SIMPLE THINGS JULY - ACHIEVEMENT

 For our Simple Things project this month, we are delighted to showcase a wonderful art journal

by a guest designer Jayne Loughlin.

    First entry of my Art Journal – Achievement  By Jayne Loughlin

  

Hiya, I’m Jayne Loughlin. I’m married with 3 girls & work p/t in a Garden Centre. I also help run a craft blog for Fiskars called www.fiskarettes.co.uk . 

I was so proud to be asked to create a project for IACW .  I love the variety of the posts & can’t believe the ladies on the blog better their projects time and time again. 

I was asked to do an entry for Simple Things titled ‘Achievement’ & thought this would be ideal to kick start an Art Journal a friend gave me for my Birthday. My friend had decorated the book and added an entry & I love it but haven’t done anything with it & I’ve had it for nearly 3 weeks !   This type of craft is really new to me and very much out of my box seeing as I really don’t play with paints, or Gesso, and have never done anything like an Art Journal in my life !  I usually Scrapbook & dabble with cards, not to mention my Tiara making for my website, but I wanted to give it a try.

Items needed : Notebook , watercolours, patterned paper, photos, Gesso, brushes, black, orange & red felts, black acrylic paint, chequered stamp, scissors, adhesive.

So to start off on the first pages I used watercolours (2 different colours) and painted a frame then filled in the middle. It was really slapdash and not painted perfectly (see below)

 

Then I chose some photos and cut around the images. These were placed on the pages but not glued down yet...I  drew light squiggly lines with pencil where I was going to put the journaling. The photos helped with the placement of the lines, You might be able to just see them faintly.

 

Next on gloss paper I drew a thin strip & coloured it in with a chequered effect . This was repeated as shown in the photo below. Trim these two lines and glue to the top of your pages (i’ll trim edges overlapping pages later)

 

A few triangles cut out of patterned paper were glued to the bottom of the stripy lines. Now paint the whole pages and strips of paper you have glued down with Gesso in messy brush strokes  (this helps lessen the brightness of the colours ) Leave to dry.

I’ve now put a puddle of Black Acrylic paint onto a paper plate and stamped chequer board patterns using a stamp around some of the edges.

Again paint with more Gesso using messy paint strokes.

 

Glue the photos on top of the page and Journal what you would like to say straight onto the page...I like to not write notes so that the thoughts are from within; it can look like someone else writes this if you plan what to say and not be true to your feelings. There’s nothing wrong with this however, if you get a little worried writing off the cuff and want to jot notes down -  its your preference.

Last but not least I’ve doodled a little on the top border with the title Achievement.

I hope you all like it, and hope it inspires at least one person to create an Art Journal...If I can do it anyone can .

.There’s quite a good little link to help you choose themes, materials etc http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Art-Journal

Oh and a BIG thank you to IACW for letting me join you this month,

J

It's been our pleasure Jayne.

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Hiya Claire here with my take on the word of the month - achievement...

I'm using a lot of quotes in my little pizza box album & this quote from Walt Disney really struck a chord with me, The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.

This is something I should remember, there are many things I would like to achieve but I never get round to doing anything about it as other things crop up... so from here on in less talking, more doing :)

The quote is written on 2 little tickets cut with a Sizzix machine & a Tim Holtz Alteration die, they slide into a little pocket on the page

 

The pocket was made by using a strip of spotty patterned paper, stuck with double sided sticky tape but with a gap for the tickets to slot into, I then used some more die cut tickets to mount the title then added the dictionary definition & a small metal key...

 

thanks for stopping by to see what we've made & hope you enjoy playing along too...

See you next month

Claire

xx

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Hi Debbie here with my page on achievement.

I decided to focus on five things that have required perseverance or confidence to give it a go, and things I have enjoyed. Working in an infant school, being a mum, being a wife and creating a home, growing my own vegetables and becoming one of the girls on It's a Creative World.

 


I ended up making a double page as I wanted to put more detail into this page.

I started off by stamping a green background on my pages.  

I then stamped a flower pattern randomly over the top masking off the area for my title.

I cut flowers using a sizzix die and and circular punches and inked the edges with brown ink.

The tags were made using sizzix dies and are decorated to represent each achievement I wanted to remember. The tags are decorated with quickutz dies, stuck on with velcro and there is hidden journalling on the reverse.

The tags were a little too purple, so I toned them down using dusty concord distress inks.

The flowers were layered using foam dots to create a 3D effect.

I have really enjoyed making this entry, and I am really enjoying looking at everyone else's entries. Why don't you come along and join in?

Debbie x

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Eleanor here, still working on my quilt squares, and for this one I used both paint and embroidery thread.

I personally feel that one of the biggest and most important achievements for any of us is to have learnt to read. Of course we all did it, for some of us it was so long ago we can barely remember, but a huge achievement nonetheless.

I taught all of my children to read, and the books in the reading scheme we used at home have remained very special, to them, and to me. All three are now avid readers, and I thought that the word this month was a good way of preserving a memory of these books. Now that I've started, I don't want to stop, and I'm working on my second square right now.

