Guest Post: Inside Nessa's Art Journaling World

Hello Dear Friends, I am so excited about today's Art Journaling Post!  I get the honor to introduce you to my new friend Nessa.  She is incredibly talented and makes the most beautifully expressive Art Journal Pages.

In fact, all the pictures you see here are her gorgeous work.  Nessa has a sweet spirit and pure heart, which can easily be seen in her art and through her blog where she shares her creative process with others.

She also happens to be honoring me this month by participating in my sponsor swap.  I couldnt be happier to show off her amazing artwork and let her share a bit more about herself with you. 

From Nessa: "Hi!  My name is Vanessa Colant but more known by my nickname as Nessa from Pretty Days Studio.  I’m a creative Stay at Home mum who lives in Belgium(Europe) with my man and my 2 little sons. I’m 31 years old and I’m a creative soul.  I can’t live without ART. I’m a painter. I’m a mixed Media Artist. I’m an Art Journaler.  I love bright colors and using all my art supplies in my art journals. I love having paints on my fingers, feeling alive putting my hand in my gesso jar.  Art has saved me, Art makes me feel alive.  I need to write and draw into my journals to feel better and to write my story, my feelings, my emotion, …. I love staying hours and hours in my studio creating a canvas or an art journal page.  I live a creative life and I’m so proud of it…It’s a full time job. I love being an artist and a mum together.  You can see my art on my both English and French blog at Pretty Days Studios and being a fan on my facebook page.  I hope you enjoy my art."

Nessa's website is so fun, colorful, and totally inspiring!  I hope you'll take some time and check her out and add her to your read list.  She also posts art journaling videos.  I just love these! Here are a few of her latest videos, the first creating a background for a journal page and the second of her completing it.  I got lots of new ideas and learned some fun tricks from watching her work, and now I am totally inspired to work in my own journal today! Check them out right here or on her blog.

Thank you Nessa for sharing so much of yourself with us today.  Happy Journaling Everyone! I hope you got inspired too.

XO, HARMONY

Artist Inspiration of the Day: The Lovely Wyanne

 Together is Better by Wyanne

I really wanted to show you a new painting process video today, but it seems that hitting the 8 month mark in my pregnancy has seriously slowed me down and I am not working as efficiently as I used to.   So until I finish that project later, I thought I would share another artist's process video today.  This is a snippet of one of my favorite artists to get new technique ideas from.  I watch her videos all the time and get filled with inspiration and creative energy.  Her name is Wyanne, said "Y"-an, and if you havn't discovered her yet and explored her world, you've been missing out on some beautiful paintings and probably some of the best painting process videos I have ever watched.

Garden Wild by Wyanne

It was actually her videos that encouraged me to start using alcohol and inks in my mixed media works.  She just posted several new videos and listed new paintings, and I instantly fell in love with this amazing little owl.  If I could afford to snatch it up and put it in my boys room, I would do so in a second.

Hello World by Wyanne

Whether you are a painter, art journaler, creative player, you should spend a little time today exploring her videos, they truly are inspirational and FUN to watch.  Maybe it will give you he courage to try something new and artsy today.

I hope you found something inspiring here that brightens your day.  The idea is to keep going, keep pushing through, and keep your eyes open to discovering your creative self bringing the world alive to you in totally new ways (oh and playing with lots of bright colors helps too). 

XO, HARMONY

Blooms and Roofs: A Color Study

I've been experimenting in my sketchbook lately exploring color and pattern, working up the nerve to do some serious fabric design on my newly purchased canvas cloth.  I started with some loose sketching of flowers layered on top of each other on one page and then a repetitive pattern of house doodles on the opposite page.  I really wanted to play more with using bright colors against soft hues.  I watered down some simple craft paint and started to play.  Here are a few peeks of what I created in the end.

Dont they remind you of crisp autumn leaves against a sunset sky?  As I was painting the houses, I started to imagine a story about little costumed ghosts and princesses going trick or treating door to door.  Do they inspire you to try a bit of fall inspired art making of your own?  If you'd like to try working with this color palette, I made it super simple for you.  I isolated the colors that I created with and made a digital palette just for you!

As soon as I completed my pages, I left the room and my 3 year old son snuck in and picked up his own creative inspiration on the next page.  I was able to catch him on tape and interview him a bit on his process.  If you have a child, a childlike heart, or maybe need a bit more childishness in your creative world, I highly recommend that you spend the next 2 minutes letting him inspire you.

XO, HARMONY

Even A Three Year Old Can Do It: Painted Fabric Video

The weekend has begun! I hope that you are safe and sound and enjoying your favorite morning cup of whatever getting lots of creative inspiration for your days off.  I wanted to offer you a bit of fun, energy, and lots and lots of color today! (oh and a bit of rock and roll)  So for your viewing pleasure, here's my latest episode of Creative Play with my 3 year old son.

I needed to design some fabric for a project I will be showing you later next week, and it seemed like a perfect mommy and son art-tivity.  We taped a piece of white muslin to a plastic table, grabbed a couple of sharpies (BTW: Under 5yrs + permanent markers typically demands being outside to avoid the "accidental" inspiration on your walls).

Then when our fabric was entirely covered in our creations, we watered down cheap-o craft paint and did a watercolor play over the design.  The effect was gorgeous, lots of pretty mixing of color.  There was seriously no way to screw it up, which made it PERFECT for little helping hands.  When it was finished we hung it up to dry and Voila, ready to use fabric for lots of projects.

