Making Holiday Gift Wrapping - Part One - A Party

I got my hands on Gwen's holiday stencils and the ideas immediately started going round in my head. I mean, look at them! And yes, those are fairy lights shining down on them. I do so love to have fairy lights shining down on my desk. 

First I stenciled on white paper. Then on a brown tag. Finally on tissue paper. The possibilities for making materials for gift wrapping were amazing. 

I couldn't keep all this goodness to myself, now could I? So we decided to have a gift-wrap making party and enjoy making our wrapping with our friends. Now I must admit that some of my friends are not all that comfortable with being asked to make things. They say things like "I'm not artistic." or "I don't make things." Usually, I nod my head and tell them that there will be refreshments and they can hang out with the other people who don't think they can do it making hot chocolate. Frankly, some of their work ends up being amazing.  

When having a party that involves paint, covering the tables with craft paper and securing with duct tape relieves those what-if-I-spill-on-the-table jitters. Frankly, I encourage people to draw on the paper. It's so much more interesting that way. 

Here's the tag I made using markers. 

One participant mimicked the poinsettia stencil using one of the makeup sponges. 

Another made stripes of color and stenciled the poinsettia over them. 

In this picture, you can see many different approaches. 

This was a careful stenciler who made beautifully crisp images. 

This friend believed she could not do this stenciling thing. Imagine a package wrapped in this! I love the colors she used. 

This friend has a mathematical and geometric sense of balance. 

Here the stencil was stamped onto paper, cut out and pasted to a large piece of paper. Paint was added on top and other elements added around it. 

More color was added ontop. 

Here it emerges. 

Brownish red paint in a spray bottle was used to spritz the stencil. Then the stencil was used with red paint to create more poinsettias. 

They were then layered and glued to the paper to create a full and dimensional work. 

The party was fun. It was especially enjoyable to see the different things my friends did with the stencils. It was a good way to gain a new perspective.

Stay tuned - That was Holiday Gift Wrapping Part One. Later this week I will reveal what I did with these stencils to make some unique gift wrapping. Hope you will come back and visit me then. 

Until then, I would love to know:
Do you make your own wrapping material?
Have you ever done it? How did it go? 
What are your favorite gift wrap go-tos? 

International Women's Day

International Women's Day journal page. The prompt I was working on was "primary". The librarian in automatically thinks of primary documents. So I chose two from the National Archives - one of suffragettes marching on Bastille Day (they ended up in jail) and the amendment to grant women the right to vote. Keep marching. No accepting backsliding. Thanks to the women who came before and paved our way. 

#internationalwomensday #strongwomen#adaywithoutwomen #wearred#wearredforwomen#artmarks30daychallenge #artjournal#artjournaling #artjournaleveryday#artjournalmixedmedia

The Mad to Glad Tea Party

Welcome to the 

Mad to Glad Tea Party 2016

These days there is so much to be mad about, sad about, absolutely devastated about.

Wherever I look I see people questioning why...

wondering how we got to this place....

wondering if the things they do matter...

if they matter....

and they do.

They do matter. 

You matter. 

So as I pondered these things, along came the time for

Vanessa of A Fanciful Twist to post the invitation 

to her annual

Mad Tea Party. 

Each year I look forward to this wonderful party. The loveliness, the creativity, the joy of it all. 

As I pondered these things I decided to hold a 

Mad to Glad Tea Party this year. 

First we must entice a rabbit with a bouquet of basil and fresh dill. 

Everyone knows that rabbits are great for inspiration. 

Sir Fernly Fern and I thought a long time. I stroked his silky fur. He nuzzled me and nipped me when I stopped petting him. Sir Fernly Fern doesn't shy away from comfort as we humans sometimes do. 

The idea to turn Mad to Glad came to me as we snuggled. Tea, friendship and art journaling - the focus for this year. 

I used craft paper instead of a pretty cloth so we could spill as much as we wanted, or write, or paint. 

Guest tags were replaced by black sharpie free flowing names on the table. Naturally we set a place for the Unexpected Guest. 

Three kinds of tea. Why not? A taste testing adventure.

Silly labels made us laugh. 

And we can't forget to stop and smell the roses.

While I know that a cuppa tea can often change my mad to glad, I had more planned for my party friends.

I gave each friend a piece of cold pressed watercolor paper and told them to write what was making them mad or sad or anxious or worried. Like 18th century letter writers would conserved paper, we turned the paper and wrote crosswise. In days gone by the paper was expensive. We used it as a design element. 

After choosing some colors to paint over the words we picked up our cards and spread paint.

My spot at the table after painting a few layers. 

Collage ensued. Scrap paper. Paper bags. Paper from presents last Christmas. Magazine pages. If it could be pasted down it was fair game. 

More color. More layers. We stopped only when it became apparent that our pages needed to dry before adding any more. We hope to continue these now glad pieces. Pieces that inspire us to move forward when it seemed hard to move a muscle.

Here's hoping that you have some inspiration to turn something mad into something glad. Thanks for joining us.  

Please be sure to visit A Fanciful Twist for links to see all the Mad Tea Parties that are happening today. Just click on the invitation to zip over there. 

Pushing Past Limitations

There's red under here. Really.

Limitations. Sometimes they are given to us. Sometimes we make them ourselves. As someone doing art journaling, nursing my limitations was not in my favor. I became aware of my color deficiency some years ago when taking my first course with Vivienne McMaster. 

So when Kelly Kilmer challenged us to use up the paint on our palettes I became recalcitrant. "No, I will not use that red" I said. My painting partner also aired her dislike of red. I then took a moment to think about why I was taking a class instead of following my instincts and proceeded to use that red. (Yes, I agree. I should have thought before childishness refusing in the first place.) You know what? I liked what came out of it. If I hadn't used red then, I would have missed an opportunity for self growth. 

A few weeks later during our Artist's Retreat, Cindi Huss playfully jibed me about my aversion to red. Later on her blog, my name and red were mentioned in the same sentence. I took that as a challenge. The gauntlet had been thrown down. My next page spread would heavily feature red. 

Well, Cindi, here's some red for you. 

See?! It was red. Really. Well, before I added the pink and purple. 

I still use pink and purple as my neutrals. What can I say? I can't get enough of them. Nevertheless, learning to add colors I don't normally use will stretch me and make me grow. So I'll be giving it a try. 

P.S. I have learned so much from each of the teachers I mentioned above. If you have the opportunity to take a class with them, take it. 

The Kettle's Still On

I feel a little sheepish, but I realize I didn't include a link to the Mad Tea Party revelers in my Mad Tea Party blogpost. I thought I was being clever in preparing my post in advance, as the Mad Tea Party fell in the middle of my Artist Retreat. The morning of the party I made sure that the post was up and that the URL was sent along. I had forgotten to add the link! 

Please visit A Fanciful Twist for the list of tea parties. I had a fun time visiting the Mad Tea Parties. 

Looking forward: Posts from my Artist Retreat.