Here's to 2015!

View of my Documented Life/Faith Planner for 2015. I did every juicy week! Happy New Year!

Joy to the World

DLP inspired by Michelle Ward

November theme: Stencils, Stamps & Masks
Weekly challenge: Use a hand-carved stamp
Journal Prompt: Tapestries

Here's my interpretation of this week's challenge.
I found a leaf in my notebook, nicely pressed from last year. I traced the leaf, made a reduced copy on the copier and then transferred the design onto an eraser. I used the Speedball Speedy-cut eraser carving block.

I carved the leaf design and tested my design by stamping samples. I like to leave small lines to show the hand carving lines. If you don't, you can cut those away.

Then I stamped my new stamp onto tissue paper coated with gesso and paint.

I allowed the ink to dry overnight so in the morning I could cut the leaf image into strips of paper.
Then I glued all the pieces back together matching up the stamped images over each other just like a quilt!

Check out Michelle's beautiful DLP example here.

November

Getting my table ready for November. I love decorating my table centerpiece. It's a deep "box" that I fill with seasonal fun all year long.

Tea bags for DLP

Here's this week's challenge for Documented Life Planner: tea bags! I buy tea bags and fill with loose tea, so I've got plenty of paper to play with. I dried the tea bags after they're wonderfully dyed. This page was easy starting with a decorative layer of tissue paper that I stenciled and finger painted. Then I stenciled right on the tea bag paper and glued it onto the page. Hope you try it yourself!

Painting

I am very inspired by Flora Bowley's painting process, so I gave it try. The trick is to let each layer dry before building up layers. I don't even know how many layers are here! It was great fun.

Visit Flora's site.

August inspirations

I'm sharing my latest LifeBook 2015 lesson ... where my limiting beliefs were written on the page under the "world" you see. I covered with paint and modeling paste and then show the girl rising above the beliefs. This was so much fun to create. As I often do, I made a copy in my planner so I could remind myself of the lesson all week. Don't forget -- Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can create your own flying girl.

This fit perfectly with the faces theme for my August Documented Life Planner. More of August here:

July Documented Life Planner

Like most of us, I like to participate in several on line art challenges. I currently follow both DLP and Documented Faith, plus I take LifeBook 2015 weekly lessons. I use my planner as a true planner: schedule, to-do list, journaling about thoughts and art journaling about what's going on in my life. I use both the DLP and Documented Faith prompts to jump start ideas and sometimes combine them or incorporate them into a LifeBook lesson. So, my weekly art will reflect all of these influences.
Here are a couple of examples:

Travel/picture worth 1000 words: We visited friends at Lake Wallenpaupack over the Fourth of July weekend. This is a photo of flowers in their garden.

The Ephemera theme/life history worked perfectly for the week that I had a family reunion.

And then this message coordinated for the inside of the ephemera/family history tip-in.

This worked for uniqueness and time themes -- me at age two.

 Danielle Donaldson's LifeBook lesson (girl photocopied on left) inspired childhood joys. These ideas then spilled into the "uniqueness" and the Psalm verse shown here which supported the "only you can be you" page.

A brave new girl

A brave new girl appeared after the ink dried in my Dylusions journal.

Happy Easter!

My inner artist guardian angel

..to watch over me. Watercolor crayons, collage, gesso and charcoal pencil.

Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can create your own angel.

Come with me to the sea

Here's my latest from LifeBook.  This was an interesting process and I wish I would have taken step-by-step photos. I started with a layer of paint. Then each night for 5 days I added something to the page. Having it dry completely each night before adding another layer was key! The boat is made from gold leaf flakes. The flake colors vary so you'll see the rainbow of colors. Thank you to Mati Rose for her inspiration.

Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can play, too.

Seeds of Love

Just finished this LifeBook lesson from Tam. A lesson on contrast with whimsical, natural shapes. There's lots of collage underneath, layers of gesso and paint, and then doodling. So fun!

I used photocopies of the original to create this week's planner pages.

Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can play, too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

LifeBook feathers

Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can play, too.

Planner pages

Sharing a few documented life pages...

Another lesson from LifeBook 2015

Patti Ballard is a very talented painter who shared a mini-lesson with us. This was way out of my comfort zone, but I was excited to give it a try!

Visit Tam at LifeBook 2015 to see how you can play, too.

My Muse

I created my little Muse to inspire me this year.
Special thanks to Tam at LifeBook 2015.

Watercolor crayons, acrylic paint, torn paper, Tombow markers and pencil.

I added a copy to my planner for the week!