Art journal

Inspired by | Paris revisited

| Marsha.

Inspired by: a monthly creative blog series by Riikka Kovasin and Marsha Valk

Hi there! August is here and the time is right for… The 50th instalment of Inspired by!!!

I guess you know the story by now: Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material) and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th, when we show you and each other our creations.

50+ projects and counting

We started this project in juli 2012 and I am still so grateful that we did! Without it I would not have created these projects:

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: 50th

Many of these are still all time favourites!

I actually did more than 50 projects. Sometimes I’m not happy with a result and I do another take on it. Other times I am really happy and so inspired that I just can’t stop creating.

I’ve learned so much whilst doing Inspired by. I watched films I never would have watched, read books I never would have picked, I learned about new-to-me musicians and artists and I tried out so many things I wouldn’t have tried. I even sewed a couple of times!

This series is my playground and I love that we’ve managed to keep it up for so long!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: 50th

This month’s theme

For this month, we decided to go back and revisit one of our earlier themes. But because just choosing one was way to hard, we decided to each pick one at random.

The first number I got was 4. Inspired by no. 4 was a theme where Riikka had sent me an inspirational package to work with. It would not be impossible to revisit this theme, but I decided to give the Random Number Generator another go. It then gave me this:

Marsha Valk | Inspired By: 50th

Inspired by no. 21 coincidentally also involved an inspirational package, but this time I had sent it to Riikka and the package had a theme… Paris! And because Paris is a reoccurring theme that goes back to the very beginning, I found it a rather fitting choice.

I immediately knew I would not go back to Inspired by no. 21. I didn’t have to, because I visited Paris again this Spring and… I had all this photo and video footage that I hadn’t edited yet. So I was thinking a long the lines of scrapbooking, making a video or a photo book.

The reason I now have no video to show you is that I dropped my external hard drive last week… and it has unfortunately stopped working. I did not have the raw footage anywhere else… Consider this your cue: please back up your files!

This is such a bummer for me, but I don’t think anything super precious is lost, so… Let’s move on!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Paris Revisited

My photos live on another drive, so I’m happy to report that I still have all the photos I took!

I started to work on a (digital) photo book. I completed and sent it in this weekend. Which means that it will not be here in time for me to show you in this Inspired by post. It isn’t that special anyway, though I do intend to handwrite my journaling in the printed book and I might add some bits and bobs to make it more personal.

No harm done, because whilst I was editing and sorting photos, I remembered of all the AMAZING art I had seen during the trip.

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Paris Revisited

I spent a looooong time at Centre Pompidou. One of the exhibits I saw there was Paul Klee – “L’ironie à l’oeuvre”. I could not believe my luck and I was so excited to see his work in real life. There was so much of it on display too!

I wanted to create something with the art inspiration I got at Centre Pompidou and… I was dead set on using some of the supplies I took home from this trip. Because the reason why I was in Paris, was that I accompanied my friend Birgit, who taught workshops at the Version Scrap fair.

At the fair I met the sweet ladies from 13 Arts and Aida gave me a zip-lock bag full of 13 Arts products to try. Of course I’ve already used some of them on projects here and there, but I haven’t had the chance to really explore them and use them all together on one project. So that’s what I wanted to do!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Paris Revisited

And this is what I ended up with:
Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Paris Revisited

The metallic paint and glitter is hard to capture on photo:
Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Paris Revisited

Conclusion
This was fun! Exploring products, using limited supplies, exploring the work of one particular artist, documenting memories in the process. I got all I could wish for!

Now… This has become a very long post and I’m sure you are as curious as I am to see which theme Riikka picked and what she created with that theme in mind! Don’t let me keep you any longer! Visit her blog here: Paperiliitin.

Inspired by | Alice Through The Looking Glass

| Marsha.

Inspired by: a monthly creative blog series by Riikka Kovasin and Marsha Valk

Happy Sunday! Time is flying by and we’re already 10 days into July… So here’s a new instalment of Inspired by!

Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material) and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th, when we show you and each other our creations.

This month’s theme

Was of course a no brainer… At least on my part! It had to be Alice Through The Looking Glass!

I had been looking forward to this film for so long! Harold and I went to see it on a Friday morning. Not a very popular moment for visiting the cinema, so we had the theatre almost to ourselves!

The story of Alice Through The Looking Glass has very little to do with the book. Most of the book has already been told in the first film, that Riikka and I covered in this Inspired by last year.

In this film Alice returns to Wonderland to travel back in time in order to rescue the Hatter. Many of the characters from the first film return and there are a couple of new ones too, like Time and his Seconds.

