Tag Archives: DecoArt

Art Journal Page: Eat Dessert

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Eat Dessert

Today’s page marks a landmark in my art journaling – it’s the final spread in my very first complete journal. I have at least four journals on the go at any time, but this is the first to be filled since I started journaling back in 2011. I wanted to play with different layers, working on making the text stand out and the background to support, but not over power it. Choosing media by its opacity helped me achieve this outcome: transparent Cobalt Blue Hue allowed some of the paper white to show through the underpainting, whilst the semi-transparent Phthalo Blue provided the background to the text, printed in opaque white gesso. Spritzing with the mister and adding visual texture with stamps brought everything together.

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Art Journal Page: Easter Roses

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Like Christmas, Easter has a real meaning to me that far surpasses chocolate eggs and fluffy bunnies. I started this page without really knowing where it would end up. I had a wonderful magazine photo of roses which I really wanted to use, so in that went. After colouring the facing page and adding a gesso vignette, I searched online for a longer piece of text than a trite quote extolling the ‘romance’ of the flower.

I stumbled on this poem, which I’ve not come across before, by George Eliot. Nothing trite or romantic here as she explores the colour, thorns and fragrance in a stunning metaphor so in keeping with the true Easter story:

I went to gather roses and twine them in a ring,
For I would make a posy, a posy for the King.

I got an hundred roses, the loveliest there be,
From the white rose vine and the pink rose bush and from the red rose tree.

But when I took my posy and laid it at His feet
I found He had His roses a million times more sweet.

There was a scarlet blossom upon each foot and hand,
And a great pink rose bloomed from His side for the healing of the land.

Now of this fair and awful King there is this marvel told,
That He wears a crown of linked thorns instead of one of gold.

Where there are thorns are roses, and I saw a line of red,
A little wreath of roses around His radiant head.

A red rose is His Sacred Heart, a white rose is His face,
And His breath has turned the barren world to a rich and flowery place.

He is the Rose of Sharon, His gardener am I,
And I shall drink His fragrance in Heaven when I die.

 

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Art Journal Page: Nature

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Nature

In between planting out onion sets, garlic and shallots at the allotment, teaching scrapbook layouts, supervising a learner crocheting and making tea for the landscape gardeners, I slipped in an art journal page! It just goes to show that if you aim to do a page a day – you can. Just! I wanted to try my inverse silhouette technique with something other than black ink, and I think it worked really well 🙂

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Art Journal Page: The Old Apothecary [Pick A Stick Challenge]

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I have taken a couple of hours this morning to tackle this month’s Pick A Stick Challenge: ten journal techniques are pulled at random and have to be completed in order of the draw. This layout wasn’t planned at the outset, and developed a theme as I went, featuring my Old Apothecary assemblage. I’ve crammed in several different techniques, including stamps I’ve carved based on my own tangle patterns. I also remembered to film a time lapse video of the process.

 

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Art Journal Page: Zen

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Well this layout has taken pretty much all day, aside from occasional breaks to make tea for the landscape gardeners laying my greenhouse base. I had this background waiting for something over the top – in fact since I printed it using this technique in 2011. I’d also blended a thin layer of Dylusions Paint over the top to help seal it. A new set of alphabet stencils also arrived yesterday afternoon, so that’s where the zen started, continued with the hand-drawn flowers (following some of the examples in the FloraBunda book), and then coloured with glazes.

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Art Journal Page: Aging

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I wanted to get some practice with some crackle medium, so I got out the DecoArt Americana Weathered Wood and applied it over a black gesso ground. Once that had dried, I added acrylic paint and gesso over the top, dry brushing one into another. Once the cracking had finished, I blended the colours a little more using some of the pink on a wet wipe and moving it up into the white. I dried that and then sealed the crackle with DecoArt Ultra Matte Varnish. Then out came the Pitt Artist Pens for the knots, board joins and the text, all of which were sanded back slightly to age. The quote, by the way, was chosen once I’d done the cracked paint – I thought it was quite apt 🙂

 

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Art Journal Page: The Course of Civilisation

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More art journaling! This layout started out with a pale watercolour effect, which I suspect (though don’t remember) is actually bleed through from spray inks I’d used on either side. I decided to keep it as it was, so to stabilise it, I did a quick layer of DecoArt Media Matte Medium to seal it. Over the top went some napkin decoupage to maintain the water colour effect, added and sealed with the same matte medium. A bit of Distress Ink around the sides to tone down the edges, and then I drew the text on with ProMarkers. This seemed a good idea at the time, as I could colour match the ink to the roses – but of course acrylic based paints/mediums break down with alcohol. I solved the nib clogging issue as a result of this by running it out on scrap paper between words, and going over each letter twice to get the colour. Next time I’m going to try out my Pitt pens instead. I sealed everything with some DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish, being careful to not over-brush where the distress ink was added.

I’d like to have planned the text justification a little more –  but then that’s what art journals are for: to experiment in, and learn from the experimentation.

 

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Art Journal Page: An Open Book [Wanderlust 2016]

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There’s various things keeping me from my ‘me time’ in the studio, and consequently, I’m playing catch up with the Wanderlust 2016 course. The fourth prompt for our dedicated art journal is ‘the bravest moment of my life…’. The theme for the layout came fairly quickly, and the page came together just as I’d hoped – it’s the first time I have done word decoupage in a layout. In fact it took longer to retrieve accidentally deleted movie files from my iPad than it did to create the layout! Happily, with those undeleted, I’ve been able to piece together another of my time lapse videos:

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Art Journal Page: Take Time To Smell The Roses [Wanderlust]

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Take Time To Smell The Roses

In the Wanderlust class this week, we were introduced to still life painting. The lesson was done on a canvas, and the artist was seriously unimpressed with those who included words in their painting, preferring the image to do all the work. Well, you know what they say – you have to know the rules to be able to break them. So I did. Here’s my homage to still life painting, done in my art journal, and complete with words. Enjoy.

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Art Journal Page: Impossible

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EmbossResist

For February’s Art Journal Session, we’ll be playing with emboss resist. It’s one of those techniques that is counter-intuitive, but is just planning layers to build up the effect using the embossing powder as the mask. I have to admit the way the text developed and fitted on the page was complete chance – but I like the way it isn’t obvious what the text is at first glance, reinforcing the sense of the quote.

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