Woyww 451

Hi dear deskers and WOYWW addicts!

My last WOYWW was no. 395 – hard to believe. But as may have expected it was due to health issues that kept me from blogging. Spring 2017 I got the results of my check up: bone cancer in my spine. At least I knew now why my energy and creativity were close to zero.

After some strength-sapping therapies and medication I feel a bit stronger and decided to jump right into a year long challenge: 365somethings2018 hosted by Daisy Yellow and iHanna. They made a great effort to bring this project on the way.

On my desk you see tons of rubbish as usual, so here nothing has changed. I am always working in a journal and in addition for 365somethings2018 I have small formats, that are easy to handle. If you are interested to have a look please check with week 1

Week 2 and Week 3.

How about you? You can still join in, believe me it is fun! Now go ahead and visit some of the other desks, it will be an interesting journey.

Hoping to see you soon.

Cheers

Gabriele

 

 

 

WOYWW 395

This is the last WOYWW for this year and I don’t want to miss it. Welcome to my desk which is as – ahem – busy as always. It is an awful long time since my last post because this year I had so many health issues, I was unable to do something decent. I did take some courses though and worked outside with a little help from my friends.

 

The first class was by Gillian Lee Smith, a wonderful artist! I started drawing and I will continue, because there is so much more to learn… Just some examples to show what I learned so far:

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In August I started a class with Erin Faith Allen. A completely different program by also an awesome artist. This class is very challenging as it engages not only my drawing and painting skills, it demands my whole self:

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Well, after all I was more productive than I thought. Although I had an eye operation in late November I even had energy enough to create some letter journal entries for Christmas.

I am now looking forward to the new year that will hopefully bring more health and energy and with a better eye sight easier creating. Hoping to see you early next year! Have a wonderful and Happy New Year!!

Gabriele

WOYWW and still letter journals

Hi, dear WOYWW addicts, it is Wednesday again and time to let you have a look at my messy desk and visit not so messy desks. Listing, what is on my desk would take hours, so just have a look for yourself, there is nothing you would not know.

I am still spending my time with Letter Journals. The members of our German Facebook group just love doing these Journals and it is the main point of discussion these days. I show you my latest entry into a friends journal. I did not want to cover these little angels, they are too sweet.

My journal, just with backgrounds and one finished page by myself, might show you how this kind of journaling works. We use mostly recycled material and prepare backgrounds, like we want to.  A big help for me are my trusty Rubberdance stamps, which allow me quick and beautiful results in giving the papers a personal touch. And then we wait until it comes back, packed with beautiful artwork. Exciting? Oh, yes!!!

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I will post again, when this little book is filled with friends artwork!

Have a wonderful time in this beautiful May!

Gabriele

 

WOYWW 359

Long, long time no see! Yes this was a winter with mild temperatures, but almost everybody I know, including me, was weak and miserable. But the sun is shining and things will be better! I want it! So I decided to start with this post and get some inspiration by visiting other studios to carry on. Here is mine, more or less still the same, maybe a bit dusty.

I have been doing some things you know, things you can do lying on the sofa, like taking internet classes, making some little drawings, finishing my mini book, and I am in a swap for Letter Journaling. You know that kind of thing, where you make little journals, that fit into  a regular envelope and you send it around, so that 4 or 5 people can create in it. Supercool! I am in an international group and also in a German group. Real fun. I show you what I made so far.

The cover of my Journal and the envelope where I could make good use of my Rubberdance stamps!

Collage with a print of one of my paintings

Collage with a print of one of my paintings

Little beetle (also Rubberdance stamp) longing for falling stars

Collage with a print of one of my paintings

Collage with a print of one of my paintings

I am quite happy how it turned out and I can´t wait for my copy to come back.

I finally finished my mini book, part of which you might have already seen. This was quite an interesting experience. As I was too weak and tired for a bigger project, it was a good thing having small pieces of art that can be finished quickly and leave you with the feeling having created something. It became a wild mix of found art (the underpaper that covered my desk, ripped into pieces), that sometimes revealed surprising beauty at a close sight, painting, collage, drawing and stamping with my wonderful Rubberdance stamps. I must say these stamps helped me out many times when I needed some marks, sentiments, just words, or a little creature or just an idea, when I needed one. This was my first mini book, but I started the next one, as it is so much fun and rewarding for me and even the people, who had it in their hands. This format (8,5×6 cm closed) is really something special.

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Today is spring at it’s best, with bright sunshine, lots of colourful flowers and birds singing! It’s marvelous!

Have a nice time visiting all the other desks and enjoy spring (or autumn) wherever you are!

Gabriele

Mini book on WOYWW 339

My goodness! It has been ages since my last post here. Still having a lot of health issues I had no energy for blogging. But I missed my WOYWW community so much I just had to do this blog and show you, what I am doing right now.

