A tippy toe into art journalling

Those of you that have followed me for a while may remember I had an idea to start art journalling at some stage.  Well this week whilst blog hopping  I was delighted to find a week-long free beginner's art journalling course going on at this blog.  It doesn't matter if you missed the start, the ideas are still up there. If you are interested in starting to journal yourself do take a look, as there is lots of fabulous inspiration.  On that blog there is also a link to her youtube tutorial videos and one of them was how to make a figure stencil using magazines.  I've wanted to do these for a while as they are also done by one of my favourite inspirational blog/journalling artists, Dina Wakley.  Here was the one I've rapidly done (you can tell, as its still very wet!) tonight because I was running out of time:

To do it you find an image with a strong outline - arms must be quite clear (mine could have been better but I was in a hurry) and cut it out:

This is the tip I learned - cover the picture with contact adhesive so it makes it stronger to use again - and  then cut round the shape again.

You then place the figure onto your paper and mist all around it:

(Oops, her face!) Take away the mask and Voila!:

You can then add other elements to the page, journalling, etc. 

*****

The other craft I did today was simply using some free printables from this site, I made these cute bookmarks (these are 2 out of 5):

and

(The book incidently, is a charity shop purchase I got today, 'Twenties Girl' by Sophie Kinsella - haven't started this one yet but LOVED her Shopaholic series)

Please comment ocassionally as I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for stopping by,

qwiksave

Bootcamp and Template Creativity

Today's Bootcamp theme was 'Fly' and my son helpfully suggested I photographed a few of the dead insects that they have on their bedroom windowsill but no, I didn't fancy that grizly project. 

So when we were in town I spotted this ENORMOUS England flag hanging down from a corner shop so I thought I'd photograph it as it was appropriate for today, England are playing USA in their first World Cup Match. Loads of people were dressed up in preparation, flags were on lots of cars and horns were being blasted from cars all over town.

You know why its like this?  Because I forgot to take my camera and my son took it using the camera on his PSP game console and you know why its out of focus?

...Because the camera had been left on macro mode from when they took this photo earlier! Doh!

(Incidently, if any of my UK readers have got a PSP, there was a deal mentioned on MSE where you can buy a game called 'invizimals' for £10 (down from £25) from Gamestation and it includes the Sony camera (which normally retails at £30!) as part of the game)

As you can appreciate, I would have taken a better picture of the flag had I got my camera but I did tell him to wait until he could see the whole red cross so he did pretty well considering (apart from the focus!)

My craft tonight was a quick one, I need an early night for a change!

I have recently purchased some stencils from QVC:

These are just 5 out of 40 different ones, incl animals and Christmas...

So I just decided to play around and doodle with them tonight:

I like the idea of using them in a doodle fashion - first draw around the pattern as it is, then move the stencil just a fraction and draw again and repeat.  Gives a more sketchy look.  I also like to colour outside the lines (omve!) to complete the effect.

See you tomorrow,
qwiksave