I Want To Ride My Bicycle – Art Journal & Tags

Hi Friends!

Happy Sunday!  Our clocks went back overnight and I FORGOT about it.   I woke at 6.30 according to my clock but my phone said 5.30 noooooo!  I knew it was this weekend but then when I went to bed it went right out of my head.  So since I was up so early, today was a bit of a maintenance day for me, well actually yesterday too, so it was a bit of a maintenance weekend.  Today I refilled a lot of pens that are not designed to be refilled.  I hate waste and so I try to recycle, or in this case, refill, any pens that I have if possible. Most of the Poscas can be refilled easily except for the very small ones with the metal nibs unfortunately – I love those but I cannot get the tops off.  It’s so frustrating when you reach for a Posca in the middle of a project only to discover it’s dry, so now after refilling five white and four black in assorted sizes, I should be good for a while!  I also refilled some of the regular pens I like to write with on a daily basis. Do you ever refill your pens?  Miss Lily was absent for this process for safety reasons – the chance of her knocking over a bottle of ink is too great so I had to shut her out of the room while I did this.  She cried and pawed at the door for a bit before going off for a nap!

And yesterday was journal assembly day – I finally got around to making my September and October journal pages into books.  I would say “bound” but there was no stitched binding happening.  They still need covers and the covers will still need to be decorated but at least they are in book format now! This October one was a bit tricky because there were so many 3D elements on some of the pages (those old recycled projects!)

Today’s Art . . .

Today’s art is a journal page Neet’s theme this month on Art Journal Journey – In Gear.  This one is stuffed full of gears!  It also has a pocket containing a couple of tags that are also full of gears!

When I cleaned out the tea cupboard over the summer I found this box of liquorice tea that was almost empty.  I wanted to hold onto the box to use for something but I didn’t know what – the purple for Halloween perhaps. I also liked the “125 years” badge on the shortbread box, and the scrapbook paper with all the bicycles on it was a nice discovery.  I had used the other side of it to stamp my clockwork butterflies onto and didn’t even know this was on the other side, so of course when I turned it over I knew I had to use it this month for Neet’s theme!  There’s also some teabags and the liquorice bag but I didn’t end up using that one today.

Here’s a look at the finished page.  In addition to what I mentioned above, I also used this Stamperia paper from the Voyage Fantastique range for the man in the hat tag and the gentleman on the penny farthing.  There are many gears on this paper, all manner of cogs and gears and clocks on the man on the left and on the right, the penny farthing, the hot air balloons, the zeppelin, the clocks and possibly his mechanical wings.  The Eiffel Tower stamp may also qualify assuming there are many gears to make things go up and down the tower.  There are a few washi stickers used on the page and some steampunk washi tape.  The teabags are are hard to see in that photo, and also a denim heart.  I used more of the shortbread box tartan that I planned to but I quite like how the red stands out.  The strip on the left is only glued on each end so I can slip things under it, and the penny farthing man on the right is actually a pocket.  There’s also a little bit of random stamping in grey along the top of the page.

While I was in bicycle mode, I made two tags for Tag Tuesday’s Transportation challenge. The one on the left is made from the tea box – I tried so hard to use these bikes on my page but I just couldn’t make it work, so I decided to make a tag instead. It has a pocket on the front into which I popped this image of the Professor which was recycled from an old project.  There is also a lot of the steampunk gears washi tape on it.  I don’t have a photo of it but the inside of the pocket is covered with purple Halloween paper!  The tag on the right is made from the shortbread box – there’s a tiny bit of the red tartan peeking out at the top.  There is also more of the Stamperia paper on there, teabag, denim heart, washi sticker and more of the steampunk washi tape.  Both tags feature bicycles old and new.

Tags in pocket…

Tags out of pocket …

Let me know what you think in the comments.   As always, thanks for reading and Happy Journalling!

Challenges

Art Journal Journey – In Gear
Tag Tuesday – Form of Transport – bicycles