Monday, January 4, 2010

Calendar Challenge

My friend in the UK Kate Crane started up an Art Calendar Challenge (which I did not sign up for) and everytime I checked out her blog I was in awe of her beautiful calendar creations ... so yesterday I thought I'd have a play in my journal and see what happened and here's my calendar:






I had an existing A4 Visual Arts Diary in which I'd already created some pages from a workshop, so decided to keep using the same journal.  I started with a light blue patterned napkin, added a wash of yellow and added orange and red paint with a brayer.  I decided to go with bright colours for January as it's Summer and hot here in Australia.

The next layer was stamping with flourishes and patterns around the edges in brown.  I used Heidi Swapp mask alphabets for January and temporarily placed the 4cm x 4cm squares, which I cut out of ordinary white printer paper, then sprayed the whole thing with terracotta glimmer mists.  My plan had been to lift everything up and voila finished calendar ... but the glimmer mist colour wasn't dark enough to make out the letters and the squares didn't show up enough either, so I used the outside edge of the mask alphbets and inked inside with brown so the month could be read easier and permanently adhered the plain paper squares with a bit of ink around the edges.

I have to say, the calendar thing is kind of addictive and although I haven't "officially" joined the challenge and committed to creating a calendar each month, I really like the idea of recording a few words on my happenings every day ... I could be hooked!

"For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice."
~T.S. Eliot ~

9 comments:

thekathrynwheel said...

Oh wow, this is lovely. I LOVE your use of colour in this, it's gorgeous. Interesting that a lot of us in the UK have chosen blue - well it is minus 8 here at the moment . . . !! Good luck with this :)

ANNETTE HUSBAND said...

Happy New Year Di
love your calander and man you got some gorgeous 12 days of Christmas gifts.See you soon at the art retreat.
hugs
Annette

Shelly said...

Beautiful work. I never would have guessed the background started with a napkin. The washes turned out lovely. Like the idea of giving the calendar page a try without the pressure of an official committment. Maybe I'll try something this weekend.
Hope you had a great New Year !! Enjoy the summer season. It's cold here even in the Southern U.S.!!
All the best,
Shelly

Eliza said...

What fantastic gifts you received an awesome swap to be part of. Love the goanna in the tree. Love the calendar page and who would of guessed it was a napkin in the background. Make sure you use that calendar.

Happy New Year I hope all your dreams and wishes come true and hopefully we can catch up at CSR.

Sorry just starting to catch up with the blogging.

Love your blog by the way

Barb Conroy said...

Love what you have done Di. Look forward to seeing February!!!
Barb
x

Jen Crossley said...

WOW Di this is gorgeous love it

Kate Carvellas said...

Di...this is really terrific!! So well done! the layout, colors and layering all work so well together! I hope you do continue with your own calendar "challenge". I can't wait to see February!

Julie H said...

What a beautiful calendar! And thank you so much for entering my give-away. Good luck.

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