Leafygal

One thing leads to another...

Following on from Altered Books (AB's) and Watercolour Collage (now reincarnated as the group ArtExplorations,)  I have been seduced into yet more categories of artistic endeavour.

Flirting with mail art in the form of 4"x6" (inch) postcards,   Artist Trading cards (ATC's) and now Gluebooks...

"Gluebooks are a cross between art journals and collage. Collect the paper fallout from your daily life, and turn it into art!"

Gluebooks are described by Lisa Vollrath  as
"... basically of collage journals. They do incorporate other types of artwork like drawing and painting, but for the most part, the basis of the gluebook is---surprise---gluing things to the pages. Everyday things, mostly---flyers, receipts, tickets, fast food fallout. These things are the building blocks of the day's artwork. The visual becomes the description of the day, rather than the written word. There tends to be only minimal writing done in these books, but visually, they do tell a story."

Artist Trading cards are much smaller - the size of a playing card in fact and can incorporate the whole gamut of artistic expresssion.

I'm slowly getting my studio organised so I can flit from one format to the other as I have a little time to spare.  Looking forward to sending pics of my work, although progress is likely to be somewhat slow!!

Altered Book First

Here's the first upload of a page from my Altered Book.
A bit experimental, but I'm quite pleased with it.
Watercolour Background, Collage , Stamping and metallic pens. The title came from the poem by Robert Graves -  "Red Daisies".

Watercolour Collage

I recently became obsessed by Altered Books and that has lead me further into the realms of ART!

A Watercolour Collage group was set up as a Yahoo group and I duly joined. It seemed like a great idea as we would be given instructions for a mini painting session for each day of the program. This struck me as the only way I was going to actually get something painted - A Kick start to be exact.
Sadly the group disintegrated due to some internal tensionsa but I had printed out the instructions and now belong to a new group that started up following the demise of the first.
I know now why I have hoarded scraps of this and bits and pieces of that for years. (I thought it was because I was just following in my mother's footsteps!!). I have a legitimate use for  dip pens, ink, rubber stamps, scraps of paper, old magazines, Pictures from old magazines, threads and ribbon etc. etc.................... (the latest insanity is contemplating the lid of the yoghurt container and wondering if I could use it as a frame for Something? Anything?)

This an example by the group moderator

On my last day off, Tuesday I finally started the first series of instructions to create watercolour and mixed media backgrounds for the collages. Here is the work in progress - watercolours overlaid variously with drawing inks (gold and white) crayons, watercolour pencils.  I'm now dying to have some time do stamp and collage them.  More to come...

Ego Trip

Just mucking around on the web, as you do,  and decided to use some photos to make up a name plate.

It was a lot of fun to do. I plan to do something with it when I really get started on some Altered Books - a new fascination I have.
I knew that all the bits of so called "Junk" that I've hoarded collected over the years were going to come in handy one day.
Now I'm even finding it hard to throw away the lids off the yoghurt in case I can make some sort of frame from them!!  Sad person!