30-Day Art Challenge - Art Marks - Days 1-3

Rae Missigman came up with an idea of doing an art challenge for 30 days with a prompt for each day. She's called it "Art Marks - A Daily Exercise." In a nutshell, you create a small journal (or even work on separate pages) and work in it daily. She has even provided a list of prompts if you can't think of anything to do! (You can find out more information here.)

I love the exercise of making a bit of art each day so I wanted to join in, but I just didn't get my act together for her time frame (Jan 15 to Feb 13.)  Then, just a few days ago I received a "care package" from my mother in which she sent me a yearly date book (those small 7" x 3.5" calendars). Since I already had at least one, along with other planners, and I didn't want to just throw it out, I decided that it would make a perfect journal for this exercise! It has the right amount of pages. I could start on Feb. 1 and do it on my own for the month.  (Anyone want to join me?)

So, here I go!

This is the datebook - we will see how different it looks in a month! I have gessoed most of the pages because they are very thin and will do one side of one page for each day.

Here are the first few days and their prompts.

Day 1 - Petal-like

On this page I painted magenta and blue acrylic paints, then braider over with white paint. I used yellow and white paints on my finger to make the petal-like marks, outlined with black Stabilo pencil. I also added white and black marks with paint pens.

Days 2 (Needlework) and 3 (Concentric)

Day 2 started with a gelli-printed paper that I stitched on and then glued into the journal so it wouldn't show through onto the other page. I "saw" the flower within the random paint on the paper so hand-stitched around the petals and flower center with overdyed floss to emphasize the design. I also added a whipped backstitch for a stem. Except for the tiny circles stamped in black on the background (and filled with white pen), everything else was already on the print. 

For Day 3 I had "cleaned" my paintbrush on the background so went from there. I glued on three paper circles (pink and two blue) in the center and from there just started doodling with paint pens and other pens until it grew to fill most of the page. To complete the page I added some doodled circles in black and added pink dots to the centers.

I am enjoying these daily exercises, but it is hard to not make a "finished" piece. The idea, of course, is to make marks and just randomly create each day. The original exercise suggested to set a timer and create within a time frame, but I'm not doing that.