I lightly pencilled  on my cotton fabric, selected a few colours of thread and green acrylic paint, and the result was this.

The green paint on the left dries well and if used straight from the pot, doesn't bleed (I used freezer paper to mask off the area). I then stitched the tree in mainly French knots and the words in white cotton backstitch.

The colour in the illustration was done with pencil crayons, and the line work simply backstitched. The red lead and the stripes on the cat were stitched, and finally, I made up a short verse about learning to read.

Originally my quilt was going to need many plain squares, but now I want those squares to be stitched Oxford Reading Tree reading scheme book covers. Here's hoping I'll achieve this goal.

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Dolly here with the next page in my words album.

I have been focusing on photos of plants and flowers for the entire album and linking these in with definitions and quotes and this month is no exception.

I started as usual by thinking about how this word - achievement - translated to the project and what it made me think of.

I have to say this one came pretty quickly. The photo of the the new leaves unfurling on a horse chestnut tree that I took back in April popped straight into my mind.

I love spring and one of the things that fascinates me is how seemingly dead twigs burst into life.

Now THAT has to be quite some achievement!

Here is the whole page

 

  
I used lots of blending both with masks and with the eraser to try and get the softness I was hoping for.

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Hi, Mandy here...

I decided to focus on my own personal 'crafty' achievement and although I dabble in many different crafts (don't we all?)...making my first quilt was my greatest crafty achievement (to date).  There were so many times I nearly gave up and got 'off-the-scale' frustrated while making it.  I made heaps of mistakes and it didn't turn out anything like the one in the magazine I was copying.  So, even though my first quilt is full of (very noticable) mistakes, I DID finish it and it gets used by all the family to snuggle under and watch DVD's in the winter.  So, this page of my fabric book isn't a page at all but a mini quilt using leftover fabric from 'The Cupcake Quilt'. It's a bit rough because I knocked it up this afternoon but I remembered the joy of free-motion quilting the 'pebbles' or 'bubbles' which was a fave part of making that first quilt. 

It will be tucked-in but loose in the fabric book.  I put a quote on the back which links happiness & achievement...

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

Franklin D.Roosevelt."

 

I wish I'd taken the time to sew the words instead of writing them with pen, but time was short this month.

Bye,

Mandy.
  

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Hi all tis me, Michelle, sneaking in ‘graciously’ with two entries this month! As time got the better of me last month for the post on graciousness the creative girls, ever full of grace said I could sneak my project in here … ok enough of the play on words and on with the project!

When I was planning my project for graciousness I kept thinking of the three graces so I looked it up and wikipedia gave me this;

Charities – known in Greek mythology as the 3 graces, goddesses of such things as charm, beauty and creativity.

I decided this described the 3 most influential women in my life perfectly

 

My mum, my nanny and my gran!

I decided to make a triptych to echo the 3 idea and made it from corrugated card, ripped and stripped and painted with brown acrylics (eco green paints my new fave rave!) to look a little like wood.

 

I generated the backgrounds in the Serif Digital scrapbook artist 2 programme (another new fave rave of mine!) and had great fun layering up images of statues, greek architecture and script to create my own papers.

 

I cut out the photos in the cut out studio and applied a shabby effect to try and make them ‘belong’ to the papers.

 

Finally some ripping, tearing and inking ‘melded the pieces together and a bit of florists raffia joined the 3 sections of my 3 graces.

And so to moving on to achievement. I thought long and hard about this one, there are lots of forms that achievement could take, many things that I am proud to have achieved in my life but I decided to look further inside of me and record my every day life achievements so far.

 

 

 

And I decided to award myself a certificate from the university of life.

 

 

Again I generated this digitally, complete with my own little university of life shield, before printing it off and adding a little bit of ripping and inking to make it look a little like an old papyrus.

I like the fact this word made me look within myself and record things that have really made me appreciate where I am and who I am today. What achievements are you proud of in your life?

Enjoy the rest of the work from the creative girls in this post, I love our simple things project, it makes you think doesn’t it?!

Until soon Happy Crafting Love M x

The team on It's A Creative World have no other wish than to share projects and ideas with blog readers, in the hope that some of you will be inspired. If you are, please leave a comment or drop us a line, we love to hear from you, and with that in mind, the word this coming month in the SImple Things project is

INSPIRATION.

Please join us.

Comments

[Debbie Roberts]

Wow ladies loving all your creations

[jayne]

Hiya ladies ...Firstly thankyou for letting me join you today. It really isn't me to do messy inky stuff myself ( i like to see others do it though) So a little out of my box !
Love what you ALL have done it's sooo varied and inspirational. Keep the good work up and i'm here if you ever need me x
Thankyou xxxxxxx

[Lynne V]

Fabulous, congratulations on finishing the quilt Mandy.

Jayne it was lovely to see you being inky and messy.

I want to try all your ideas now!

[claireliz]

Jayne it was lovely having you with us this month, fab journalling.
All the projects look great :)
C
xx

[Carmen]

Oh so gorgeous loads of beautiful entries again this month. Jayne I can't believe you don't usually do painty fun you are so good sat it! I hope you'll be doing more?