Starting a New Art Project-Part 1

Hello everyone! This year I started my GCSE Art course and I've been loving getting creative! So, this week I decided to share with you my experience of starting a brand new art project. I'm one of those people who love nosy-ing at people's GCSE sketchbooks so I hope you're one of those people too! I think I'll do a few posts about my art project so make sure you come back to read the rest! This first post is about my own photos (AKA primary sources).

To start our project we were given a list of topics such as: stretched, personal collection, public transport, details, assembled, architecture and wrap. We could interpret these any way we would like to personalise our project. I knew straight away that I wanted to do 'personal collection' because my room is practically overflowing with stationery I've collected ha-ha! So my sub-theme was stationery and craft supplies. From this point we were given a list of tasks to do and since I only started this 1-2 weeks ago I've only made a start on the first few.

Here's where I get back to where I started...photography! Over the weekend I used my spare time to take photos for my project! I gathered up all of my prettiest stationery and prepared a few backgrounds then just got started!
                                                   

 Left:
I used a Johanna Basford colouring book page as the background for this because I wanted to create a soft look to the photo. Also, I continued this soft look in the editing stage by turning the temperature up to make it look cosy. I also used an effect that darkened the edges and brightened the centre which \I thought added to the cosy feel. By the way, I used PicMonkey to edit all of these photos and just used my smartphone's camera. Also, it took me AGES to link those papercliups together in the shape of 'hello' ha-ha!

Right:
This one fits more into the crafting supplies section of my project because I used sequins. I spelled out 'love' with sticky notes. I liked how this tied in with the upcoming Valentines Day celebrations.

Left: 
I decided to use hessian fabric as my background for this one to create added interest with some texture. It should be interesting to come up with a way to recreate that background in my sketchbook! I used my moleskine dotted notebook and some mini pencils for this because I thought these items were really cute! The purse is there because that's where I store the pencils and I think it will be good to get a break from drawing stationery. By the way this purse is from Japan.

Right:
This one doesn't have such an interesting layout as the others but I wanted to focus on the sequins. I chose to take photos of sequins because I think that it will be interesting to look at the colours on them and then try to recreate them with different mediums.

Left:
This one took me a very long time to arrange ha-ha! I started this early in the morning on Sunday so that it would be done by 12 o'clock when the lighting was just right! For some reason I love incorporating circles into my art projects, they just seem to look neat but not too harsh. Do you understand what I mean? Anyway, I like this layout.#

Right:
Well...this one didn't exactly go to plan. It was meant to look a little bit like the one on the left but less organised. I started by putting the ones that were in the middle (red) at the bottom of a toilet paper tube and then put the next layer above it and so on. Then when all of the buttons were in, I lifted up the tube and let the buttons spread out. As you can see, it's messier than I was hoping for! Anyway, I think that the contrast between the photos will be an interesting part of my project.

Left:
I took this photo in a slightly different way to the previous photos. All the others are flatlays (taken from above) but this one was taken in front of the items against a background. I like that this one has a mixture of plain white paper and hessian as the background because it ahs a nice balance of textures. I chose some really cute pieces of stationery here. In editing, I darkened the edges to bring attention to the items.

Right:
For this photo I chose the wooden table as the background because I wanted something warmer than plain white paper but I wanted to choose something different than hessian.I like that I chose the eiffel tower scissors with the eiffel tower writing paper because they work well together! I love this writing set by the way, it's so gorgeous! It's from Paperchase (but the sharpie, scissors and stamps aren't).

So that's all for this post! I hope that you've been inspired by my photos, I'll be taking a few more for the project but these are the ones that I wanted to share with you! I don't know how often I'll update you on my new art project but it may not be every time I post since sometimes I'll feel like posting something else.

Over to you...
Are you currently doing a GCSE art project or have you done in the past? Let me know in the comments. Also, what do you think about my photos?

Giveaway Time! (CLOSED)

Hello everyone! I hope 2017 is treating you all marvellously! I was originally going to call this post 'New Year's Giveaway' but since it's the 16th of January I wasn't sure if I should still refer to the year as 'new'. Anyway, this is sort of a giveaway to celebrate the new year! It is a free entry into this competition since it's just a bit of fun!

So, the last time I did a giveaway, I only opened it to my UK readers. But this year I've decided to open it internationally because I know that a few of my reader are from around the world which is so exciting! Also, another reason that I decided to open the giveaway internationally is because in recent months I have seen an increase in views so I wanted to cater for those views from around the world!