All in all the film left me a bit… ‘meh’. I loved all the visuals, especially the costumes and I thought the animation that is played with the credits was a nice surprise at the end. It was an enjoyable film to watch, but it will not make my top 10 of all time favourite films.

The Chinese Dress

I should have known that this would be all about the costumes again… The costumes for this film were made by Colleen Atwood, a triple Academy Award winning costume designer.

She won one of the Oscars for Alice in Wonderland, but she also designed the costumes for Dark Shadows and Snow White and the Huntsman, the films that got Riikka and I started on this Inspired by adventure.

I guess I’m a fan… and it makes me want to watch all the films she has worked on. Fortunately I don’t have to do this right now!

I knew my point of inspiration from the moment Alice appeared in her first amazing, colourful Chinese costume… I was obsessed!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Alice Through The Looking Glass

I wanted to work with paint again and I grabbed one of my art journals. I did not have a plan. I printed some photos of the dress that I found on the internet, looked for similar paint colours in my stash, gesso-ed the page and… started to paint.

I worked on this journal spread for three days. Not enire days of course, but I did not finish it in one sit. In fact: I don’t feel it’s finished yet.

This morning I was thinking that there isn’t enough depth and there isn’t enough white. I’m also still thinking about some text on there. But for now I’m going to call it finished.

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Alice Through The Looking Glass

Conclusion

It was fun to do a film again! I also loved playing with paint again. I think it was a good exercise to work on one thing for a longer time.

I had carved out more time for this Inspired by than I usually do. And STILL I don’t feel I had enough time. Which is funny, because time is a theme (and a character) in the film.

Anyway: I think it could still use something. But it’s also just a journal page… I don’t need to save Wonderland with it. So let’s not overthink it!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: Alice Through The Looking Glass

Now… I can’t wait to see what Riikka has created! You can visit her on her blog: Paperiliitin!

Inspired by | The Last Runaway

| Marsha.

Inspired by: a monthly creative blog series by Riikka Kovasin and Marsha Valk

Happy Tuesday! Can you believe that it’s already May 10th? Time for a new Inspired by!

Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material) and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th, when we show you and each other our creations.

This month’s theme

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

It has been a while since we read a book for Inspired by! Tracy Chevalier’s books have come up as a possible theme before and this time we decided to go with it!

Tracy Chevalier is famous for her book ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. I didn’t want to pick that one, so I choose ‘The Last Runaway‘ instead. The pick was totally random: it’s the first one that comes up when I search for Tracy Chevalier in my local library’s catalogue and the readers had given it 5 stars. I didn’t even read what it was about!

When I actually read the description I was worried that the story would be too heavy for Inspired by, but Riikka said it would be fine. Riikka had already read books by Chevalier before… but I hadn’t, so I didn’t know what I was in for!

I read the book whilst on vacation. It turned out to be the perfect vacation read!

I liked the book a lot. It was an easy read and the story was quite light considering the theme. I expected more drama, more depth… I kept waiting for a twist or a turn, but it just didn’t happen. The leading lady seemed too sensible, the whole story seemed a little tame and the ending certainly seemed rushed to me.

That said: Tracy Chevalier is really good at setting a scene and describing everything to the details. You can just ‘see’ the quilts the main character Honor Bright quilts and the bonnets that are made at the milliner’s shop!

The project

Quilts are mentioned first on page 1 of the book. I took a mental note just there, but little did I know that the quilts would be a thread throughout the book.

The further I got into the story, I knew that those quilts were going to be my inspiration.

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

I was especially interested in the Star of Bethlehem pattern and I thought I could create something like that on paper.

My first thought was that it would be cool to make it out of paper that ‘meant’ something to me. Like scraps of scrapbook paper that I had used on other projects. Only thing is: I do not keep any scraps… Not of scrapbook paper. What I do keep are endless supplies of gelliprinted papers. So I dove into that pile and I even found some odd bits and pieces to collage.

Now for the pattern. I knew I had to have quite a few diamond shapes. So I dug out my Silhouette machine and started to cut diamond shapes. That didn’t work… You need a diamond shape of a precise lenght and width to be able to create the star. It took me hours to get it right! In the end I copied a page from a quilt book from the library. I altered the image in Illustrator and then I was finally able to cut it with the Silhouette.

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

The pattern came along nicely. But once I had every piece glued down, I thought there was something missing. So I decided to doodle the Running Feather Stitch on top of it. This is the quilting stitch the main character of the book is supposedly known for.

