Next month’s art journal session (spaces are available) puts to use the small clear mini stamps that are available on the front of Craft Stamper magazine. Over the months I have collected a fair number of them, and the challenge is to use them in an art journal spread.
It’s not often that I deliberately go into a cut-price bookstore with the sole intention of buying several copies of ‘My Little Pony’ children’s books. Well, this happened sometime in late winter, with the intention that I would be using them in a class. On Monday 1st October, attendees at my art journal session will be using the board books as a base for an art journal, included at no extra fee. Unfortunately, it does mean that my little ponies will be painted out. What a shame.
It seems that for the last few days my corner of blog land has been out of service due to a duff plugin. Apologies! Here’s another art journal spread to make up for the absence (not that anyone noticed and let me know!). I experimented with collaging papers for the background and unifying the whole layout with a blanket stencil design. Masking off the area intended for the stamp and covering with gesso helped take the busyness away behind the ‘mum. It’s the first outing for my new Dusty Concord Distress Oxide ink pad. I’m not sure if it’s all a bit much, but experimentation is the name of the game in my journal.
Continue reading It’s my monthly art journal session on Monday evening, and this month’s theme is ‘Spring Spraying’. Spray inks, stains and paints are always a fun, and fast, way of making a background. Occasionally, the spray reaches the page… Using stencils and then embellishing with other media, such as white pigment pens, finish the page off nicely.
Speaking of finishing a page… There are some who ask, ‘when do you know a page is finished?’. Here’s an example. The first pic shows where I originally finished the page. It was only when I was editing the photo for posting that I decided I hadn’t finished after all. The second pic shows where I left it after a little more work:
Continue reading At next month’s art journal session*, we’ll be having a Tim Holtz Stampfest. I have a fair collection of his stamps and, as with most crafters, some haven’t been used yet. I thought it would be a great theme to work with, and lots of possibilities open up as we mix in the Distress line of products.
* The session on Mon 5th is fully booked, but if you would still like to take part, it will be repeated at the following Wednesday’s afternoon group.
Continue reading Last Monday was my regular art journal session at The Studio. We took the theme ‘baby, it’s cold outside’. Coincidentally, it was one of the coldest evenings of the autumn too. The theme called for cool colours, shimmer and sparkle to evoke frost rime on windows and icy surfaces:
I started with layers of gesso, creating ridged fans/feathering by jittering the edge of a palette knife to make the texture. Sprinkle a little Ultramarine Color Burst. Add more layers of gesso and then iridescent medium. Stamp with archival inks before adding the quote. Smear some Stardust stickles over the page and set aside to dry. I think the quote source is fairly obvious and just fits the theme perfectly!
It’s always great to know where things are in your craft space, which requires organisation. It’s even more important in a teaching studio to be able to tell at a glance if anything is missing and for studio guests to know where to put things back. As part of the Creative Chemistry course, Tim Holtz made available inserts for his mini-distress ink pads to fit the storage tins. I’ve just looked for similar for the mini-archival ink tins, and couldn’t find one. So I made some:
I know I haven’t done the Pick A Stick Challenge for a little while but didn’t realise quite how long ago it was… 2015! I’ve decided to try and do at least one ‘me-project’ each month, and this month was the Pick A Stick art journal challenge. For those that have forgotten the format, ten sticks are chosen at random, each with an instruction as to what to put in or a technique to use. The challenge Facebook group can be found here.
The page ended up darker in tone and emotion that I normally do – the quote was inspired by the raven stencil I used. There are many different things that I would call from the poem, but this is perhaps the darkest. As I was writing it onto the page all I could think of was my road with depression, my ‘black dog’.
On Monday evening, it’s the monthly art journal session at The Studio. The theme for the session is ‘faux patchwork’, and here’s my sample. Quilting meets paper craft and art journaling.
Just so you know, there is no fabric, padding or indeed cotton/thread on this page. Everything you see is flat and stuck onto the page.
Continue reading
This Monday, the art journal session at The Studio has the theme ‘perfect palettes’. For this journal prompt, I picked a colour chart from the ever fabulous design-seeds.com and did my best to match the palette. Of course, this was a little harder when printing out the image – the printer colours aren’t a good reproduction.
And here’s the resulting page (and don’t forget that the colours changed again when I scanned it in…). So the palette isn’t exact, but, as with all journal prompts, it’s what sparks the rest of the page. I also chose the theme to help those who struggle to know what colours might work together.
