Monday 30 June 2014

Organisational frenzy

Hello lovelies!

So it is the end of the Australian financial year today.  That prompted me to spend Sunday an organisational frenzy.

I have been feeling overwhelmed recently as I am juggling a new(ish) art business as well as a job as a contract consultant and life in general!  So I went to my local stationery store yesterday, bought a new planner, bought & downloaded some very cool inserts from etsy, made some pretty dividers and proceeded to try and create order from the chaos.


I now have a beautifully sectioned planner with areas for time management - that's the beginning of this week's plan above, for my consulting work, and for my art stuff.

I even have a section dedicated to the management of this blog!
At a minimum, as I think of things that need to be dealt with they can go into 1 place - instead of onto scraps of paper that I lose.  That's got to be a win, right?

'till next time

~Liz

Thursday 26 June 2014

Blessing of the fleet in Melbourne - Rivercruise!!!

Hot damn, I just gave myself a flashback of my highschool rivercruise in the 1985, sneaking swigs of summer wine (the first ever Australian wine cooler) before jumping on a boat to cruise up and down the river with all my highschool classmates. 

OF COURSE I idolised Madonna - who didn't? She was awesome.

Hello lovelies,


This is a quick post to let you know that the Mission to Seafarers (the owners of the gallery where I teach some of my classes) is running a cruise of Melbourne’s ports.

This one is on Saturday 30 August and coincides with Melbourne Day celebrations and the Melbourne Regatta and Blessing of the Fleet. Part of the cruise will be to participate in the Blessing of the Fleet before cruising around Melbourne’s Ports.

Cost is again $45 a head, departs 11:30am returning 2:30pm. It is BYO lunch, camera and notepad.  More details and a flyer are available here.

Just for your info, I've listed below some of the activities that will be happening in Docklands to celebrate Melbourne Day. 

• Formal Blessing of the Fleet by Father Bob. (awesome local legend that he is...)
• A flotilla of vessels, flares, whistles, pipe bands and a display of water cannons from tugs.
Cruises around Melbourne’s ports to see big ships up close – great photo opportunity.(this is the bit that I am interested in!)
• The schooner Enterprize will perform a re-enactment of the first landing in period costume. Opportunity go aboard for a short cruise.
• The Alma Doepel volunteers showcasing their recently restored traditional naval 4 oared captains gig.
• Story telling about the first landing as well as street entertainment including works of Shakespeare!
• Bands, vans and local venues will bedazzle Docklands.
• Supporting the work of the Mission to Seafarers.



'till next time

~Liz


Monday 23 June 2014

Working it out...

Hello lovelies,

You know when you have those days of incredible self doubt? When you lie awake at 3am, sniffling with a cold and worrying about whether you have a plan that will see you through to the end. Worrying about whether recent and old decisions you have made are the right ones, and whether you are doing the right thing with your life?

Or is that just me? Perhaps my 3am wakeups are amplified...

I don't have a partner in my life to share my middle of the night doubts with.  Most of the time I celebrate my singledom, my freedom to undertake new projects whenever I want, the flexibility I have created in my current working arrangements that give me time to do things like start up an art teaching business. But occasionally in the middle of the night with the wind howling around my little house, I start to worry, and there is no-one next to me to wake up and say "It will be OK, I support your choices".

It is then, when I have that hard lump in my throat caused by worry and fear, that I turn to my art journal for solace. My art journal says to me - "its OK, I can take your fear".

And so it does.
See the doodles and paint starting to hide some of my 3am stress?  Its not a finished page by any means, but I feel better for the offloading - even if I am tired today.

'till next time

~Liz

Sunday 22 June 2014

Art Journaling 202 - Class 2 page

Hello lovelies!

A quick post to let you have a look at the Art Journaling 202 Class 2 page - the one that we will be doing in July...
This class page has been done without paintbrushes.  I tend to rely on my paint brushes to the exclusion of many other tools, so its good practice to occasionally put them to one side and stretch myself with other items.

In this class we will make our own stamps from fun foam, use brayers, do some credit card technique, play with string, skewers, masking fluid drippage and paint pens. 

It will be a fast, loose and free class!!

'till next time

~Liz

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Word Up, Wordling

Hello lovelies,

Here's a bit if fun for you...

I was poking around the internet looking for some bits and pieces to make an infographic for my paying job (yes, that one that I must do in order to keep a roof over my head), and I rediscovered wordle.
I thought I would feed my blog into it and see what was produced.  Not bad if I do say so myself!  All the important words seem to be prominent - art, journaling, supplies...  I will feed my blog into this program in a few months to see what the differences are.

Perhaps I should mention coffee and chocolate in every post from here on in to make it a little more reflective of my arting experiences?

'till next time

~Liz

Sunday 15 June 2014

Art Journaling 202 - The first class

Hello lovelies,

What a fantastic success the class was in the new space!  All the students enjoyed themselves and produced some great art.  Karen's pop-up shop was fantastic - I fondled and then bought supplies :)

Here's some of my stuff out the front of the gallery whilst waiting to get in and set up.

Here's a panoramic pic of the space set up for the class that I took in the lunch break...

And students doing their fabulous art work (Joy didn't need to put her hand up to ask questions though!)


'till next time

~Liz

Friday 13 June 2014

Ready... steady... ART!

Hello lovelies,

So, art journaling 202 starts tomorrow! Its so exciting :)  Here is my studio area where I am getting ready for class.
Pretty bad huh! 