 There it is drying with the sunshine coming through, so pretty.  While it was drying, I started gathering up laundry to start a wash since we were already playing outside, and my son starts yelling "Mommy!" "MOMMY!" like something was wrong (but honestly right now, every bit of information he has to share is urgent to him, regardless of the reality).  I poked my head out and asked what he needed.  "Mommy! (still yelling like it's very serious) It's PRETTY! I LIKE IT!" pointing at our creation.  Sometimes he totally kills me with cuteness.

(FYI: This fabric is NOT washable, so you cant use it in wearable art.  To make it washable use fabric markers and watered fabric paint and then heat set).  I hope I've inspired you to try to try this project by yourself or with a little helper the next time you need interesting fabric for a project.

BTW: If you didnt see my post yesterday, right now I am on the hunt for some artsy/crafty/creative bloggin people that I can team up with, more information HERE.  Have a wonderful Saturday!

XO, HARMONY

Inspiration Through Messiness

I've been painting today! My son went out for the day with his dad, and I am soaking up every second of me time I can while they are away.  This of course means making lots and lots of mess in my art room.

I needed a creative jumping off point, and since I'd been so excited about this art book I just bought, I decided to start there. I've come to realize that abstract painting using bright bold colors mixed with different mediums and textures is really attractive to me, and as an artist still seeking her unique voice and point of view in my work right now, I am becoming really sensitive to what feels like "me" when I run into it.  So using some of the tips from the book, and my recent obsession with all things from this other artist/designer, along with a long running deep love for the work of this artist, I let my inspiration run wild.

I call it creative play, even though I usually refer to CP time as art making time with my son.  This was just me, trying to let go of my thoughts and expectations and just let loose my inner child.  It was happy play time just for me.  I video taped the first bit of it until my batteries ran out, but you get a really fun look at the process of mixed media work.  (FYI: a miracle occurred and the dead video camera decided to start working again, hooray!  It apparently just needed a week off to recover from its fall)

For this piece I used: paintbrushes, my fingers, and an ink roller to manipulate: water soluble pencils and oil sticks, gesso, block printing inks, black alcohol ink, distress inks, vintage photos, vintage wrapping papers, various fabric strips, painted tape, doily, gel medium, and archival glue on a cold-press heavy weight illustration board cut to 8"X10".

I LOVE THIS PICTURE SO MUCH!  It makes me really happy, from the bright colors, the contrast of the black ink, and all the yummy textures from the different materials.  I feel many more like this one will be created very soon.  I really feel like I am a bit closer to my goal of creating a unique and cohesive style and vision for my work through this piece.  We'll see where it takes me...

XO, HARMONY 

Creative Play Thursdays!

I am starting a new weekly post, Creative Play Thursdays.  It feature a new video each week of the creative process of art making with a three year old.  My son and I will be doing one new project together each week and sharing the chaos with you.  Here's a bit of us doing a large scale canvas painting together.  I love how he forces me to keep changing, let go of expectations, and paint freely.  He keeps me honest in my process. 


Unfortunately, I only recorded the first 10 minutes before my video died and my hands were too full of paint to change batteries.  I will post the next video of our second painting session on this piece next Thursday.  We had so many thick layers of paint going by the end, that we needed to step away and let it dry.  So look for that next week along with a pic of the final piece.  Love painting with my son! If you have a creative little person in your life that inspires you, leave a comment and let me know how your create art together.

Art Journaling Video

Ok so here's the video I made about my art journals.  It gives you a better idea of how I make them, what they look like, and some fun video of me working in one.  Hope you enjoy it!

 Remember that all Art Journals are listed at a discounted price right now in my etsy shop and every purchase (journal or not) is 25% off until Monday, plus a free print of your choice with a journal purchase.   So much fun!!  Have a happy weekend and I'll be back on Monday with new inspirations to share.

Update from the Art Room

Here's a bit of what I've been doing the past 2 days...

I was asked to do a series of paintings like my bird paintings, but with butterflies, adding inspirational words, and using a slightly more girly color palette.  It will be for a nursery and I was really excited to jump to the challenge.  

I came up with a rough idea of what each one would look like: (mostly to play with space and design elements to make sure they went together well)  After this pic, I ended up doing a reverse of the Bloom design to fit the overall scheme better.

The buyer wanted me to use my usual mixed media techniques and so I played with some paper layering to build a base background for the paintings.

Then I used gel medium to fasten all the papers down on the canvases and to create a brushed texture on top of the papers (I like lots of texture on my paintings and dont like working on top of flat smooth paper.  The gel really helps me create that rough base I like to work with.)

Next I grabbed my brayer and created the color pallettes that I wanted each painting to be in and worked away creating layers of color over the papers to get the exact background look that I wanted.  (Hint: keep a dry and wet work rag on hand to wipe away areas of paint as you are working)  Then I added some texture and patterns with some hand carved stamps and random household items (paper doily and bubble wrap).  Here's a short video of me doing some of this (its my first attempt at doing a video of myself, bear with me, the view is not that great)

Last I added drips with alcohol inks and Voila! The canvases are ready for me to start on with the paintings.  Backgrounds are always super fun to make in this way.  It always feels like playing to me and there is very little chance of messing them up.   

The "Imagine" canvas in pinks and reds

The "Create" canvas in purples and blues

The "Bloom" canvas in greens/yellows

the "Discover" canvas in yellows/oranges

My other news for today is that I finally got 3 of my newly redesigned Journal Necklaces photographed and listed on Etsy.  I am really proud of these.  It took quite a bit of time and money to get all the materials that I wanted for them, but I think it paid off.  They make me so happy!  I have 6 more almost complete, so keep an eye out for more shop updates.

See them on Etsy Here

 Have a Happy Day where ever you are at!! And before you leave please leave a comment to introduce yourself if you have not already.  I adore making connections with new friends, and you are welcome to leave your website address and whatnot as well so we can all get to know each other better.  Ciao!!