Thursday Treasury

Hi everyone! It is really Thursday already? Where did that week go? Anyway it's a good thing cause that means it's time for Thursday Treasury! And I have a really good one for your this week :)

This week's treasury is inspired by Mandalas. I always feel spiritual and grounded when I look at this beautiful, intricate art pieces.  I have been really inspired by mandalas and zentangle lately and I have started to incorporate it into my own work where possible.

You can find out more about this treasury here which includes the shops and sellers of these items.

I was inspired to create this treasury from a notebook I spotted while shopping in town earlier this week. I thought this notebook was gorgeous, the white on colour really popped out to me. I should have bought it too, look at how much it was reduced! :)

The shop I found this in is brilliant for finding colour and design inspiration in because it has a bit of everything in it such as art/crafts, books, stationary etc. They have a PILE of notebooks in every colour and pattern imaginable, but I really don't need anymore notebooks......(or do I?)
If you are find yourself struggling to get off your creative feet so to speak, going for a walk in town or in a shopping centre/mall can help a lot to inspire you because shops are filled with patterns, designs and of course colour. Colour is everywhere! Thank God, it's free!

Anyway enough of my rambling! I hope you enjoyed this week's treasury and are encourage to create some beautiful art based off this inspiration piece. If you do, please send me a photo of your creation as I would love to see what you get up to! If you do email me or share a link with me of a photo of your work I will feature it here on my blog for all to see :)

Again, I hope you have a creative day, the weather is amazing here lately (which is rare enough for UK)  so where ever you are I hope you are getting to enjoy the sun :)

Take care

Ciara
xoxo

Things That Are Inspiring Me

Zentangle

tumblr

Yellow

theheartbook

Gypsy Style

a fanciful twist

Watercolours

pinterest

Keys

betterthanfine

Clay

craftandcreativity

Teal

tumblr

Fibres

flickr

Tags

studioshirel

Butterflies

pinterest

What is inspiring you lately?

Ciara

xoxo

Thursday Treasury

Hi pretties! 

Those of you who are familiar with Etsy you will know that they have a treasury section where members can create lists of up to 16 items that are usually based around a theme e.g. "Tropical", "Blue", "Love"

I have decided to start creating treasury lists as a way to bring inspiration into my own + to others art or creative projects.

This week's treasury is inspired by lime, yellows, greens, zingy + zesty colours. When I see these colours I immediately think of lemonade,  Key Lime pie, Mojitos. It is bright + bold with a Spring feel. I can almost taste the tartness of the lime! 

You can find out more info about this treasury here, which includes all the relevant shops and sellers where you can purchase the items.

I created this treasury off of this colour inspiration journal page

I centred the page around this picture of a lime/yellow flowery make up bag that I found in a fashion magazine. I loved the fresh colours but also the retro feel of it's pattern and I tried to incorporate that into the treasury through some of the items that I chose.

I pulled some paint colours + patterned paper I had in my stash that I felt matched the bag in the photograph and before you know it, the colour scheme was born!

I might go on to create a canvas or journal page to co-ordinate with this colour scheme/treasury so stay posted for that. I don't ever use these colours together so that would be interesting for sure, and challenging. But, I like to challenge myself, especially in my artwork because that is how I keep things fresh + interesting. 

I hope you are inspired by this week's treasury. Let me know what you think of it, leave comments below.

Why don't you send in some photos of projects you make using this colour scheme and I will show them off here.

Have a great day!

Ciara

xoxo

Playing with New Products

Hi everyone! How has your Wednesday been?
Today one of my most favourite things happened - Art supplies that I ordered online arrived :) Happy mail!

I ordered a small package from Art from the Heart of 2 ink sprays and 1 dabber paint from Ranger + 2 stencils by The Crafter's Workshop.

I chose 'Sailboat Blue' and ' Red Pepper' ink sprays and 'Sunshine Yellow' in the paint dabber to add to my collection. I try to purchase 1 or 2 of each a week so that I eventually have the entire collection. Also, I have been looking for a doily stencil for a while but couldn't find one anywhere. I finally found this one on Art from the Heart and although it's not exactly the type I was looking for, it is still cool. I bought the Chicken Wire as I didn't have it and have been wanting to get it for a while now.

Whenever I get new products, I have to test them out on a scrap piece of paper before I use them for real on a project or whatever. Does anyone else do this? I dunno, I think it would be weird to just go straight into  using it in my work without testing it out first.

What do you think? Have you ever seen a more vibrant red in your life?! I love it! Isn't it funny how out of all the different shades + hues they carry on that website I still managed to go for the three primary colours? I didn't do that purposefully, I actually only noticed it now as I have them all laid out together. Funny.

I had to test out the stencils aswell of course. They look great, I'm really happy I bought them. The thing I love about these type of stencils is that, if you get them wet enough, you can actually use them as a kind of stamp aswell, so you then get the reverse image. It's like two for the price of one!

This isn't really a great example of that because I wasn't trying too hard to get that effect, I was just cleaning off my stencil + since there is no sense in wasting perfectly good paint, I used it to stamp the reverse image. However, if I had wanted to + had paid it a little more attention, I would have probably achieved a much clearer image. Either way, I think it looks great :)

*Note on cleaning stencils* I use baby wipes to clean my stencils but today I noticed while wiping the doily stencil that you really need to be very gentle how you wipe them because the cloth can get caught in the cut-out part and pull them out of shape (does that make sense?) Just a little warning I thought I'd pass on to my fellow artists ;)

So, that's a little of what I got up to today. I hope you enjoyed reading! Let me know what new art supplies you purchased/received lately, I'd love to hear all about it.

I hope you all had a creative day!

Take care

Ciara

xoxo

Colour Inspiration

Hi everyone!

How are you all today? My day has been good, it has been relaxed and off schedule which was nice. I have been working on a colour inspiration journal!
I am not claiming this as my own invention however, I signed up for one of Christy Tomlinson's online workshops and she shows us how to go about making one, what it is used for and basically how it benefits your artwork. I. Am. Loving. It! Loving it!!

The idea of a colour inspiration journal is to explore new colour palettes that you may not have thought of before or wouldn't normally be drawn to. It forces you to choose colours out of your colour comfort zone. You can collect images from magazines (like home decor, fashion), from the internet, photographs etc, add it to the journal and then take colour inspiration from that to create a project. 

So, today I went out and bought a new notebook + some magazines that I thought might be fun + colourful and then I spent a lovely afternoon snipping out images and sticking them into the notebook along with paint swatches and pieces of patterned paper and trims that I felt matched the colour scheme.

I think this is a brilliant, lightbulb idea to kickstart your inspiration. Sometimes I can get stuck in a bit of colour rut + I have noticed that I tend to reach for the same colour palette over + over. Turquoise, seafoam blues, red....... Which of course are gorgeous and are my favs, but obviously I need to move on!! For everyone's sake.

I am hopeful that this new exercise will help me to explore new colours and be excited about colour again, you know? I say this often but it's so true, there is nothing better than that excited feeling you get in the pit of your stomach where you know that there is something creatively amazing about to happen. 

I'm looking forward to sharing with you all, the projects that come out of this. 

Do you have a special way of getting yourself out of a colour rut? What colours are you automatically drawn to and what colours would you never use? Do share, I'd love to hear.

Leave a comment about anything and everything!

Take care

Ciara

xoxo