Big up to Helen Tilbury (my fellow Saffa) for starting a new challenge blog. And it looks like it's going to be a huge one!

As I am typing this I realised that it is actually rather co-incidental that I used SATW's very first challenge to commemorate my daughter's very first blog post.



Her blog's name is “Life According to Karla” but the first post was titled “Hello my name is Karla”. The same photo was used in the post.



I started with a hand drawn circle, using Distress ink and blotting with a paper napkin for the distressed effect.

For the title I used some yellow Amy Tangerine thickers, which I coloured black with a Faber-Castell Big Brush Pen.



The fence and doors were painted with a white acrylic dabber by Ranger, giving it some subtle texture.



I used a variety of flowers (paper, crochet and wood) for my clusters, adding to the texture on the page.



I laced a string of fine beads through the tags for some added interest.



Here is the sketch and mood board from SATW.

These 2 people really are the loves of my life. Where would I be without them?

When my husband asked me this morning what I wanted to do today, I thought, “oh no, does he want to go out”? It is Mother's Day after all. He seemed pretty happy when I replied, “nothing”.
We spent a quiet day at home, having chicken braai leftovers for lunch. Karla and I did some scrapbooking together and I manage to do 2 layouts.

This was the first of them:



I used the May sketch over at Paperhaus for this layout.

Oops, I completely forgot to blog about this one! I finished it over a month ago.

I loved this lesson by Danita about painting over a printed image. It's really that simple! Take a magazine photo (preferably almost full-page) and, starting with watered down gesso, followed by colour (not necessarily “life-like” colour), paint over the image, creating a masterpiece. See, I painted Liv Tyler!



Now I just have 10 more weeks to catch up on before Monday. No biggie

Guess what! Another photo of the cousins at Blouberg Beach. I'm just not getting tired of these photos, they are SO great! Aaaaannnd... there's more to come!

This one was taken on my sister-in-law's birthday. We had lunch at Onse Huisie and sundowners at Blue Peter. What a perfect autumn day!

I came to realise that I have a LOT of Blouberg Beach photos... all taken on different days. Most of them are of Karla and her cousin Juan. They both love the beach and make the most gorgeous photos, playing and running and just being awesome kids!

This photo was taken on a sunny afternoon in February when I took the 2 rascals to Blouberg.



Here is the photo I used.



I love how the title came out.



The layout was based on the current sketch over at Stuck Sketches.

For Karla's birthday in March we invited 3 friends and went to Mouilli Point for a day of putt-putt and picnic. After quite some time in the Cape Town sun we went home for a swim. What a day! Four 7-8 year old girls can be very cute together but boy!they DO fight over the silliest things. Still we had an amazing day with awesome weather.

This photo was taken at the putt-putt.



Here are some closeups of the cute elements.













I have been having a real tough time with Karla's blog between Nucleus and Bloglovin. The title link is simply not linking. The blog link works perfectly. If anyone has a Nucleus blog linked up with Bloglovin and you have overcome this hurdle, please give me some tips. I am getting desperate. I have now also tried Networked Blogs and it seems to give a whole NEW list of errors, so I gave up after the first 5 seconds. Hubby has been searching the internet and changing and updating things all over the place and not been able to find a solution either. One of those moments where you go, "weeeeeelll, if YOU can't fix it, how do you expect ME to know?! HA!

I took Karla and a friend to Cape Town during the school holidays in January. We had such a fun day feeding squirrels and pigeons in the Botanical Gardens, visiting the museum, watching a show at the Planetarium and ending off our day with a visit to the Castle of Good Hope. I love this photo of the bell tower.

For the background I used a paper I created when I first discovered Tim Holtz, distressing, stamping and masking. I played around with some techniques and left the page laying around for some time (a few years). I think the colours worked pretty well with the rest of the layout.



Here are some closeups:







This is the sketch I used by Sketchabilities.

Jane Davenport's lesson on Unstumpification was one of my favourites so far. I LOVED her entertaining video and, seeing that I am totally useless at drawing, found this technique soooo helpful. I will definitely be practising to draw a lot more girls with this technique.