It is Wednesday again and time for WOYWW – where we visit our workspaces around the world. Thanks to our wonderful host Julia Dunnit this is possible without leaving the nice warm house and the steaming cuppa on the desk! What you also see on my desk are fragments of my mini journal, I started like 2 weeks ago. It is a super format for me at the moment, as I can quickly finish one of the little pages or just leave it as a nice background ready for finishing touches or a little drawing or painting. Also I can use my lovely Rubberdance stamps on them for a quick result and also they make rich backgrounds. But I don´t have to tell you about using stamps – you are the pros and know all about it!!!

Some great artists are doing mini books, which really inspired me –  Orly Avinery and Roxanne Coble. I am gathering pages at the moment and now have to think about the binding and the cover. I believe a more casual binding would be the right one for me (you know I am the queen of imperfection), like, let´s say, a personalized coptic stitch. I mean personalized, because I never did it before and it might not look like the proper Coptic stitch, when I am done. Well, maybe you are experienced in book binding and have an advice for me, on what technique might be best for tiny books.

Here are the pages I finished so far. I must say, for me it is kind of a therapy. A little playground, where I can try out ideas, techniques, colour combinations – what ever. And I can always go back and add what I feel it has to be done…

I will share the finished product with cover and all, I hope next week. Now off you go to visit all the other desks and enjoy and get inspired. Hope to see you soon, dear friends.

Gabriele

Diva and WOYWW 323

This is an odd summer. Nothing really goes like I wanted it. The weather is giving me many problems (well, I suppose not only me). Since I have to take these cancer meds, the hot and humid summer is sort of paralyzing me. It sucks all the strength and energy out of me, that I need to create. My desk really, really is a complete mess. Here is the proof:

I started journaling again, but something else is drawing my attention. Her name is Diva. Incidentally I happened to come across a site of an organisation, that takes care of these poor doggies that are abused in breeding factories. You might have heard of it. They keep dogs in small cages, sometimes in complete darkness. They get hormon treatments, so they get babies 3 times a year, instead of two. Very often, they don´t get enough to eat, they get no medical treatment, they are just kept to produce babies.

It breaks my heart, when I think, what so called humans do to them, just for profit. This only works, because people buy puppies any places, but not from a responsible breeder or go to a shelter and adopt a puppy from there. What really impressed me is the work of the organisation „Liberty for Dogs“ or Retriever in Not. To get an impression of the things I am talking about you should have a look at their website.

Anyway I did and found Diva.

She is a 7 year old Cavalier King Charles and was all her life living in a cage and producing babies. It was love on first sight and very soon we could welcome her in our home. I am not telling any more, just have a look at the slide show and I am sure you will understand me. These are photos made in the shelter where she was in loving care. It is more a family situation than a shelter, where the puppies are been taking care of to relax and get stronger. Because living in a small cage makes them weak and many of them are in bad shape.

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Now she lives at our place and is good friends with our Luna already:

Now you know, why I was a bit short on time for art. But I am sure little Diva will soon inspire me and next time I will come up with some results.

That is it for now, have some fun visiting some desks and have a wonderful creative time.

Gabriele

 

My altered book in my new video studio

Hi, dear friends, long time no see!! It is more than 6 weeks since I posted anything here and that is a shame. I was sick for several weeks and unable to do anything. But big news: this week, WOYWW321, I invite you to my new video studio! I know, it doesn´t look like much, but this is the place, where IT happens.

The following video shows a walkthrough my altered book to give you an impression of the project. I very much like this one, because it has many vintage photographs, which really inspire me. This is my first video, so please be kind with me and forgive the stuttering and „hms“ and „ehs“ and my searching for words. But I hope you will have some fun with it.

Many of the pages, you saw in the video, are still in progresss. I posted the pages on Pinterest, but they might be changed, as I am coming back on them to change little things, some more doodling or stamping. And new ones will be added. If you are interested, you can find them on my Pinterest page. Also I posted the video and some clippings on the Rubber Dance blog.

I just show a few pages here, so you get an idea, what it is about.

And what does little Luna think? „She forgot to give me my carrot!!“ Well, we are renovating the house, there is not always time for carrots! Shall we change places, darling? I am still recovering…

I wish you a very happy and creative time!

Gabriele

WOYWW and Art Journaling With Friends

It is Wednesday again and time for WOYWW – where we visit our workspaces around the world. This time I cannot show my workspace, but maybe the following is of interest for you. This article was published in Unruly Paperarts already, but I think not all of you have seen it, so I post it here.

I like to use underpaper to protect my workspace (at least most of it). I use big sheets – 70 x 100 cm (27,56 x 39,37 inch) – of good sturdy watercolour paper. It is quite expensive, but luckily I have some sheets in my stash that are not 100 percent stain free, so that is a good way to use them up. This is what they look like when I am through with them. Sort of wild and trashy. But you will see, the beauty shows in the details.

I tore this big sheet in halves to the size of 25 x 17,5 cm (9,84 x 6,89 inch) and ended up with 16 pieces. I did not look for any patterns, just ripped the page up as it comes. When I took a close look at the segments, I realized, that some of them where so pretty, like a painting done on purpose. There is so much beauty in the details I just felt bad covering them with paint. Other ones just needed minor additions to make it complete.

