Handmade Art Journals I

Posted on 22nd April 2016 by perfectly4med

Over the last two days I thought I’d construct my own art journals. I’ve adapted a slot-and-tab technique to make the inside pages from 160gsm white card. Each journal is A6 in size. The brown has a grungepaper cover with greyboard support behind, coloured with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Sprays and sealed with DecoArt Media Soft Touch Varnish. The grey has a wrap around cover in the same card, decorated with DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics and with a grungepaper and baker’s twine closure. Now all I have to do is fill them 🙂

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Art Journal Page: Pictures [Pick A Stick Challenge]

Posted on 15th April 2016 by perfectly4med

I’ve taken the opportunity today to complete this month’s Pick A Stick Challenge. Ten steps, in order, mixing up the media and adding collage elements. There are more and more taking part in the challenge, and it’s the perfect way to journal when the artistic muse has wandered off.

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Matchbook Art Journal: Life Experiences

Posted on 14th April 2016 by perfectly4med

Though I’ve not posted in a little while, as before, a quiet period online often hides a frenetic few days in the studio. Crafting took a small back step last week as a party loomed and the house had to be cleaned and beds prepared, and clobber hidden away from the seventy or so guests! This week I’ve been working on a couple of differently styled art journals, and this is the first to be ready to share.

Inspired by an article in this month’s Art Journaling magazine by Stampington, I’ve created my own matchbook journal (3×3″) with six pages. Unfortunately the supplier listed has discontinued the matchbook used in the article, so of course that didn’t deter me and I created and cut my own using my Silhouette Cameo. I’m going to add more quotes and cuttings as I find suitable ones, but you get the idea from the first page.

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A Graffiti Journal

Posted on 5th April 2016 by perfectly4med

I’ve been fascinated with ‘proper’ graffiti since a child – I love the colour, the vibrancy, the illegality of the hobby and the absolute control of the medium and the application. I’ve also owned a ‘how-to’ book for a number of years, well-thumbed but never used. That all changed when I made a journal from corrugated cardboard and once I’d started tearing off the surface layer, the idea developed to make faux rusty corrugated iron complete with requisite graffiti. I’ve tried different styles and colouring methods, starting with Sharpie pens, trying an image transfer, then Pitt Artist Pens. Then I had a sudden thought of how to replicate the aerosol can at this small scale – I got out my LetraJet air brush attachment for my Promarkers and thus smooth blends appeared. Lots of Posca pen use as well to finish things off.

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Altered Art: The Key to Creativity

Posted on 29th March 2016 by perfectly4med

One of my Tuesday night regulars, Hilary, brought amongst a whole stash of other things two sets of greyboard keys and fobs. ‘Can you think of anything you can do with these?’, she asked. This is what I came up and finished this morning.

The key is textured with sand texture paste, and then layered with fluid acrylics following Andy Skinner’s industrial paint recipe I learnt last year. The tag was sealed with black gesso. I cut a smaller oval and painted that gold, and two layers of black card were cut on the Silhouette Cameo and layered together before the top layer was dampened and hammered loudly and long to create the texture. Once everything was dry, it was all glued together and two coats of thick gloss spray varnish completed the look. I’m impressed with the triple thick glaze spray – it really helps the hammered card look more like a hammered metal enamel finish.

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Art Journal Page: Eat Dessert

Posted on 28th March 2016 by perfectly4med

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

Posted on 27th March 2016 by perfectly4med

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

Posted on 23rd March 2016 by perfectly4med

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]

Posted on 22nd March 2016 by perfectly4med

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

Posted on 19th March 2016 by perfectly4med

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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