Reflecting

 

Hello everyone,

Or should I say: anyone? Is anyone still interested in the good old crafty arty blogposts? I have to admit, I don't visit them anymore. Then why would you write a blogpost yourself, you could ask. I don't know, I just felt like reflecting on the years I spent here and the art journey I went on because of starting this blog.

It was 2012.

I stumbled upon a book called The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt.

It awakened my arty soul, which had been dormant for some decades.

I felt the urge to create something. It's funny to me now to see what my first attempts were. This piece below is the first or second thing I made. Digitally, cause I loved editing photos and was playing with Photoshop Elements.

And what's even more interesting to me, is that it already pointed towards where my art journey eventually led me: towards illustrating children's books. More on that later.

I started searching online for scrapbook ideas and stumbled upon vintage crafts. I was so excited, I loved it so much! All the gorgeous laces and vintage images they used.

New online friendships blossomed and I learned a ton by soaking up the beauty my new friends created and shared on their blogs.

I began dabbling in textile crafts and mixed media, heavily inspired by their work.

Using lots of laces and old images.

I learned about using found objects in your work, also as the canvas of it. Like matchboxes, cardboard, tins, jars and this collage below, made on a piece of driftwood.

I learned about making little fabric books,

of course lots of cards,

and fabric hearts.

I followed courses on making handbound mixed media books.

And this led me towards using paints again. I started painting my own fabrics which I would use for my mixed media books.

Also my stitching started taking up more space in my work. And I began drawing with these threads, making up my own designs.

Which led to painting and drawing with all kinds of materials in and on my mixed media books as well.

Still using lots of lace, but these started to slowly take up less space in my work.

Until they kind of disappeared.

I began to take up painting and drawing classes more seriously.

Which resulted in transitioning towards illustration and being a published children's book illustrator.

Till now I have illustrated two books.

Unfortunately I couldn't stop myself from overworking, which led to a long lasting inflammation in my arm. Which means I haven't been able yet to illustrate more children's books. But I'm hopeful for the future :)

And it made space for taking up a little bit of crafting again.

I even started a new instagram account for it, called Poppy Podge. You can find it HERE. But I have to confess that I'm hardly ever using it.

Not sure either what my crafty / arty future will look like. I need to take better care of my physical health, so I think I need to change the way I work. More loose painting perhaps. So what I will share in the future here and there might change, may be even a lot.

I don't know yet, but I'm excited anyway :)

If you made it this far into my post, thank you so much for reading and keeping me company here! It was nice reflecting on my arts and crafts journey so far, seeing how my work developed and where it took me. I hope you enjoyed it too.

To end this post, I will share below some (lots) more of my favourite images of previous years on this blog.

Take care my friend and perhaps till later,

xx Wen

PS: I noticed that Blogger messes up the ability to comment. You can no longer comment when you have third party cookies blocked. I found this helpful information though:

https://support.google.com/blogger/thread/179762315/can%E2%80%99t-comment?hl=en

It worked for me, I hope it will help you too!