubber stamping. Covered with yellow ochre wash and rubbed it a to get a distressed look. Not that the book isn’t already distressed enough – hope I can keep it alive for the whole 365 days!

Printed off the girl’s face from a scan of one of my other journals, alpha-stamped it and added the daisies using the kitchen paper used in the distressing stage above. You can tell I am recycling all my art waste these days! Used pens to emphasize the stamped words, rubbed some Neopastels around the borders and tis done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: The daisies didn’t come out well in the photo so tried again. Spent a few minutes highlighting a few details – darkened the eyes slightly and added some white to the daisies as they dried almost transparent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Three

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Off the Grid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick blast today without all the wet, soggy mess of yesterday. Cut alternate ‘slices’ from a page and then reinserted them in a rough woven grid pattern. Added text printed in a Dymo font, “I would like to live off the grid”. I might but I probably wouldn’t.

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Two

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We’ve been out all day so I planned on getting a page done this evening. Had it all worked out -gesso, paint, gesso, collage, a rubber stamp or three and some text. It all went wrong from the off. Applied the gesso to the page. Left it to dry. Went back to it. Still wet. Used hairdryer. Still wet. Blotted with kitchen towel. Big mistake as the gesso lifted off taking bits of the page with it. Panic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end I laminated the soggy pages together with PVA and left the book on the radiator to dry out as best as it could. I then had to throw something together very quickly. And it shows. Torn paper collage, Neocolor 2 crayons and pen doodles. Looked horrible. No time to do anything else so glued a layer of tissue paper over it. I’m not happy.

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day One

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It’s midnight and I need to post my first day results. I have spent an hour or so working on the cover of my copy of  “A Daily Creativity Journal”.

Started off by making some fabric paper with a muslin base. Glued on some scrapbook papers and then a piece of shimmery silver netting. Splashed on some diluted acrylic paint and let it dry. Full instructions at Textile Art, Fabric Art & …

Here’s the paper. It’s quite tough and leathery so is perfect for book covers. You can also sew, glue it or use it as the background for collage and painting. I love the texture of this stuff and make loads of it when I have a few minutes to spare. It’s really quick and easy.

Next, I cut the paper to size and just stuck it over the existing cover with strong double sided tape.

Stamped some scraps of handmade paper with the year, 2012 and glued them to the cover. I felt that the cover was lacking something so attacked it with some metallic oil pastels.

I may add some more embellishment in due course when the mood takes me. See you tomorrow!

 

Daily Creativity Journal

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Having done nothing with this blog up until now, I’ve decided to put it to use. Recently got a copy of “A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life” by Noah Scalin. Yes, please, do go ahead and click on the link, I might get a teeny-weeny bit of commission if you are persuaded to buy it. Do it now, because after reading the following, you probably won’t want to.

I have to say that when I first looked at the book – I’m not going to say ‘read’ because there is very little to read – I was disappointed. Most of it is empty space, sprinkled with creativity ‘prompts’ and a few anecdotal accounts of how other people took up and completed the challenge. Well, yeah… it is supposed to be an actual journal, so I suppose there will be empty spaces. But then, in that case, it’s not empty enough. I’m not terribly impressed with the prompts, for example, “Create something that floats on water.” Now, now, let’s not get lavatorial but, really, it’s not terribly inspiring, is it? I’ll just say here that the reviews on Amazon.com are 5* and everybody is terribly enthusiastic about this book that is mainly fresh air. However, on AmazonUK, they seem to be a little more demanding and definitely see the book as a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Yes, I admit, I was swayed by the Am.Com reviews.

So, anyway,  my choice was to either send the book back – very tempting – dump it (maybe to see if it floats on water?) or attempt to do something with it, i.e. accept the challenge. I’m going with the challenge. For a while.

Now, I’ve had to give it a lot of thought because I already do make lots of things – like Zentangles, art journal pages, textile art, Squidoo pages… and sometimes I even cook for my kids. So my dilemma was, what should I do? It needs to fit in with the other stuff so can’t be too overwhelming or I will simply neglect it until it dies.  In the end, my choice of what to do has been determined by the book itself. It’s a nice sturdy softback with good quality, shiny paper and nice curved corners. The content not being up to much is irrelevant because my 365 day challenge is to alter this book every day, just a little bit until it no longer is what it is but is a work of art, a proper journal and something to be proud of.

Starting right here:

 

Tune in to see how the cover turns out tomorrow.