There is 1 place left in the course if you are interested. Please let me know if you are in the Melbourne area and would like to expand your art journaling reportoire.

love you all!

~Liz

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Strathmore competition!

Hello lovelies,

I thought this may be of interest to some of my readers... Strathmore are having a card-making competition!  The prizes look pretty nice :).  Its an Autumn/Winter theme so we're right in the groove of that!

http://www.strathmoreartist.com/greeting-card-contest.html
I note that you need to use Strathmore cards as a substrate (that kind of makes sense)... so I went on a hunt, and Artified sell them here in Australia.  I'm sure its a piece of cake for my US readers to get their hands on this!

The final submission is the 11th of July (and online too which is a relief).  I may just give it a go.  Let me know if you are going to participate and if youre around Melbourne whether you want to get together to have a play.

'till next time

~Liz

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Long weekends & Dina Wakely paint

Hello lovelies!

So we have just had a long weekend here in Australia - it was Queen Lizzie's birthday (no, not me silly - the one in England).

There was not a huge amount of artiness for me, but I managed to get some time on on Saturday when a few of the girls came over.   This is despite the fact that I have SO MUCH to do!  *sigh*

But I did manage to get out my Dina Wakely paints to have a play. I have agreed to demo these paints at the pop-up shop this Saturday, so I thought I should do more than just paint a colour wheel (as useful as that is, its not much fun as a demo)...

So I got out a journal that I have been trying to finish off for a while now.  I turned to the page that was more "clean-up" than "art-up", and started throwing paint around.  Here I have used turquoise, lemon and magenta on the background, and accented with white.

Scribbly writing, doodles and focal imagery in the next layers on the page, with Lime, white and black coloured paint applied really thickly to take advantage of its heavy body nature. 

It still needs "something" on the left side of the spread - probably a word or phrase in bold black to balance out the composition, but that will have to wait for a couple of days... Life is busy right now!!

As an aside, I have 3 people who have registered their interest in doing art journaling 101, but need another 3 to make running the class series viable. If you are interested please either email me or pre-register in my shop.

'Till next time

~Liz

Sunday 8 June 2014

INKtoxicated Art Journaling 101 Lesson 1, Part 1 Video

Hello lovelies,

So I have a video for you today - well 2 videos but it's one lesson spread split in half! . This is a how to for testing your dry supplies.  It's Lesson 1 of my free INKtoxicated Art Journaling 101 Series.

Part 1:


INKtoxicated Art Journaling 101 L1- Part 1 from Liz Aitken on Vimeo.

Friday 6 June 2014

Art Journal Supplies - A Pop Up Shop

Hello ladies,

I just wanted to let you know that Karen from Kazmos Kreationz is running a pop-up shop after every Art Journaling 202 class.

Yay!! You can actually fondle art goodies before you buy - and who doesn't love a good fondle...

First pop-up shop is Saturday June 14th from 3.30pm till 5.30pm. Karen will be open for business down in Docklands, so please come and visit to pick up some goodies.
http://www.kazmoskreations.com.au/index.html
Karen has the new Dina Wakely paints in store now, and will be bringing stock to the pop-up shop.  To let you see how delicious these paints are, I will be demoing with them (in my art journal of course) during the shop hours.

Here are the details:

Attributions

Hello lovelies,

I can't believe that I have to say this, but it it has come to my attention that I do.

I know that copyright in our art journaling, mixed media community is a tricky issue, but if you have taken my classes and wish to rerun them in their entirety (including notes) you can't.  They are copyright.

If you would like to quote me to sell something in your shop, then please attribute the quote to me and link to my blog.

If you want to share my work on your own blog then please attribute and link.

I put a lot of time and effort into developing my art and my classes. I provide my students with comprehensive resources because I want them to enjoy their art journaling journey, not so that they can steal them and make money from my hard work.

This is also part of the reason that I am currently filming my Art Journaling 101 and 201 classes so that students can take the classes from me via the web.  The absolute basics will be free and the rest will be very reasonably priced.  At least that way I may be able to prevent people from stealing my own material from me.
'till next time

~Liz

Thursday 5 June 2014

Art Journaling 101 in Geelong

Hello Lovelies,

Just dropping in with an update on my in person class that started last weekend at Create on Ormond in Geelong.

The first class in INKtoxicated Art Journaling 101 is called Laboratory, and its all about substrates & supplies.  Students learn how to deal with different substrates and how supplies react on different surfaces.  We cover a lot of ground in this first class as we do 2 spreads!!

The first spread we tackle in the class is this one:
As you can see, the idea is to divide up the page and test different "dry" supplies on different surfaces.  This gives the students a good feel for what can be achieved both fro the base page and within layers.

A golden rule for us arty hoarders is use your art supplies before you find them a home in your studio - otherwise you will probably never use them at all! Just the act of doing a simple test like this in your art journal means that you are more likely to actually use your supplies.  I reckon that's got to be a good thing!

The next spread we tackle is the sprays.  Obviously we can't be as "neat" with sprays as we can with the dry supplies, so the page needs to be a little different. Here's the sample of the second spread.

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Art Journalista's for 202 are GO!!!


This is Assembly Control calling all Zero X units. Assembly Phase One - go! 

Hello lovelies! Well, Art Journaling 202 now has the minimum number of pre-registrations, so we are ready to countdown to our big lift-off on the 14th of June.

I'm so excited!!