Author: Clare at CatsEatDogs

100 days of freeform mandalas 1-10

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Yay! I am loving the 100 day project so far. Yes, I know, easy to say when we are only at day 17 out of the 100 required days, but I am not feeling the pressure and I am enjoying my mandala making. I think one of the main reasons I am liking it so much this year is that I haven’t restricted myself to a sketchbook or one paper type to make them on.  In fact I am sure at some point I will make a mandala which doesn’t even involve paper. Some are in art journals, a Moleskine sketchbook, a handmade sketchbook, a vintage library card, on an old black and white photo and on a sheet of ledger paper. I do need to find a box or envelope to keep the loose ones all together though or I can see that by the end of the 100 days I won’t remember where half of my mandalas are! Are you doing the 100 day project?  How is it going? Happy Thursday x   …

The Sketchbook Project 2018

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The Sketchbook Project is hosted and housed by the Brooklyn Art Library and I got my little sketchbook many months ago! This is an amazing and unique project in that it is not curated, you buy a sketchbook, fill it up following the Art Library guidelines, send it back to Brooklyn and you are in.  Your book filled with your art is on a shelf along with the other sketchbooks waiting for someone to pick it out and browse it’s pages. I removed the original pages and made an accordion fold out which I painted both sides of and glued it back in. The theme I chose is ‘People I wish I knew’ and my book title is ‘Vintage names and modern faces’.  I snipped out some names from a vintage encyclopedia and glued one per page/face and painted a face onto each page. On the reverse side I painted a loose pattern. I still think this is a wonderful project and I will be signing up for 2019! Happy Monday x  

I made a giant book!

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I had a case of FOMO this week or keeping up with the Joneses or whatever you want to call it. I saw two different Instagram friends post two books they had made, one was super chunky and amazing, the other was a small pamphlet stitched book made with kraft paper and what looked like old book pages. Well, you know me, old books and bookbinding, I loved them both and wanted to make something similar to combine the chunky and the vintage paper. As this is the beginning of the season of play in the Get Messy art journaling community, I decided to go for it and make a basic structure so I didn’t loose my mind but make it nice and full so I didn’t run out of pages (ha! no shortage of pages here). I used a fancy paper bag as the cover which I reinforced with a cereal box and I cut and folded 17 signatures each with five sheets. The pages are from an old cookbook, an encyclopedia, an old …

How many projects can I spin at once?

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April is here and where I live spring missed the memo and winter is snickering in the corner as the weather is still freezing cold with a sprinkle of snow every so often.  I am sure someone will poke spring shortly and we will warm up a little. Not too much though, I don’t need ninety degrees and high humidity just yet. Anyway, along with a new month and season I have decided to take on possibly too many projects!  Three of these are ongoing and the other three are shorter than the first in duration, but they still add to my daily quota. My ongoings are the 365 day of random art in my Moleskine planner, make a colour swatch each day for 365 days and Get Messy Art Journal projects and community.  These are all going swimmingly and I am enjoying all of them. The new kids on the block are as follows The 100 day project – started on Tuesday April 3rd and consists of me drawing freeform mandalas every day for …

Weekend Finds

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My favourite antique shop here in St Louis opens each month from the 1st to the 7th only.  This month we made a trip this weekend and they didn’t disappoint. I found a ledger which is smaller than the ones I usually see, the size is what drew me to it initially and when I saw that it was almost all filled in with ledger type stuff from the 1920’s I was sold. It contains information about mail deliveries, egg accounts and Jessie’s music expenses from 1928! I bought this fabulous chunk of vintage paper to paint on and put into art journals, but I am not sure I can.  The more I look through it, the more interesting it is!  For now, this is safe in my collection of old books. I also found a People’s Cyclopedia from 1890 without its cover but so interesting.  It is the D-L volume and full of 1890’s information and illustrations.  It still has the wonderful marbled cover pages and the inside of the bindings is revealed as …

My Many Watercolour Paint Sets.

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How many watercolour sets does one person need?  Maybe not this many if I am honest, but this was an interesting little task I set myself. It all started when I began to think about getting or making a new travel set of watercolours for myself.  I wondered whether to buy a ready made set or make a new set with a small tin and some gum trays.  Any excuse to buy some new tubes of paint, right?  When I started to look at the price of the paints I was coveting – wrong!  I have so many watercolour sets as well as a good selection of tubes, I decided to get them out and see what I had and what colours were among the many many sets past and present. My small collection consists of a vintage M. Grumbacher set from an estate sale which has great colours and pigments even now it has been around for a few decades. Then there is my homemade travel set in an Altoids tin and the paints …