Ephemera from my understanding means things you create to use within your art journals, these can be things like tags which most people do but I've also come up with my own ways of creating ephemera.  Last year I began creating doodles on scrap pieces of paper and decided I wanted to include them in my art journals, this was the birth of doodle ephemera where I used black marker pen or biro to create and now the idea has spiralled into using felt tips to draw with and then colouring or painting them. It depends how I feel as to what method/mediums I use. The doodle ephemera linked into the collage ephemera which is pattern doodles and scribbles on scrap paper which are then collaged onto printer paper ready to cut things out of.   The collage ephemera gave me the idea to stick together scrap pieces of paper like insides of letter envelopes *they have dope patterns on* and coloured paper, I then drew on them but started to get art block every time I tried so I stopped drawing on th

  Life aint fucking easy man and it can scare the shit outta ya...Fear is paralysing, it can have you all sorts of messed up - it's one hell of an emotion that's usually caused by thoughts or experiences and it keeps you stuck in a state that's very hard to move through but don't give up, don't stay where you are, you need to take action to move through it.   Fear has two meanings as an anagram, Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise, whichever meaning you give it depends on your fight or flight response and you can train this fight or flight response yourself by exposing yourself to anxiety situations that you'd normally avoid. Repeatedly doing this lessons your anxiety meaning you're less fearful. For example if you was fearful of spiders you would need to expose yourself to them for as long as possible as many times as possible till eventually you're okay to hold one or if you was fearful of going outside you'd need to go for a shor

In 2020 as I've previously mentioned I did some edits of the scanned illustrations from 2019, I played around with posterization, inverting colours and different colour combinations in a free photo editing software. I'm not massively skilled at digital design, these are basic alterations but they turned out really cool! I found it super inspiring and interesting to see how I could have done the piece differently if I was feeling a different set of emotions.  Here are my favourite edits I've made: For more edits please vist my edits page here  I hope to one day use all these edits as inspiration for final pieces, obviously i won't be able to make them the exact same due to products not being the same etc. but i could make something similar.  which was your favourite? Till next time, Stevie x 

Want to level uppp your artwork? Posca paint pens are a life changing art supply and one of my favourite to use, if you're new to the art world you may not have heard of them but basically they're acrylic paint in a pen that you can draw or colour/paint with!  I discovered Posca paint pens fairly early in my art journey (I started in 2018 but discovered them in 2019) and it was an absolute game changer, I've never felt so inspired by an art product - I was excited to use the paint pens and was impressed by the ease of use and how good the quality of the product was like opacity was perfect it gave a professional finish,  it really did level up my work.  The paint pens come in various sizes which I've experimented with and they also do lots of colour variations but my favourites are the metallic or the pastel colour set, I've recently seen they do the paint pens in glitter format too which i'm interested to try; The only down side to this is I've only seen th

  Depending where you are in your mental health journey you may or may not know what triggers are, I know I didn't learn what they are till I had my first round of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Triggers in short are things that cause your mental health to decline. Knowing this is life changing information, knowing what your triggers are fills in the gaps of understanding why the decline happens. It's important you recognise what triggers you so you can begin to tackle the problem and hopefully over come it.   We all have basic triggers such as significant life changes such as betrayal and death but there are other types of triggers infact there's two category types; external and internal. External for example, rain would be a trigger and over-stimulation from noise. An internal trigger would be something private to that person i.e thoughts and feelings. Starting a new job can be a trigger it's not always bad events that trigger us and for those of us who already have p

 It's a good idea to go through your makeup collection *every year* and get rid of any almost empty, unusable or old products in your collection. Makeup doesn't last forever it usually has a 12 month date from when you open it meaning it might not be safe to use or as good quality after the 12 months is up; it can loose effectiveness, colour and texture may change. The rapid bacteria growth from after the 12 months can cause spots/breakouts, irritation and even infections so things that go on your eyes especially aren't safe. Stuff like using old eyeliners are a common culprit of causing redness and inflammation because the eyes are a sensitive area. If the eyeliner is losing it's colour and/or starting to dry up it's time to get rid.  Old foundations can cause skin conditions like acne cosmetica due to the oli ingredients for spreading which separate meaning you're using a higher concentration of the oil causing spots (this is why you always shake your foundati

The picture above doesn't include bought tiny paints, nope it's a zero waste paint method for when you can't seem to squeeze the paint outta the tube,  DON'T throw it away!!! There's still SO much paint left inside to use... I call this method the 'Zero Waste Paint' because you can really get your monies worth and use every last bit of the paint before getting rid of the packaging; I have tried to cut up the tube packaging and use as a recycled material in my junk journals cos the paint streak patterns on the inside are beautiful but PVA glue didn't stick it very well,  you'd need something stronger and I'm not too sure what would work maybe a spray adhesive or staples anyways I haven't tried either of those ways of attaching the packaging - kinda gave up on the idea of using em for now but they probably can be used.  What you'll need: A paint that's running out and some scissors Step 1: Open the lid a little, this will let air out wh