March 2021 Rowanberry box – Goddess

The latest Rowanberry box has just landed, and O.M.G. what a gorgeous box it is. The Theme is GODDESS and I’m not going to lie, its a lovely box with tactile items to get the creative journalling juices flowing.

The box contents :

March Goddess Kit Full
March Goddess Kit Full

A lovely little box for journalling with themed items in Gold, black and grey just waiting for me to put pencil to paper.

I am probably the worst (or maybe best) type of subscriber as I buy the boxes and to be honest, rarely do much with the items. Good for the company, bad for my pocket and storage issues! Having been a subscriber for over a year, I enjoy getting the boxes and I love supporting small businesses.

So for March I setup my cover calendar page, and I think pretty much that’s all I’ve done with the items. But then again I had a pretty busy month setting up this blog and getting to grips with doing my daily Instagram challenge for #artisticspringtime, as well as making a start on our garden – we’ve only been here 3 years, so it’s about time!

March Page Goddess
March Page Goddess

Overall its another lovely box and a regular journaler will have a field day. Me? Well the items have mostly fallen into my stash pots and will get used at some point in the future. After a year I am starting to reconsider whether I want to continue receiving the boxes. Danielle’s business is growing and although the themed boxes are lovely I am not sure they fit my personal style anymore. At this time I’m going to give it a couple more months, especially as I’ve already got Aprils and I know the theme for May as its no longer secret and teasers are planted all over her social media, which I do find a shame as I liked the mystery of what was to be found once the box was opened. We are also asked not to show reveals on Social media until everyone has had their box.

Day 2 of “Blog Along with Effy”

Day 2 in my challenge to blog every day in April. Day 2 is my review of my March subscription box. I’m really enjoying reading so many new blogs in the blog-along. It’s giving me so many great ideas for how to progress my own style.

Happy Journalling

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

Blog every day in April

I’ve joined an art blog challenge hosted by Effy Wild, which is a great idea, its to encourage a group of people that Art and Blog to get to know and support each other – how cool is that!!

The great thing about this is that I had already decided to challenge myself to do a journal page every day in April.

The plan:

30 days, 10 mediums, 3 books equals one page a day which cleverly equals April done. So watch this space, I shall be uploading my page daily, and at the end of the month I will finish with a full comparison review of the 3 books, how they perform, which is my favourite and why.

  • Wrapped Journals
  • all journals unwrapped
    Unwrapped Journals

The journals are all A5, Dot Grid, White Paper, Hardbacked

Medium that I can use this month will probably include some or all of the following… (yes it shocked me how easy a list I created, without trying, from my stash!

  1. Posca / acrylograph
  2. Acrylic paint
  3. Coloured Pencil
  4. Watercolour – Pan, tube or liquid, crayon, markers (Ecoline, Windsor & Newton)
  5. Fountain Pen Ink
  6. Sharpie
  7. Felt tip
  8. Alcohol markers
  9. Pastel pencil / crayon
  10. Wax crayon
  11. Pitt pen
  12. Biro
  13. Brush pens

So here it is, my first page, in the Archer and Olive journal, using Posca Pens. I have had this book for months, I bought it from Danielle at Under the Rowan Trees, and I have been unable to write in it, because its just TOO pretty, but this months challenge I am determined to get over that, so I decided that day one would be in the A&O as its the most expensive. If I can do this, I can do anything!

April 1st A&O Posca
April 1st A&O Posca

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

I’ve “sold” my first piece!!

Anyone that knows me, knows I have zero confidence, so not only am I doing a “thing” by arting, I’m doing an even bigger thing by putting it out into the big bad world for people to see it. Well recently, one of the pieces I have completed following a tutorial by Karen Campbell, got picked up by a peer in a Facebook group, and she requested her own version! OMG really, you want ME to create something for YOU?? Really, you mean that? Well apparently yes she did! So to prove to myself I could actually do it – I did! Yes, little old me, who is dabbling at art, actually decided to create a piece for someone, and they HAVE accepted it, and they ARE going to pay for it.

So as this is my first ever official “commission” I have decided that, not only do I not know how to charge for my work, I dont actually want to charge for it, because Its come off the back of a tutorial. So I have asked that they send a donation to a charity that is supremely close to both our hearts – Widowed and Young WAY – I sadly became eligible to join in 2013. Life has changed since then and I have remarried and have 2 amazing step children, but WAY remains an important part of my life, and that of my husband, and so many people, so it seems only fitting that I ask for donations to this amazing peer support charity.

Anyway – I’m sure you’d like to see what I have “sold” – so here it is

Baby Orangutan – Graphite Pencil

Karen Campbell has such an easy teaching style, I love her work and I’m learning so much, and I am truly thankful that she has given me the confidence to not only try to draw, but to show my efforts off to the world.