Also I have been seeking a good way of displaying tags, ATCs etc. from friends and maybe incorporate them into my art. It is inspiring to me, working with friends artwork, I feel somehow connected to them while doing this. It was so much fun, to start this little art journal where I could combine both. Here is my box of treasures where I collect my cut up underpaper and all kinds of stuff from friends.

I have no experience in bookmaking at all, but always wanted to try it, so please forgive that this is not a perfect product. Unlike for many cardmakers, perfection is not an issue for me – unexpected stains and distressed edges sometimes add more interest. I decided to use a simple binding with 3 stitches, because the book will have the format of 12,5 x 17,5 cm (4,92 x 6,89 inch) and that would be enough. Here now is the first signature of I don´t know how many yet to come.

The colours of this background were a perfect match with the postcard on the right hand side and a beautiful tag on the left. The tag and the three small squares on the upper right are from an Australian friend and the leaves cut from book pages and coloured by me are a gift from Bibi Lindahl, the owner of Rubber Dance. The leaf stamps in the background and the text fly free are by Rubber Dance. Here you can see the simple binding very well.

This butterfly by a friend from the US found its place because of the turquoise colour match. This page was very lively so I calmed it down a little with the card here and now from my stash on the right side. I stenciled a few black accents to pull everything together and put some washi tape on the bottom. I stamped those round shapes in light turquoise on the left and the right side with Round in Circles from Rubber Dance.

Here I cut up an envelope from Bibi Lindahl to use as a pocket, which houses a beautiful tag and shows Rubber Dance stamping – spirals, circles and hearts, which also calmed the very vivid page a little.

The green tag is from my stash and is attached to the butterfly to hold both in place. On the reverse side various stamps from Rubber Dance.

This page shows a raven from a napkin, some more collage with magazine scraps, part of a wonderful card from a friend from Sweden and a lot of Rubber Dance stamps.

Here I tried to repeat the egg shaped pattern with a stencil using similar colours and I´ve also used many Rubber Dance stamps.

Here is a wonderful place for an ATC from a friend from the US. I thought that wonderful quote would go with the Rubber Dance dragonfly that happened to appear on just the right spot and I completed with Rubber Dance Weed Love stamp. I could not make such a background on purpose!

A wonderful tag from Bibi Lindahl found its place on a page that had some horizontal lines like an abstract landscape. I completed sparingly with a face and the pine stamp from Rubber Dance.

As this is an old sheet of underpaper, it also has a stamp from another brand on it and I think it goes very well with the hearts circles and the sentiment just a note to a friend from Rubber Dance. And it goes so well with the wonderful handwriting from my friend in Sweden. I really love it when this happens.

The opposite page shows the beautiful card from my friend that you have already seen with the bird page. I added some handwriting, vintage postcard and circles stamps from Rubber Dance, some stenciling and a piece of washi tape.

I cannot give you a supply list, as it all depends on what you have in your stash or trash. I did use a lot of Rubber Dance stamps though for some finishing touches, as they are unique and give me a big variety of nice sentiments, of nature and vintage images and what I really use a lot – also in my paintings – are their text and background stamps. See for yourself at http://www.rubberdance.com. Their design team also shows a lot of inspiring projects.

This was such a pleasure to create, also because I feel connected to my friends, each time I have some of their artwork in my hand. And if it is only a scrap of some printed material, I feel it was thoughtfully chosen with love and that makes me feel good. One thing is for sure:  ART JOURNALING WITH FRIENDS is going to be continued. I will post the progress on my blog, the Rubber Dance blog and Facebook page and would love to see you there.

Hope to see you soon

Gabriele

 

 

WOYWW 305

Hello dear WOYWW friends, welcome to my place. After some miserable days weather wise it starts getting better and the sun is shining again. I did no spring clean, but kind of an inventory of my „treasures“. And I „found“ this awesome box of pastels. I always wanted to get me some Pan Pastels but the price kept me from buying them. Well these pastel sticks cost about 10 percent of the Pan Pastels. So I gave it a try and was excited about the vibrancy of the colours and the chalky grip . I have to try out a lot more with that cool stuff. I will show what develops.

When I sit at the computer I sometimes get company from birds, cats, mice and sometime this little fellow. He eats what the birds threw out of the bird feeder.

Now off you go to visit all the other participants of this cool worldwide blog hop. Have fun and I hope to see you soon!

Cheers

Gabriele

Stormy weather!

Hi dear WOYWW friends! Welcome on a very stormy day! It has been stormy already yesterday and the weather forecast said it is going to stay like that until Thursday. Well, in here it is nice and comfy, maybe a bit – ah lets say busy. I am preparing for my monthly post at Rubber Dance and I hope, I am not going to ruin the page. It will be posted April, 12 at the Rubber Dance blog.

I can reveal another secret, that is my article at Unruly Paperarts, which was published on Monday, the 30th. It is all about what to do with all those wonderful art pieces received from friends. Here is are two photos:

and click here for the whole article. I hope you like it – have fun. Maybe it is an inspiration for you.

Have a nice day and see you soon.

Gabriele