I’ve snatched some ‘me’ time in the studio today and revisited some of the lessons on distress stains and markers from Creative Chemistry 101 – a staggering four years ago! It’s part of the Summer of Creative Chemistry from onlinecardclasses.com, in the lead up to the brand new Creative Chemistry 103 from Tim Holtz. These are three tags created for Week 2.
More sneak peeks of pages to be featured on my Hochanda shows on Thursday at 11am & 3pm. Don’t forget to tune in to, or catch up with, the shows which will be introducing art journals and art journaling.
I’m busy prepping for my next shows on Hochanda, which will be introducing art journaling, on 16th June. I’ve already shown you the test pages in the journals that will be available, but here are two sneaky peek pages featuring products available to buy during the shows. There will be more sneaky peeks on Hochanda’s social media feeds during the coming week.
Today, I went on retreat to Launde Abbey – a space to reflect, be out of contact with the outside world and to re-establish communication with God. The theme for the days reflection centred around Martha preparing the meal for Jesus, and the story of Brother Lawrence finding ways to worship God as he washed dishes for his entire monastic life. I took my iPad, so I could respond in creative worship, and as I reflected on things happening in my life at the moment, I drew on this quote from Brother Lawrence:
Lift your heart to Him during your meals and in company, the least little remembrance will always be most pleasing to Him.
And from this quote from Edmund Morgan, a Welsh Anglican bishop:
… to overcome the temptation to love the praise of men more than the glory of God, your life must be a continual sursum corda; you must ever be groping, fighting, leaping Godwards…
‘Lift up your hearts’ – Latin: sursum corda – is the opening dialogue to the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer. Rarely featured in Baptist tradition, it was a perfect illustration of what I took away with me from the retreat.
[created in Procreate and Inkpad Pro apps on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil]
In tonight’s art journaling session, we’re going to be playing with paint films. This is my demo page – it’s one of those sort of pages that is inspired by the technique results rather than an artistic intent at the start. The glass is drawn round the paint film, which reminded me of sloshing Ribena and I went in search of a suitable quote. The full quote compares colour to be as essential as water, which is a great metaphor reflected in my layout.
It’s getting closer! My television debut is on Friday 3rd June, with live shows at 11am, 1pm and 5pm. I’m delighted to be showcasing DecoArt Media fluid acrylics and various mediums. Sneaky peaks will be up on the Hochanda Facebook page sometime in the next couple of days. It’s been a busy weekend for me as the products for the shows only arrived at The Studio on Friday morning, and promo pictures were requested about an hour later (to which I politely replied along the lines of ‘you must be joking’!). Want to know what The Studio looks like at the moment, with several concurrent projects on the go so that one is drying as I am working on the next?
That’s the sample boards done; two 12×12″ panels; ten different 3D papier mâché letters; at least ten different paint and decoupage techniques; at least ten different mediums and a heck of a lot of demo planning, cups of tea and drying time. Oh by the way, the art journal is for the next shows on Thursday 16th June…
I hope you can join me online, on Sky 663, Freeview 39 or FreeSat 817 or even catch-up up to a week after: Friday 3rd June: 11am, 1pm, 5pm.
As promised in my previous post, I used spray inks and copious amounts of water on my test journals. I’m delighted to say that all three passed with flying colours. I wanted to check that the paper didn’t become saturated, there was minimal bleed through of colour to the reverse of the page, and that generally the journals behaved themselves when wet. Here are the results, the journals I used and any notes I made:
Frisk layflat Sketch Pad
This is an absolutely perfect journal – it is 300gsm, pretty much A5 in size, with a laminated cover and 20 pages. The pages really do lay absolutely flat with no gutter in the middle fold – it looks like Frisk have managed to fuse flat sheets of cartridge paper together to make the pages. There was no more buckle than I would expect from wetting any paper and no bleed through. A cracking journal!
Frisk Sketch Book
This is a 140gsm, 40 page, A5 landscape format journal with staple binding. It has a laminated black cover, though kraft covers are available as are other sizes. The pages are definitely a lighter weight than the layflat sketch pad, but are no less flimsy when wet. Again, no bleed through to the back of the page. An excellent everyday journal.
Hahnemuhle Travel Booklets
I used the small A6 size which makes for a dinky journal, but handy for very quick pages, or journaling on the go. At 140gsm with 20 pages, the twin pack of booklets features stitched binding. The paper was a little more absorbent, with the wet ink soaking in to the page faster than the other two. Even so, there was no bleed through the page and thus it passed the test. It also comes in various sizes.
As a result of my tests, I was happy to recommend all of them to Hochanda buyers in preparation for my art journaling shows on 16th June 🙂
One side effect of being the probably the first art journaling demonstrator on a UK craft TV channel is that I need to help source journals suitable for sale during the shows. This lunchtime I had unexpected happy post containing four journals for me to test. The timing’s a bit awkward – first thing this morning a delivery arrived with all the products I have to make samples with for my first show a week tomorrow… So for pure expediency, I set up a journal test bench this evening and worked my way down the three journals with the same page layout. The fourth? That one is A3 in size, and far too big to do anything in the timescale!
These pages were an exercise in complementary colours. Using the Distress palette, I chose a colour and then the closest colour to its inverse – a different way to find a complementary colour than using a colour wheel. Above, Stormy Sky meets Gathered Twigs, whilst below, Crushed Olive zings against Shaded Lilac and Dusty Concord. Oh yes, one more thing – buckled pages do not make an easy surface to be stamping paint onto…
I’ve done faux leather, faux weathered wood and faux brass – here’s a fresh-from-the-desk journal page featuring a faux galvanised steel paint effect with faux rust. The sentiment is apparently a Turkish proverb. Is it immodest to say I’ve surprised myself again with another successful experiment? Next time though, I’ll not leave the studs until last, which somewhat annoyingly overlapped the end of ‘unlock’ – tI added the wording whilst I was waiting for the image transfer to dry, and I needed the image transfer uncovered to get the perspective right for the door studs.