Calendar Challenge

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank.

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity and its 

first chapter is New Year's Day"

Edith Lovejoy Pierce

When I posted my art calendar at the beginning of the month a lot of you expressed an interest in having a go and Kate over on The Kathryn Wheel is throwing down a 365 day challenge. I am more modest and propose a month at a time  as sometimes I find making a long commitment off-putting. But either way, please join in, make a January calendar and post a link here or with Kate - she'll be posting soon. Here is how I do it, but really anything goes. I fill mine in retrospectively, sometimes several days at a time, and with just a doodle or a rubber stamp, so it need not take up much time. I use a double page spread in an A4 'portrait' spiral bound sketchbook. I use a pink pig as they are cheap and sturdy.

Then I decide on a background

I often use a layer of gesso first as I like the texture it gives. For January I wanted that watery sun look, so I started with a pale yellow and then rubbed  a blue colour from a water soluble crayon and added some torn images of bare trees.  For this project I printed the month, year and days of the week rather than writing them.

I cut out 31 4cm x4cm squares - sometimes in just white, sometimes from off-cuts from other projects and work out how I am going to arrange them. Don't forget the 1st of January is on a Friday.

I decided each week would start with Monday so had to rearrange the squares.

When I am happy I stick everything down and add a few embellishments - here I have a couple of January quotes. If you click on the pictures you should get a large images so you can see the details.  Have a go and have fun.  I would say that one of the liberating things I have taken on board in keeping an art journal is that anything goes-embrace any mistakes and incorporate them into the work. There are lots of different calendars here on this flickr page - good luck.

January opens 

The box of the year

And brings out days

That are bright and clear

And brings out days

That are cold and grey

And shouts, "Come see

What I brought today"

Leland B. Jacobs 'January'

Link to last month's diary here.  And older ones here .

    

A Berry Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas to all my talented Blog friends around the world who have enriched my life.

It is a pleasure to open my Blog and see who I am going to chat to today.

Have a great holiday whatever your pleasure, and look forward to hearing your news.

Winter Solstice Greetings

Soon the days will be getting longer!

More of him later...

I have been busy over the weekend - the Christmas cards are posted, the decorations down from the loft, presents bought - if not wrapped and the house reasonably tidy. As we are having a very quiet Christmas there is not a lot more to do - just the last bit of food shopping.  So I have had time to play with my new toys.

lino prints

After my couple of days etching in the autumn, I got the urge to do some printing and lino is an easy one to do at home. As well as a piece of traditional lino I also got a piece of synthetic lino which I used for this ATC sized print. I tinted the paper by rubbing stamping pads on thin card and printed with some water soluble printing ink. Of course I had to have another go at needle felting too - quite a contrast to the messy printing. But both are involving sharp tools! I hope you like my little 'blue-tit' loosely based on the real bird using the rather bright colours I had. Thank you to everyone who has sent me links to needle-felting sites, they have given me lots of tips.

 

Stand by your journals

A reminder soon of the challenge to create an art calendar page for January.

Winter photography

My re-entry into the world of art and crafting started three years ago when I bought my first serious camera - a Nikon D40 DSLR. As I had no idea how to get the most out of it I registered with the Open College of Art for their photography course. After a year I upgraded my camera to the D80 and have completed another course, the work for which is at the early months of this blog.   Now my camera has to fight for time with all my other projects, but I do enjoy creating abstract  images so I thought I'd share these with you.

fence

gate

tree

A Week too early!

Viburnum Tinus

Erica Carnea

Vauxhall Astra

As you can see, we live in the eastern counties that got a good few inches of snow overnight, with the look of more to come this evening.  Of course I had to get out with the camera and there will be more on my flickr pages over the next few days.  I was pleased that I took notice of the weather forecast yesterday and we went to the supermarket to do our weekend shop a day early - the cupboard was bare, so now we are well stocked up.  The advantage of living in a town like Luton is that we also have three corner shops  a couple of minutes walk away - including a post-office - so there is no need to go short of basics. 
We don't seems to have had a postal delivery today, but I did see Gary the postie in his shorts yesterday, I hope he hasn't caught pneumonia!

Keep warm

Blame it on the blog

It all started with a lovely surprise.
A little Marvin arrived in the post from Lesley of Printed Material

'How did  you do it?' I enquired.
'It's needle felt' replied Lesley, 'You need wool and a needle.  You stab the wool with the needle.'
'That sounds interesting' I thought.
Google
shop
wool, needles, foam (to stop you stabbing yourself supposedly)
roll wool
stab
stab
OW!
 more Google and Youtube
stab, stab, stab
twiddle, fiddle, stitch


Tra laa

...only drew blood once!

This could be the start of something big!

I've got a way to go before I can create such lovelies as the cute cat, but a furry fish is a start!

A quiet moment

Here is my contribution to a quiet Advent moment.

I don't know about you, but all creative activities have had to take second  place to Christmas preparations. Trying to fit in a few minutes quiet contemplation seems to be difficult, but I usually manage to stop and watch the birds on the feeders while drinking my morning cup of tea. I enjoy the fact that as well as the cyclamen flowering,  I have an azalea about to bloom and my orchids will be out for Christmas.

This was a couple of years ago, it is considerably larger now.

I hope you manage your own few moments of peace.