I recently took delivery of the latest Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous mini-stencils, along with a Crafter’s Workshop 6×6″ stencil. Along with those came some DecoArt Americana acrylic paints. I decided that I would have a play since I haven’t done much art journaling during COVID lockdown. The text was an image transfer, put together in Adobe Illustrator before printing in reverse ready for sticking down. The woman’s head mask is by That’s Crafty!.
Well, it’s a strange world at the moment. I’m not in self-isolation, but I, like many other self-employed freelance workers, am finding things a wee bit quiet at the moment. So, I’ve been flicking through some art journaling magazines and came across a course I thought looked great. It’s ‘Digital Art Journaling’ from Jessica Sprague and despite it being published a couple of years ago, is still available. Here is a flick through of the finished journal and after, a quick review which I hope you find useful.
I’m on a roll! Today’s make is an art journal page featuring the new First Edition Deco Maché decoupage paper in the Modern Marks design. I decided to augment the marks and colour matched the marks to Distress Paint colours (listed below). The paper behaved itself today – I used less of the glue and the wrinkles were kept to a minimum as a result. It’s certainly a lot harder to work with a sheet rather than pieces, so bear this in mind. Time-lapse video below.
Next week’s Art Journal Session has the theme ‘butterflies’. I’ve three new pages to share, but there are several in my past library that you can find using the search facility.
I have a penchant for sugar-free mints, especially when they are on show at the till in an Aldi. Their ‘complimints’ come in a small lidded tin, and I have often thought how suited to altered art it would be. So, this weekend I got on with altering one, upcycling it to enclose two mini-albums.
Tonight’s art journal session features Brusho colour crystals. Last time I had the Brushos out, some of the highly concentrated watercolour crystals fell into my stack of distress inks. Inappropriate streaks of colour appeared in carefully blended ink for months and months, despite fastidious wiping down of every single ink pad. This time I’m wiser, and the inks have a full cover over them!
July’s theme for my art journaling session (spaces are available) is ‘black and white’. This is my example art journal page… I photocopied a magazine page and used it for an image transfer on the left side with an inked vignette effect using blended archival ink. The text is stamped in white picket fence distress ink using with the ‘colour’ cut from the original magazine page. There’s not much contrast between the coloured word and the black – I’m still not sure what to do about that as I’m not keen on outlining it and distracting from the colour itself.
Here are five more Bible journaling illustrations, complete with a free downloadable outline. I’ve been getting in some practice with watercolour pencils as my next Bible journaling session will be featuring them. Another version of watercolour is using studio safe solvents to move around the wax carrier for the Polychromos pencils, giving much the same effect (though waterproof of course). The solvent is less likely to swell the paper fibres compared to water and is my preferred technique, though the effect is less translucent than watercolour.
It’s time to share my submission to the February Pick-A-Stick Challenge #PASC0219. I’m working in my very first art journal started in 2011. There are lots of spreads where I was playing with backgrounds and which had never been ‘finished’.
For the unfamiliar, PASC stands for Pick-A-Stick Challenge. It has been a long while since I last participated in the challenge, and the format has changed slightly. The team now randomly draw words which it is left to us to interpret artistically. The only stipulation is that the order of the steps is followed. Everything else is artistic licence, and anything can happen before, during and after the steps to complete the page. There’s also a shorter ATC (Artist Trading Card) option. Here’s my January 2019 layout:
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