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

It still didn’t look right to me though… There wasn’t enough depth. It looked like a background for a scrapbook page. But it was far to busy for a scrapbook page. Where was I heading with this?

Then last night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I thought: beeswax. I have no idea where that came from! Funnily enough it is actually mentioned in the book, because the main character keeps it in her sewing box and uses it on her quilting thread.

So that’s what I did this morning… I added melted beeswax. And some collage-elements while I was at it. And some scribbles. And… now I think it’s done!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

It’s hard to capture the vibrancy of this page. Photos do not do the neon colours any justice!

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

Marsha Valk | Inspired by: The Last Runaway

Conclusion

This was fun! It was frustration too… But it was fun! Reading is my ‘first love’, so drawing inspiration to create something from a book is always such a treat!

Now… I’ve kept you for far too long! Go and see what Riikka has made this time! I have a feeling it’s inspired by quilting! ;-)

n*Studio | Stampendous Blog Hop

| Marsha.

Marsha Valk | n*Studio Creative Squad: Stampendous Blog Hop

Hi there! Welcome to the Nathalie Kalbach and Friends Blog Hop!

The n*Studio Creative Squad is joining the Stampendous Design Team today for a blog hop focusing on Nathalie’s awesome foam stamp sets!

If you would like to start at the beginning of this hop, then please check out n*Studio. Or go over to the Stampendous Blog: They have been hopping there all week, so there is loads to discover there!

I’m sharing this art journal page, featuring Nat’s Elephant Foam Stamp, Cling Rubber and Stencil Set:

Marsha Valk | n*Studio Creative Squad: Stampendous Blog Hop

The idea came to me when I was flicking through an old Flow magazine and found the image of two acrobats, doing a stunt on a couple of horses. They were just made for Nat’s Elephant!

Here’s how I created my art journal page:

Print | Monoprint a background with a Gelli Plate. I started by pulling a print of just plain red paint. Then I covered the Gelli Plate with rows of ultramarine, light blue and white paint, put the Lily Wallpaper stencil on top and pulled a print on top of the red layer.

Stamp | Cover the solid Elephant foam stamp with white paint and stamp the Elephant onto the page. Once that’s dry, stamp over it with the Elephant cling stamp using black ink.

Collage | Stamp another Elephant (cling) image onto a sheet of copy paper using neon pink ink. Cut out the elephant’s cloth and collage it over the stamped image on the page. Cut out the acrobats and collage them on top of the elephant. The guy was missing part of his legs, so I sketched them back in.

Stamp some more | Use the Fiesta Cling Rubber Stamp Set and the stencil that comes with the Elephant Foam Stamp Set with white paint to create curtains for the ‘circus tent’.

Glaze | Darken the area under the curtain with a glaze. This is a thin layer of translucent paint that I created by mixing black paint with a glazing medium.

Doodle | Add details with paint markers, pencils and gel pens.

Finish | Add more stamping, more stencilling and splatter paint until you feel the page is done!

Marsha Valk | n*Studio Creative Squad: Stampendous Blog Hop

For more foam stamp inspiration, check out all the wonderful projects in this Blog Hop!

Here are the links to the other designers participating in the hop today:

Nathalie Kalbach

Louise Healy 

Janelle Stollfus

Gwen Lafleur

Michelle Rydell

Cheiron Brandon

Lea Fritts

Pam Hornschu

Wendy Price

Stampendous Blog

Stampendous is also kindly giving away three prize packages of Nat’s foam stamp collection. That’s three x three foam stamp sets with a foam stamp, a cling stamp and a stencil each!!! So don’t forget to comment for a chance to win and be sure to check out the Stampendous Blog to find out more! The give-away is closed! Winners are announced here!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Marsha Valk | n*Studio Creative Squad: Stampendous Blog Hop

Supplies:

n*Studio products:
Elephant Foam Stamp, Cling Rubber and Stencil Set
Urban Scribble Foam Stamp, Cling Rubber and Stencil Set
Fiesta Cling Rubber Stamp Set
Lily Wallpaper Stencil

Other:
Canson Mixed Media Imagine (8.3 x 11.7 inches, 120 lb.)
Gelli Arts Gelli Plate
Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid
Hero Arts Neon (Neon Pink)
Liquitex Soft Body and Heavy Body Paint
Liquitex Matte Medium
Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black)
Stabilo Write 4 All (Black)
StazOn (Black Cherry)
Uniball Signos
UniPosca markers
Charcoal pencil (Black and white)