Blast from the past: Book of Days part 2

Book of Days ecourse by

Effy Wild 2013

Book of Days is an art journaling exploration with Effy Wild. If you want to know more about it and about this and other ecourses look HERE

Below you will find my original blogposts only slightly edited to fit my new website format. The original blogpost are no longer on my website. Want to know why read this intro post.

This is part 2 of these lessons, see the previous blog post here

Book of Days week 8 BOD and week 9 October 13, 2013 |

Week 8 BOD: Again made on a background of paper from my workdesk (underpaper,as said last week).
I did not have a good day and my page turned out kind of messy. But with a lot of good advice for myself. Now I will have to do all I have written.

book of days
book of days

Week 9 BOD: This week was about using tags. For this page they are used as flaps that can be opened or closed. I first attached the tags with tape, I started with gesso on the pages and then sprayed dylusions in two colors. After I painted the gesso I closed the pages with the wet gesso and then opened them again. I like the structures you get, they look like veins. Painted flowers with white acrylic paint and filled the flower and leaves with metallic acrylic paint. Used a homemade stamp to stamp some circles in the background and added a few pieces of tape. You can see the page with the flaps open en closed on the pictures.

book of days
book of days

Week 9 BOM: In this case the tags where glued to the background. A layer of gesso was added over some of them and then they were colored with Neocolor II. The idea was to do something with hips and I do not like to copy lessons so I googled hips and came up with a cartoon picture of a dancing girl. I drawed something similar, and gave the girl purple hair and purple dress with acrylic paint and neocolor II. I was looking for the right text and remembered a song and used that. Added some music notes, had some old music stickers (which did not even stick anymore so I glued them), stamped a little and added some flowers. And here she is. She really makes me smile HAVE A NICE DAY

book of days

Book of Days week 10 October 20, 2013 | 2

Totally in the fall mood this week. Everything falls apart around me and art sort of keeps me going
Also had a severe cold this week, due to low energy reserves I guess.
In the garden fall is starting to show and leaves are falling, but some plants are at their high now
For a few of the lessons I played with autumn colors

Week 10 BOM: The lesson was about mark making. Since this is made in my altered atlas I started by painting the pages lightgreen with acrylic paint. Used old dried leaves as a mask and as a stamp to create the background. Later also glued the painted leaves to the page. Used molding paste to create a tree and a black marker to draw a little around the tree added words using glitter acrylic paint. The right page has some other background colors due to leakage from the next page.

book of days

Week 10 BOD: First a lot of marks were made with different stencils with inks and painted markings with different colors acrylic paint then I draw the outline of my hands and covered the rest of the page with first a light coat of gesso and then lightblue acrylic paint. Blue for me is a calming color and words came up in my head. I painted them with large letters on the page.
And yes it really helps

(Note added dd sep 17 2018: this page is now used for my business cards and as header for my website, it is my logo and slogan now)

book of days

Book of Days wk 12 October 27, 2013 |

This week 12 lessons where about doodling, something you can do without thinking too much so I skipped week 11 with face making (doing that later). Just Doodling is great to get my mind of other things that are bothering me. The BOM and BOD gave total different results.
One with curves and curls and the other with straight lines and squares and circles and rectangles.

Week 12 BOM: Used black gesso to cover the atlas pages and then white acrylic paint and markers
JUST DOODLE PLAYING FUN

book of days

Week12 BOD : Used red acrylic paint for the background, later covered with pink to make the red go away a little. I am not a fan of red, but somehow needed to paint the whole page with it this time. Then used acrylic paint to made the circles, squares and rectangles and markers and pens to make borders and drawings and text inside the shapes

book of days

Book of Days week 11 November 1, 2013 |

It has been strange weeks lately. Like I said before was not feeling very good.
Made my week 11 pages before Wednesday. One where I was lost for words and the other hoping for spring. Spring as a new fresh season full of opportunities. And yes my gut feeling was right. Got fired on Wednesday together with 11 of my colleagues. Weird, feeling useless after working there for 33 years. Anyway enough of that, this blog is all about creating

