Hello sweet creative!

The camera's rolling! These days I'm filming one of my lessons for Life Book 2023 and it combines two of my favorite things: nature and collage. It is inspired by THIS PAGE from my art journal that I created last summer. I love it so much that I wanted to create a whole body of work inspired by it! That’s one of my favorite things about art journaling: it’s an endless source of inspiration for my other art. I share more about this in my class The Artist & the Journal!

The mini butterfly series I’m sharing today is a warm-up activity for my main Life Book lesson, then there will be a larger botanical project that I will share in my next post!

Life Book is a wonderful year-long course all about mixed media art and wellbeing. It is hosted by the magical Tamara Laporte of Willowing Arts, with a dream team of 30 inspiring artists & teachers! Find out more & reserve your seat below:

Use the Early Bird code LOVEART30 to get 30% off!

Whenever I start a collage project, my first step is to gather a messy stash of materials. My “compass” here is to follow my intuition and put together textures, colors and images that simply feel good together. Of course, I always end up with way more than what I’m actually going to use, because this way I give myself plenty of opportunities to play!

Here I wanted a vintage feel so I decided to stick to neutrals, even for my butterflies. My materials include:

• Papers: book pages, sheet music, a printed napkin and botanical images

• Textiles: bookbinder’s cloth, cheesecloth and various pieces of fabric, ribbons, lace, burlap

• Dimensional elements: dried leaves, feathers, twigs, corrugated cardboard, vintage buttons…

I just love this part of the process: making a mess and knowing that magic and beauty are going to emerge from my lovely chaos…

Then it’s all about sorting through the mess, narrowing down my choices and making a small pile of materials for each piece, making sure they all have the same elements in them, to make the series cohesive.

I then start building up the layers on one of my mini substrates (they’re 9 x 9 cm / 3,5” x 3,5” here… tiny!). Then I repeat the steps on the other two, varying the placement of the different collage elements. I find it super relaxing!

Then it’s time for plenty of finishing touches that will make the artworks come alive:

• adding depth and color with ink

• dry-brushing white gesso to bring in some light and reveal the texture of the fabrics

• adding marks and highlighting the edges with pens and pencils

• and even stitching through the pieces! (to do this, I pre-punch little holes with an awl/needle tool)

Here is my little series finished! Well, not quite, because then I’m going to mount my little pieces on some chunky wood panels, and float-frame them into some wooden frames that I have painted and distressed to keep the vintage vibe going. I’ll share the process soon, stay tuned!

I have had so much fun creating this series, and I’ve especially loved taking the time to connect to the joy and beauty of nature, journaling about it in the (now hidden) first layers, and honoring it in my own small way.

I hope these have inspired you! In my next post I’ll share the larger one I’m working on (it has even more yummy layers…) and in the meantime, go check out Life Book 2023 and reserve your seat with the Early Bird code LOVEART30 ! I can’t wait to share this beautiful art lesson with you.

Which beauties of nature do you find most inspiring? Flowers? Plants? Trees? Birds? Butterflies or maybe something more unusual?… Let me know below!

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