I had a quick and backpacker kind of trip in Manila few weekends ago. It was one for the books. Aside from catching up with good friends, I also learned new creative things. I attended workshops of leather making, brass jewelry and an art play date.
The art play date was when I stayed with Airees. And oh my goodness, I’ve been to her place before and it was like a haven for crafters and artists. She has a lot of art materials. From pens, watercolour, acrylic, stamps, inks, papers, books and everything else. You name it, she probably has it, hehe. There were some materials that I’m not even familiar with or didn’t know they exists.
She started out with scrapbooking to multi media painting then to watercolour. Thus explains all the supplies. When I stayed in her place, she showed me her journals, artworks and books which was very inspirational. It’s nice to see the work of other artists.
The best part though, she let me played with her stash of art supplies. What I truly love about Airees, she’s very generous in sharing what she knows and what she has. And who am I to resist? haha Even if she didn’t offer, I’d probably invite myself and ask if I can play with all those materials, haha.
Anyway, the art play date was inspired from Kelly Rae Roberts‘ Unscripted e-course {an edited video while she’s painting} and Kelly and Flora Bowley were painting together and thought we’d do the same thing. The video was, they painted on two wood panels then swap every now and then until they felt it’s already finished.
We painted on canvasses since wood panels were hard to find here. We used acrylic paints, patterned papers, rubber stamps, gesso, neocolors, stencils, washi tapes and pens. At first, with paint brushes then we with our fingers.
Here’s a time-lapse of how we did it. Really love technology nowadays. Though, I still have to learn this thing.
And after an hour, more or less, we came up with these…
At first, it was a struggle for me because colours are not my thing. I’m quite familiar with acrylic but not an expert, plus it’s been months since I last painted with acrylic and canvas. Overall, it was one fun night. It’s like a meditation. You just go with the flow, without thinking {which was hard for an over thinker like me, lol}. Reminded me when I tried an abstract art with watercolour and I find that it’s okay to get messy and just feel where your hands were taking you.
When we were done, we couldn’t decide which canvas was ours. I started with the rectangle one so that’s what I brought with me. Can you believe it? I didn’t bring a single thing for our art date and yet I was able to bring a lot of goodies from her when I came home.
It’s now displayed on my desk to remind me that getting messy or not thinking how to go about the painting is also fun. It’s a nice way to keep the creativity flowing.
Meet Airees. We call each other twinsy, because she’s like me or I’m like her in so many ways.
Remember when I said, I brought a lot of goodies back home? It’s like you’re watching a TV shopping channel and it says “but wait there’s more!” Yup! It’s like that.
Airees, up-cycled the packaging of coffee beans from Starbucks and made it into a pouch. So she let me play with the up-cycled pouch and made this. You know what I like about this idea, you can smell the coffee once in awhile.
Wait! There’s more… yup! I just don’t have a photo of it yet, but she also gave me her beautiful handmade products. Airees’ sell her artworks in a form of art journals, wallets and notebooks made out of handmade paper. Go check her online store and you’ll love it for sure.
That weekend was like an art retreat for me. If only we lived in one city, maybe we can probably have more of this. But it’s amazing even though we lived far from each other, our relationship became closer.
I hope you had fun with this. If you’re from Manila, Airees is having a Creative Travel Journaling workshop. So if you like to travel, she’ll teach you how to keep those memories into a creative journaling.
Upcycled Starbucks Coffee Bean Pouches! May DIY Guide nito? I waaant! 🙂