The Salmon, The Owl and The Bird on the Branch – Getting Started with December Challenges and AJJ Snow Theme

Hi Friends!

Well here we are in the busiest month of the year and I am attempting to join in multiple challenges – crazy?  Probably.  It’s already the 5th and I have not done many of the prompts so far but I have enjoyed created what I’ve done.  If you missed my last update, I am still on crutches, till after Christmas.  All our snow melted and we are back to rain, and the kitties are all doing well and enjoying snoozing in front of the woodburner.  I have only managed to make and post a few Christmas cards so far, but I did manage to get some Christmas stamps yesterday so the rest will be posted soon.

In addition to the three daily challenges I planned to join, I have added another one that looked fun. It’s organised by Eugénie @supermamadesvovosges (you might recognise her as a Wanderlust 2024 teacher and from Get Messy) and it’s all in French!  I think I will stick to the same format as November posts, adding three pages to each post to keep it manageable.  So let’s have a look at what I’ve managed to do so far this month…

Today’s art . . .

Today I am sharing three pages created for various IG challenges.  To keep it simple (haha) I will list the challenges they were made for and also if any of them were also created with  Sharon’s theme of Snow on Art Journal Journey in mind.

CARE December Day 1 – Salmon

This year Care December is the Pink edition, and the first prompt was “salmon”.  I enjoy this free December journalling event from Everything Art, anyone can sign up for free and you have lifetime access.  The only thing I don’t like about it is that the prompts are not provided in advance.  They are released every day by email so I can’t think and plan in advance.   I went more literal, since I happened to have this empty treat packet in the kitchen and it doesn’t hurt that it’s pink!  These new “lollipops for cats” are their new obsession.  It’s a bit gimicky but they are made of freeze-dried salmon, tuna or chicken.  The kitties are obsessed!

Here’s a look at the unadulterated packet.

Super Challenge de l’advent Day 1 ciel de minuit  (midnight sky) AND

Art Journal Advent Day 3 – start today, AND

Art Journal Journey – Snow

This page was created with a few challenges in mind.  You might recognise this owl as one that I painted a while back for my AJJ October 2022 theme.  I had scanned it at the time and have used it several times, resized and printed on watercolour paper and coloured to suit.  Looking back at the original I had completely forgotten that all the symbols down the side were stencilled in shiny gold. That doesn’t scan or print in the same way.  In the original the owl was facing the other way, but when I printed it this time, I reversed it.   I’m thinking of doing some more watercolour animals as this owl and the fox I also did at the time, have come in so handy to reuse for different projects at different sizes.  What do you think?

To start off, I covered my page with various blue hued torn papers and then created the snowy midnight sky to surround my owl. Originally I planned to just leave the torn papers as is, but then I started adding colour and I couldn’t stop.  I used a combination of Tim Holtz crayons and watercolour pencils.   The quote from one of the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling reads “let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure”.  In hindsight, I might have added a tree to the left hand side, I still might…
I am also joining Simon Says Stamp Wednesday blog this week as their theme is Winter Blues featuring Tim Holtz products – perfect!

Art Journal Advent Day 2 – Simplicity AND
Art Journey Journey – Snow

This page was created for AJJ’s Snow theme – as soon as I saw the little bird sitting on the snowy branch I knew I had to use it – and since it is a simple page (two printed papers, some blue chalk paint and some white snowy splatter) it also works for Art Journal Advent’s day 2 prompt of Simplicity.

I painted the page with some different light blue chalk paints from Paperartsy, then added the digital paper and the bird image.  I also printed out the quote and then added some splattery snow to the whole page. The quote was printed from one of the previous issues of Artful Pages.

About this month’s journals

Last weekend I spent some time deconstructing all of my saved amazon paper bags that they often use now instead of boxes.  They are really tough bags and good quality kraft paper so I wanted to reuse them rather than sending them straight to recycling.  I have been saving these up for some time FYI just in case you think I went bananas on amazon orders this year lol.  But just think about how many of these bags go to recycling every day and could be made into journals!

After the bags were opened up, I ironed them all to get the creases out.  Then I cut them down to my preferred page size using a pad of watercolour paper as a template.  I got a lot of pages and I plan to use many of them this month.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.   As always, thanks for reading and Happy journalling!Ingredients
as above

Challenges

Art Journal Journey – Snow

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Blog – Winter Blues featuring Tim Holtz products