This was my second try. On the first one I messed up my background pretty badly. The distress stain simply didn't respond the way Jane's seemed to do in the video. I don't know if it was my paper or if I was just doing it wrong. So I opted for Liquitex acrylic ink instead. One of my FAVOURITE products to use! (I so need more of these!) I dripped ink and painted it in with a wet paint brush. And because I used the Liquitex, I simply HAD to add some drips. I love that look.

I also kept my face much simpler than Jane's. The fact that she came with sunglasses definitely helped.

I substituted a lot of the products. The lilac shading was done with a distress marker. I love that look.

I wrote on my girl's dress instead of printing. I love using my own handwriting, even though I don't always love my own handwriting (if that makes sense). I wrote about what bravery means to me, something in the line of: Stepping up to the plate, taking responsibility, being accountable for our actions, considering others in everything we do, being honest, being true to our word, being trustworthy, that is what bravery is all about.
I love how the dress turned out with my handwriting.



And, finally, my title: Brave girl, you can do anything! Written with a white Galaxy marker and Pitt pens.

Week 6 by Tamara Laporte was definitely a challenge... or would have been if I did it the correct way (I cheated).

The assignment was to draw a full length body with a misted background of an animal silhouette. In Tam's video she explained how she masked the girl with masking fluid to mist the background but when she peeled off the dried masking fluid she discovered that it was uneven and she lost some of her detail. I don't have masking fluid (never heard of it) and decided to start with my background, paint my girl on a separate piece of paper, cut her out and glue her over my animal. Worked like a charm. I was also VERY lazy and used Tam's girl template and printed it onto watercolour paper instead of drawing my own girl.



I chose a rhino as my brave animal because it is relevant in Africa at the moment. The way things are going, rhino's are brave just by being around. One of these days there won't be any left.

I don't have a photo or scanned image... but when my daughter saw the girl I printed out she pointed out that it looked like a ballerina and she simply HAD to have one. She drew the cutest ballerina outfit, painted her girl and found an awesome background to glue it onto. She's such a little star! By the way, her picture is prettier than mine

In Week 5's lesson by Kelly Hoernig we created a Game board with a game piece and cards.

I loved designing the background, especially misting and stenciling. I used a map of Africa as my base. It kinda disappeared underneath all the layers of paint and mist but that's ok; I know it's there.



The board follows a path with blocks symbolising our challenges/obstacles, other blocks offering motivation/encouragement, finally ending at a pocket with game cards which symbolise our goals.

For my game piece I chose a photo of Louise Carver (I took the photo at a show at Van Loveren at the 2010 Wacky Wine Weekend). She is one of my all time favourite South African singers with a voice like an angel AND she plays piano. Definitely one of my heroes. I added some butterfly wings to symbolise freedom... freedom in creating, freedom in singing, freedom in expressing myself.



The dark blocks on the board represent our challenges. Hmmm.... there are many. For art... I would have to say distractions (TV, internet, etc.), mojo/inspiration (lack of), procrastination (because of the distractions), priorities (too many, so I struggle to decide what is more important and then end up doing nothing) and time management.

The lighter blocks represent encouragement. I chose to tell myself to pray (twice!) (it also goes with my word for the year: faith) and sing (also something I want to spend more time on). I also added little encouragements like “You rock!”, “Go! Go! Go!”, “Just do it”, “Just a little is enough” and “TRY”.

The game cards represent our goals for the year. One of the cards has my word for the year on it: Faith. On the back is an explanation of what faith means and why it is my word for the year. I chose the word “Faith” because I am coming back to what I have lost over the last 2 years. I want to base everything I do on that this year. It makes things a lot simpler because, when I am not sure how to tackle a situation or even IF I can, all I have to do is remember that I just need a little faith.





My goals for the year are to art every day, explore more and explore the idea of a business venture. On the front of the goal cards are my goals. On the back is a short explanation. I didn't really keep the end product in mind when I was designing the cards, so when I wanted to write my words I didn't have enough space and/or the colours were too dark to write on. I ended up with messy cards but I decided to keep them that way because I really liked the images I used.

Art every day:





Business? (Question mark, because I am “testing” the idea)





Explore!





That is my long-winded post for the day. More of Life Book (I'm catching up) to follow!