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

Rainbow Art Journal Pages

I buy a monthly journaling subscription from Kia.Creates and I noticed on her Patreon page that she was going to be taking part in a YouTube hop in March. As soon as it went live I took a look and was excited to see it was a journaling hop, with 6 other UK based journaling artists. I don’t consider myself a journaler, because I don’t “write” anything, but I do “Art”, so that makes me an art journaler right?

The hop is a “rainbow journal”. Each artist produces a spread based on one of the rainbow colours:

Today the sun is shining, the kids are off school as its half term, its the last day of March, unusually warm, and we are in the garden enjoying the sounds of spring all around us. So I found myself a homemade journal, in fact its the one I’ve been playing at this years Sketchbook Revival in. I found myself 8 clear pages and then sorted out my supplies. Washi Tapes, papers and stickers, many of which are from my subscription packs from Kia. I also found postcards from my stack of Puffin and Penguin book cover postcards that are colour related and used them as my starting point to create my own pages. I spent probably about 2 hours all told, so not very long when I consider how long some people spend on their spreads, but this was good for me and I get to do Art in the garden with the sun beating down on me!

My Rainbow Journal

I really enjoyed putting this together. I can’t thank the artists enough for giving me the ideas, I definitely will review their videos again and try and do spreads of differing styles in the future. But for me this is a style I can work with, it doesn’t need to “tell a story” as such, I don’t need to “write” about something, and it fulfils the “art” part of my day. And if I did just one spread then I could put more into it if I wanted, or make it more meaningful. I like what I’ve achieved, I’ve told the story of colour and found things that relate to that colour and in my opinion, because after all that’s what its all about, I have achieve 7 pages that look really good.

Thanks for reading – I’d love to know what you think of these pages!

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

March 2021 ScrawlrBox #67

The March 21 Scrawlrbox has arrived, amidst the usual squeals of excitement from me!  I have to say I haven’t yet received a box I have been disappointed with.

Scrawlrbox67Contents
Contents of the box

The box this time is dedicated to “the beauty of the hand drawn line”. Using lines to draw anything you want, to see how the line style and type affects your work. I can’t wait to see where this takes me!

The featured artist is Shane Vorhaben @svorhaben. He has a unique style and it’s one that I really like, and I think I can probably work with this as a style and so I’m looking forward to learning about this.  My personal doodle style was always lines and shapes filled in with colour, so this feels nicely familiar. 

The box contains:

  • 3 coloured Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush pens – in Scarlett Red, Sky Blue and May Green India Ink with brush tip.
  • Uni PIN Brush pen in Grey Water and Fade proo, Pigment ink great for adding shadows
  • Uni-Ball Signo Gelstick Pen – Black 0.7mm nib for fine details 
  • Uni PIN 1.0mm Black Pen – Water and Fade proof Pigment ink
  • Derwent 2B Graphic Pencil
  • A5 Drawing Pad, 12 sheets in 250gsm weight
  • The Zine telling me all about this months pack
  • The Featured Artist card with a fab picture to inspire me
  • And of course the colour coordinated sweet is a Refreshers sour – cant wait to eat that!

So lets get started by swatching the different colours and pens:

Swatch
Swatch

The ScrawlrChallenge is “LeadingLines” and here is my interpretation of that in a couple of images:

  • Scrawlrbox67 Vase
    Scrawlrbox67 Vase
  • Scrawlrbox67 Hearts
    Scrawlrbox67 Hearts

My findings:

For the Vase I used the pencil to put down initial ideas then I use the Gelstick pen to add permanent features. Next I added the Pitt pen colours to the image; after this I used the Uni Brush Grey pen to add shadows and finally finished with the black Uni Pin 1.0mm to add outer line weight. Everything flowed nicely, worked exactly as I expected and just sat really well together. Adding the dashed lines to the background was fun, I definitely need to practice that so they flow in a pattern!

For the Hearts, I used the UniBall 1.0mm pen to draw, added the grey shadows with the Gray Brush pen then went to colour with the Pitt pens. Unfortunately I found that the Pitt pen smeared the black so I was unable to add any great colour, so I just added the main main heart colour carefully and then filled in the two initials. I left the rest of the picture as is, I really didn’t want to smear the black pen everywhere.

This is a really great set. I have actually just bought myself some Pitt pens so was mildly disappointed with it – but ONLY for that reason. Such is the risk you take buying mystery boxes! I love Pitt Pens, I haven’t used them yet and been unhappy. I just need to remember that they will smear my black pens, otherwise its great for drawing and colouring and being a brush nib – great for lettering projects too!

Another bonus – I loaded up to Instagram, tagged the artist and he liked my post – I cant ask for more than that! I love to interact with the artist, it shows me that they are interested in the box they have added their name too.

Scrawlrbox – you’ve done it again!

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.