Week 11 BOM: All about Front Facing Portraits. I glued another old page covered with paint in my altered atlas and made a face and hair on top of this. Added some hearts to give myself a little love and added the text: Without words

book of days

Week 11 BOD: Like for the BOM page I also glued some paper in the atlas to cover the pages
One page only had a little dylusions sprayed on them with a stencil. I had a grey pencil drawing of a face lying around and glued that to the page and added a label with the text:  Feeling grey today
On the other page made some simple flowers with Copic markers in a spring color and added an envelop: In Need of Spring and some washi tape with little birds and ….

book of days

Book of Days week 13 December 7, 2013 |

Week 13 BOM: I was trying to cheer myself up, really needing some positive energy.
Started with this page with a beautiful soft color and some homemade glimmer mist (made with dylusions ink and perfect pearl powder). Then stenciled with gesso (this dissolved the dylusions and colored them). Found a few pictures (the tree is a picture I made myself and the others are from magazines) and added some text. It is really hard to see the shine on the page on the pictures. The pages are more beautiful in real life.

book of days

Week 13 BOD: Here the theme was: make a page of somebody you admire or an artist you want to be. All my art journaling and mixed media really started in March 2010 when I bought a Dutch book: Creativiteit geen kunst by Lia Nijman en Jenny de Bode.

The book learned you a lot of different creative things with paper, paint, words and lots more and
how to deal with your internal critic: A Bleating sheep
The book led me to a group from Jenny de Bode Creatief Contact (dutchies: dit is een geweldige groep for iedereen die creatief bezig is of dat nou is met papier, verf, wol, stof, foto’s computers enz allen mensen kunnen hier contacten maken met gelijk gestemden).

This starting point led me to a lot of people who did workshops elsewhere. And……made me a total Art Journal / Mixed Media Junkie.
Jenny also introduced me to working with: Newspaper (I am still not as good with it as she is), Bister (walnut ink or made of wood) and she makes awesome paintings of imaginary people on rocks.
So Jenny I would not be doing what I am doing right now if I never met you. Even though what I am doing is mostly totally different from what you do.
Here is my Jenny page (added a card and a part of the envelop I got from Jenny)

book of days

BOD 2 2013 week 14

Almost at the end of 2013, but I managed to finish a few more lessons of BOD2 2013
Week 14 BOM: Was all about using fabric in your pages. Well I don’t do much with fabric so I had to dig deep to find something and made this fabric pie.

book of days

Week 14 BOD: Here I used larger pieces of fabric. The green piece on the left edge I got from Esther Klijn with an envelope swap. The large piece with the butterflies came in a pot with an orchid plant. My motto is RELAX.
Really need to get my head quiet (when I am not creating). So much changes going on right now. The letters I cut from printed pages of Lifebook 2013.  I was so stupid as to print all the lessons, a big pile of paper and I have them digitally also. So I am going to use up the pages as background, cut out words, pieces, letters whatever and never print them ever again.

book of days

Book of Days hidden writing spreads 

Week 15 lessons for Book of Days 2013. They were all about hidden writing
Well I have a lot on my mind so did a lot of hidden written which is nowhere to be seen in the end result, totally covered by layers

time to relax

In my second spread I did some additional writing over the page (almost unreadable though). So loved the wild doodling with neocolors and markers

BOD2013-2 week 15 BOD

Week 16 BOM, a page with an image transfer
I used an image from Teesha Moore's astronaut club ( https://theartstronauts.com/ ) which I actually transfered twice.
I used a print on an overhead sheet, did a transfer on the left page and since there was enough ink left, did the second transfer on the right page. Added some words and color.

book of days

Week 17: A page with paper parts in the background. My girlie does not believe the slogan I wrote down, judging by the weird eyes

book of days

Week 17 BOD
A page with two nature photo's, stencil with gesso, words with markers.

book of days