Creative Experiment - January Roundup and February Targets. Also Last weeks quotes.

So January is over and I wanted to summarise my CE achievements for the month

JANUARY
My points total for Jan is 7 (out of a possible 11). I missed out on the mail art which I just never got around to, and the inspiration journal which I did not plan to do.

I keep my inspirational material on pinterest which for me is perfect. 95% of my inspirational browsing is online so I would actually have to print everything out to put it into a book which would be time consuming and expensive. I do not get any magazines at the present (for financial and storage reasons) and I still have sizeable stacks of craft (Cross Stitch/Dolls House Miniatures) magazines from previous years which I can't seem to make myself toss out.

After that I determined not to buy magazines any more and rely on looking at all the lovely blogs for free, and when pinterest came along and gave me a place to make board where the pins reference back to their owners I was in heaven. The only exception was letting mum bring me a magazine when in hospital since I wasn't online and was bored. Reading the two she brought me on one occasion reinforced my decision as I didn't feel there was all that much in a nearly £5 magazine and I could get more inspiration visitng blogs for free or half an hour on flickr.

FEBRUARY
With the Feb challenges out we are encouraged to set a target for the month and I am setting my target at 19 points (of 21 available). CE#8 (the real life pinboard) is out for the reasons above, I would have to go searching for stuff to put on it and it wouldn't feel genuine to me.

For me February will mean carving stamps, blog hunting (like I don't already have 50 art blogs in my rss reader) and doing the monochromatic pages.

Quotes
Last weeks quotes brought to you by Emily Dickinson, next week....Mahatma Ghandi.

Creative Experiment #2

I know it is now february but I am just sharing the last fruits of January's challenges.

For CE#2 we were to try a technique that was new to us. For christmas I had received a woodburning tool (thanks Dad) and it the rest, as they say, is history.

Using some 50mm (2x2ish) blocks I had left over from a past project I warmed up the tool and started playing with the different ends to see what kinds of marks they made. Using these blocks with acrylics I made sure to burn reasonably deep. Here are blocks before, during and after burning.



And then of course they had to be tested to see how they worked. I found that applying the acrylic paint with a cosmetic sponge the most effective and I was able to get some lovely crisp prints from my blocks. I would advise printing with a 2mm foam sheet (or similar) under the paper as it give some push back into the details which the table did not.



All in all a very sucessful experiment. Just one more to type up (mail art) which will come tomorrow.

Total burns during experiment, just the one. All pictures taken with my new DSLR and closeups with a 10X macro filter which worked out very well.