Category Archives: #Art

Stitch Stories: Personal Places, Spaces and Traces in Textile Art by Cas Holmes

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Today I’m highlighting one of Cas Holmes art books about creating art inspired by place, space, objects and more…Below I share a link to her website and I highly recommend taking a look. Her work is extraordinary and expressive with each stitch and collage. I could spend hours looking at all the detail and escape in the story she tells. -Stephanie Hopkins 

9781849942744.jpgStitch Stories: Personal Places, Spaces and Traces in Textile Art

by Cas Holmes

The events of your life, from local walks to exotic trips, can provide endless inspiration for textile art. This inspiring book shows you how to record your experiences, using sketchbooks, journals and photography, to create personal narratives that can form a starting point for more finished stitched-textile pieces. Acclaimed textile artist and teacher Cas Holmes, whose work is often inspired by her life and the journeys she makes, helps you find inspiration through your own life and explains how to record what you see in sketchbooks and journals, which can often become beautiful objects in themselves. She explains how you can use photography, both as documentation and as inspiration, and sometimes incorporate it into the work itself, along with found objects and ephemera. Throughout the book are useful techniques that can be harnessed to add extra interest to your work, such as methods for making layered collages, how to ‘sketch’ with stitch, and advice on design and colour. If you want to create beautiful, unique work inspired by your life and travels, this is the perfect book for you.

About the Artist:

Cas Holmes was born in Norwich, U.K in 1960 and graduated from University College of Creative Arts in the mid-eighties. For thirty years she has traveled, taught and exhibited and is renowned for her use of ‘the found’. Her many-layered, atmospheric pieces have been shown and collected around the world. She received a Winston Churchill Memorial Award and Japan Foundation Award for research into paper-making and textiles in Japan.

Since 2005 she has run courses for the Edward James Foundation at West Dean College as well as continued workshops in the UK and overseas. She works to commission and has pieces in the collection of the Museum of Art and Design New York, Rochester Cathedral and Arts Council England.

More recently, an Arts Council Award led to research in India and subsequent exhibition. This led to a Pride of Britain Award by the NRI Institute for excellence in her field.

The Found Object in Textile Art is her first publication for Batsford.

You can see her profile and work  HERE

How Painted Papers Evolve

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This pass Saturday I created mixed media homemade ephemera with my painted papers I made with left over paint, inks and gesso from various art projects. Then I cut out different shapes using file folders for the base. The paper dolls and lettering and number 5 is by Tim Holtz. I forgot who the ribbon is by. I love blending abstract with vintage themes and seeing how they come together. This is a great craft for meaningful imagery for your art projects and journals. -Stephanie Hopkins

“I begin with an idea, and then it becomes something else.” -Pablo Picasso

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Start Living Today

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“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you to today.” -Tim Fargo

“Keeping a journal of what’s going on in your life is a good way to help you distill what’s important and what’s not.” Martina Navratilova

Art Journal Pages by Stephanie Hopkins

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(Images may be subjected to copyright. All book reviews, interviews, guest posts, art work, photos and promotions are originals. In order to use any text or pictures from Layered Pages, please ask for permission from Stephanie.)

Daily Art Therapy

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Last night I sat down and created two new pages in my Mixed Media Altered Book. I love how they turned out and how much it helped me to end my day on a positive note. -Stephanie Hopkins

A Art Pages Edited

“Imagination is tapping into the subconscious in a form of open play. That is why art or music therapy, which encourages a person to take up brushes and paint or an instrument, and just express themselves, is so powerful.”
― Phil ‘Philosofree’ Cheney

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(Images may be subjected to copyright. All book reviews, interviews, guest posts, art work, photos and promotions are originals. In order to use any text or pictures from Layered Pages, please ask for permission from Stephanie.)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

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This is one of many Collage Art Journal pages I created in April. It holds a lot of meaning to me and its powerful. I really enjoyed creating these two pages. The image of the girl is from a art magazine I subscribed to a few years ago. I believe she had a British flag image where I placed the Liberty Bell Stamp.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Art Journal Pages by Stephanie Hopkins

A Life Liberty II Edited

(Images may be subjected to copyright. All book reviews, interviews, guest posts, art work, photos and promotions are originals. In order to use any text or pictures from Layered Pages, please ask for permission from Stephanie.)

