Christmas Cards

In 2013, I decided I would make christmas cards! I'm sorry this post is coming so late, but I hope it will give you some ideas for your 2014 christmas cards!

I began by drawing christmas decorations... Colored simply with watercolor.

Those, I drew a lot! It's almost meditating to draw them. Again, colored with watercolor.

I used a Sakura white gel pen to define the contour of the drawing.

Now here... I drew on random paper, I used ink, acrylic, watercolor to create abstract pattern and texture on paper. I used a lot of pages from an old book. It was super fun to make! Then I cut out the leafs and assembled them using glue (the lines on the leafs are made with different sakura gel pens) and finally made the little dots with Tulip puff paint.

I also cut out some trees from my papers! I used scrap papers from previous projects

Here's what I did with the scrap's scraps. I made a super recycled tree! Decorated it with gold glitter glue.

The glue in question (and my favorite paint: cheap, bright colors, mostly opaque).

Sadly, I didn't take any picture from the final product! But, I can tell you that it made everyone who received one very happy! I wrote my best wishes inside and my boyfriend made different drawings for everyone! It was fun!

On agendas and painting

The end of the year is coming fast and soon we'll be in 2014 without realizing it! And I needed an agenda.

I like to buy myself nice ones (that cost at least 20$) because I intend to keep them forever (and when I'll be tired of that, I'll turn them into journals or collage books), except this year I am on a budget (a LOT of projects!) so I took an agenda I can get at my workplace for free. The cover was o.k. but nothing exciting, and I like to have a fun cover since I will carry this book around with me for 365 days! What I did is I printed a booklet Mary Ann (from dispatchfromla ) made for The Artstronauts Club (it is fantastic and you should subscribe!!) and took one the pages I liked and that would fit my cover perfectly. I cut it to size, glued it with a glue stick (the paper I use to print is a not too thin paper but I didn't want to get it all wavy because of medium acrylic...), decorated with washi tape, paint markers, glitter glue, and other things... It is drying as I type this, and I am looking forward to 2014 to use it and personnalise it even more!

My desk is always cluttered like this.

On another subject, did you know that I paint? Well, now you do! My main "subject" is portraits, because I love to draw and paint faces obviously, I think to look at a portrait of someone you know or a stranger, it is always entertaining to imagine what is going through their mind, what is going on in their lives when this portrait was made.

At least a year and a half ago, I made a deal with a creative friend. She would make me  a certain number of journals (that she made from A to Z, with the greatest paper in the world!)  and I would paint for her two portraits. The first I did was one of her best friend, and the other one I made of her. This is it.

My first hand-bound journal

This November, I stitched and glued and constructed my first hand-bound journal!

I bought the class of Mary Ann Moss from Dispatch from LA called "Ticket To Venice" a.k.a TTV. It is pure happiness: in this class, we can come along to her Venice trip and look at all her pictures, watch videos of her in Venice, and she also shows two or three stitching techniques, plus a very user friendly how to to learn how to make a journal (or a travel journal, since this class is centered around her trip in Venice), fill it, use it! I think I bought this class in October, but I first tried (and successed) making a journal in November.

It was a wonderful experience and I bought quality equipment so I am ready to make many more journals! Let me show you what I did:

Here is the cover of my new journal, I bought an old italian dictionary to use the cover, and covered it with a special wrapping paper.

I used the beginner's stitch.

This is at the end of my journal. I used a stamped flower to decorate, some paper from a moleskine pamphlet, washi tape, and duck tape

My first page! It reads: Productive day in the studio.

I used a variety of papers: some watercolor paper, some decorative paper, bits and pieces of this and that, and magazine pages cropped to fit the journal for the only purpose of writing.

Here you have decorative paper, covered by a smaller page of heavy watercolor paper, and a postcard taken from TTV class.

One of the magazine pages

Another

I've had this paper for years and didn't know what to do with it, until now!

And finally the cover of my journal!

I made my first journal smaller than the ones I usually use (I have a friend who made me several art journals) because I wanted to get back to the habit of daily journaling. I am still working on it, but I am so happy and so proud of the result!! I love using a journal that I made myself, it adds so much to the experience!

Pages récentes / Recent pages

J'aimerais partager avec vous les pages les plus récentes de mon cahier. Ce que j'aime faire entre autres, c'est peindre le fond de la page avec de l'acrylique (j'utilise surtout Americana et Ceramcoat, deux marques qui se vendent en petits pots pratiques et très abordables) et de faire plusieurs pages de différentes couleur d'un coup. Je ne prévois pas vraiment l'utilisation, j'y vais plutôt avec les couleurs qui me tente dans le moment. Selon la marque, je vais obtenir un fini lisse ou mat et presque rugueux. Ici, pour la page rose fluo, j'ai utilisé se l'acrylique en tube qui a généralement un fini lisse et brillant, et est moins liquide que l'acrylique d'artisanat que j'achète.

Ici j'ai peint le fond d'un bleu/gris foncé, et j'ai dessiné des motifs en haut et en bas de la page avec un crayon acrylique.

Dans la page de droite, j'ai étiré la couleur en mettant la peinture saturée au milieu et en trempant mon pinceau dans l'eau et en étendant ce qui restait de peinture de mon pinceau sur le papier.

Ici à gauche, j'ai simplement barbouillé ma page avec des crayons aquarelle, et je suis passée par-dessus ensuite avec un pinceau mouillé sans trop peser fort pour garder le trait de crayon et ne pas tout diluer, tout en fixant la couleur sur la page.

Ici c'est un mélange de peinture acrylique et de crayon aquarelle.

Je fais souvent des portraits simplistes dans mon cahier (en écoutant de la musique ou une série télévisée). J'aime beaucoup le mélange de l'aquarelle, et des lignes d'encre appliquées à la plume par-dessus.

Ici on a deux fonds à l'acrylique, à gauche j'ai fait le dessin au feutre puis j'ai rajouté la couleur peau à l'acrylique, et finalement j'ai coloré avec des crayons acrylique et de l'aquarelle. À droite, j'ai collé un papier fedex sur lequel j'ai appliqué librement de l'aquarelle, et de la colle à paillette or.

En dessous du papier Fedex, il y a cette phrase écrite à l'encre, les lettres colorées au crayon de bois.

À gauche, j'ai dessiné ma tasse de café sur un fond d'acrylique, et j'ai écrit à l'entour. À droite: fond d'acrylique, écriture à l'encre, l'espace négatif ensuite coloré au crayon de bois.

Ici j'ai dessiné mon café, rempli l'espace vide à l'entour d'aquarelle, et ensuite écrit. À droite, dessin et écriture avec crayons gel Sakura sur fond d'acrylique noire.

Deux dessins faits bien rapidement: celui de gauche avec sharpies et aquarelle, celui de droit, encre et aquarelle.

J'aime beaucoup dessiner et peindre des motifs dans mon cahier. Je trouve qu'avec l'aquarelle, je peux trouver une infinité de couleurs et toutes les faire ressortir. C'est très méditatif.

Un petit Pep Talk, et un dessin de mon café dans un pot masson.

Pictures of everyday creativity

Un dessin fait sur le coin d'une table chez mes beaux-parents // A drawing made at my step parents.

Pour faire une liste, on commence par des bandes de couleurs inspirantes... // To make a list, you begin with color.

Peinture / Painting

Café Coffee