This is just a small giveaway but I wanted to giveaway two items that I thought my creative readers would love! The first item is a pack of 10 plain cards that you can decorate for any occasion! They are 380gsm so are good quality and they are 6" by 6". They come with envelopes too by the way. The next item which is the main one is a colouring book called: 'Colour Yourself Advent Christmas Countdown' and was illustrated by Hearfelt Illustrations (click on this link for her facebook page). I know that Christmas is over but I wanted to give one of these away so that you could look at my colouring of it in my post (click here)  and then give it a go yourslef! In fact, both of these prizes are inspired by my past posts, I wanted to give you this pack of plain cards so that you could be inspired by cardmaking post (click here). I thought by giving you prizes inspired by posts it would mean a little bit more than if I just gave you random items ha-ha! Look at the prizes below...

So what are the rules?

Well,they're pretty simple! Please follow all the rules:

1.) To enter, just comment below telling me why you'd like to win

2.) Ask your parents if you can enter if you're under 18 because if you win you'll need to tell me your address (we can arrange this over e-mail)

3.) Enter by the deadline: 20th February

Extra Info

• There will be one winner who wins both prizes
• I may include a pretty letter with your prizes 

So that's all! Good luck to everyone! I hope you're happy about the giveaway, January can be a dreary month for some so I wanted to brighten it up a bit!

PS: I hope you like the new background, it's a Winter one that I created on PicMonkey

Over to you...
You know what you've got to do now, if you're ready to enter, just leave a comment saying why you want to win!

EDIT:Thanks to everyone who entered or left a comment but now the contest is closed and a winner has been chosen, I've replied to their comment in the comment section so please check your replies! 

2017 Blogging Resolutions

Happy new year! For my first blog post of 2017, I thought I would tell you a few of the changes I hope to make to my blog in this coming year. I'm only making a few small changes, I think you'll still enjoy reading my blog if you've been reading for a while. I'm excited to introduce a few new ideas and see where my blog takes me in this new year! I think that my blog really grew last year as because I tried out a few new topics such as penpalling and colouring that I have become very passionate about recently. I hope that my blog improves even more this year and I continue to try out new ideas.

The first change that I decided to make this year is a change in my schedule. I've decided to aim to post about once every 2 weeks rather than once per week. I've found that I tend to post once every 2 weeks anyway so I thought that I'd announce it as an actual change. It's quite hard for me to fit in blogging with school and I'll be getting more schoolwork in these next two years so I wanted a bit more time to write posts. I don't think you'll notice much of a change anyway since I didn't really stick to the once a week schedule anyway.

I have done one blog collaboration in the past and really enjoyed it so I thought that this year I would take part in a few more collabs. Last year I started to work on a Disney fanart collab with 5starartists.blogspot.co.uk which I'll be able to continue this year now that I have finished the colouring challenge. Also, I hope to start some more blog collabs with my blogging friends that we've been talking about for quite a while. A project that I was working on last year was guest blogging for Cathy Cassidy's blog which I hoep to carry on with this year.

I'm really excited for my next change in this list! In the upcoming months, I'll be introducing some new topics that you've never seen me write about before! For Christmas I asked for a bullet journal and bullet journal so I was given both of these. I've never tried out calligraphy or bullet journalling but I'm really looking forward to trying them out. I want to share my experience with you so you can see what it's like so you might want to take up the hobbies yourself! I think learning new skills is a great new year's resolution so I hope to inspire readers.

I feel that in the previous year I haven't done much fashion designing at all. I feel like this is a big shame since it is something that I'm very passionate about, in fact I have always thought that fashion design is a career that I want to get into in the future. There's still lots for me to learn so that's why I want to get back to this topic on my blog. I think that having a blog motivates me to try creative things so I'm hoping that now I have said that I want to write about fashion design, I actually will DO fashion designing. I created a fashion sketchbook that I want to use.

The final change is one that is the most difficult to achieve. I will try my best to make at least a little progress on this during 2017 but I can't promise anything. The reason that I am unsure about this goal is because I will be getting more schoolwork in the next two years. This means that I will be more busy. However, I setup a YouTube channel last year that I want to upload more videos on. I don't think that I will use a schedule yet but I do want to be a bit more active. I have filmed a few videos but they're not edited yet and are quite old. so fingers crossed that I will have time for YouTube but I may not.

So those are the five changes that I aim to make in 2017! I hope that you're happy with the changes I want to make, I don't think there are any dramatic changes so you don't have to worry that my blog is going to transform into a completely different creature. I'm sticking with creative topics as I always have done and I'm excited to see the blog evolve to fit my newest hobbies as well as my original ones! Happy new year everyone!

Over to you...
What are your new year's resolutions? I have quite a few that I'll be tracking in my bullet journal. Also, are there any blog posts that you'd like to see in the new year that fit with the creative topics that I already write about/plan to write about? Let me know in the comments.

PS: I'll make a new blog background very soon but you'll have to look at the Christmas one for a little while longer ha-ha!