Cover Crush: Louisiana Lucky by Julie Pennell

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Louisiana Lucky by Julie PennellWhat is not to love about this cover? Images of cupcakes! Yes please! Love everything about this cover. The premise sounds interesting and I love the title. -Stephanie Hopkins 

Louisiana Lucky by Julie Pennell

Atria Books

Pub Date 04 Aug 2020

Description

From the critically acclaimed author of The Young Wives Club, a “heartwarming story about friendship, heartache, and self-discovery” (Karen White, New York Times bestselling author), comes a charming novel reminiscent of the works of Mary Alice Monroe and Kristy Woodson Harvey, about three sisters who win a huge lottery prize and learn what it truly means to be lucky.

Lexi, Callie, and Hanna Breaux grew up in small-town Louisiana, and have always struggled to make ends meet. For years, they’ve been playing the lottery, fantasizing about how much better life would be if they had the money.

For Lexi, it means the perfect wedding; for Callie, it means having the courage to go after her career dreams; and for Hanna, it means buying a house that isn’t falling apart and sending her bullied son to private school. When the incredible happens and the Breaux sisters hit it big—$204 million dollars big—all their dreams come true. Or so they think. Because it’s actually not a cliché—money isn’t the answer to everything, and it often comes with problems of its own.

Heartfelt, engaging, and featuring characters you’ll root for from the first moment you meet them, Louisiana Lucky is a satisfying page-turner from a rising star in women’s fiction.

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Cover Crush: Ordinary Hazards by Anna Bruno

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Ordinary HazardsI adore images of birds and this one is fantastic! The colors, texture and composition is beautiful. Normally I’m not a fan of fonts over-whelming a book cover however the large fonts of the title and author’s name doesn’t take away from the bird image and I feel it adds depth. -Stephanie Hopkins 

Ordinary Hazards by Anna Bruno

Atria Books

Pub Date 18 Aug 2020

Description

It’s 5pm on a Wednesday when Emma settles into her hometown bar with a motley crew of locals, all unaware that a series of decisions over the course of a single night is about to change their lives forever. As the evening unfolds, key details about Emma’s history emerge, and the past comes bearing down on her like a freight train.

Why has Emma, a powerhouse in the business world, ended up here? What is she running away from? And what is she willing to give up to recapture the love she once cherished? An exploration of contemporary love, guilt, and the place we call home, and in the tradition of Ask Again, Yes and Little Fires Everywhere, Ordinary Hazards follows one woman’s epic journey back to a life worth living.

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Mixed Media ATCs

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“Form itself, even if completely abstract … has its own inner sound.”
― Wassily Kandinsky

ATC Cards 4-19-2020

 

Today I’m sharing a few of my new ATCs I’ve made recently. I was running short on art embellishments for my journal projects and decided to make ATCs. These cards are at the top of my list of favorite DIY Art projects. I’m really pleased with how they turned out and I love the abstract look of the backgrounds.

I took a few playing cards and added Gesso on the front and journal paper on the back. Having done that, doesn’t that make them now jouranling cards? Anyhow, for the front of the cards I made the backgrounds using a few of my scraps from my collage master boards and painting master boards that I created for my mixed media projects.

After I applied the paper I used oil pastels to highlight the edges and used a few embellishments and then applied some stencil patterns and wording to complete the cards. If you want to create art using DIY Master Boards and not sure how to get started, feel free to ask me and I would be delighted to give you pointers. It is a lot easier than it sounds and you can be really creative with them. Actually, I think they are a great way to discover your creative vibes-if you will. -Stephanie Hopkins

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(Images may be subjected to copyright. All book reviews, interviews, guest posts, art work, photos and promotions are originals. In order to use any text or pictures from Layered Pages, please ask for permission from Stephanie.)

 

 

Creativity Takes Courage

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“Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.” ~Edward de Bono

Here are pages I worked on this past weekend in my Mixed Media Art Journal. I’ll be adding wording on the pages to the left and might leave the brighter color pages to the right, blank. Creating these pages was so calming and freeing. I love the abstract feel to the one on the right and I used acrylic paints and added water to them to give a watercolor look to them. The pages on the left are colors that remind me of the ocean and the butterfly represents a new beginning as I have said on previous posts. I tend to use butterflies a lot in my journals. -Stephanie Hopkins

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(Images may be subjected to copyright. All book reviews, interviews, guest posts, art work, photos and promotions are originals. In order to use any text or pictures from Layered Pages, please ask for permission from Stephanie Hopkins.)

 

Cover Crush: Hush by Dylan Farrow

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