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.
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.
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…
Avid readers may remember a week or so ago I made a couple of handmade journals. I’ve taken this one further, and created a ‘colour journal’. With an unashamed plug for all things DecoArt Media, I have used my own photos of their products as a page background, before adding glazes of colour fluid acrylics using various techniques including ragging, baby wipes, brushes and paper towel. Headings used the same colour, just undiluted. Add gesso, pen work and a smidge of gloss and the book is complete.
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.
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.
In the first Wanderlust class of the year, we were prompted to use just one word on our pages – and yesterday, I was so tired. Poor sleep, recovering from a cold and a wet grey day all got poured into this art journal spread. Building on the learning gleaned from the first pick a stick challenge, I layered and layered, and am actually rather pleased with the result, as grey and drab as it is!
It’s the first time I’m working in a spiral bound art journal – this one is a Daler-Rowney Cachet Artist’s Mixed Media, A5 sized, 30 page, 250g/m2. The paper is wonderful to work on, didn’t buckle under the wet media or bend with dry acrylic and basically took everything I threw at it. There’s just one issue – the spiral bound spine: those pesky wires. I’m sticking with the book for the Wanderlust classes, but will be looking for stitch bound journals in the future.
For next Monday’s art journaling session at The Studio, we’ll be playing with gesso. This is one of my sample pages, using both ‘normal’ gesso and the Finnabair Art Basics heavy body gesso to get some texture, as well as faded colour onto my pages. There’s also some never-been-used action here, with the IndigoBlu ‘Beautiful Mind’ stamps and the Stampendous ‘Marks’ stamps by Nathalie Kalbach. The lettering is freehand, first painted with the gesso, tidied and augmented with broad Signo white pigment pen and then outlined in Sakura Jelly Roll Gloss Black.
If you’d like to join one of my Art Journaling Sessions at The Studio, details are here. You can also get details of the sessions using the link on the sidebar or under the Workshops tab at the top of the page.
Now that I’ve finished my latest quilt, it’s back to sample making showing off the Carabelle Studio stamps I will be playing with demonstrating at Daisy’s Jewels and Crafts on Saturday 11th April (10am – 4pm). Featured today are ‘Envolée de Papillons’, ‘Background Papillons’, ‘Papillion Grunge’, Collage Texte et Négatif’ and the XXL size ‘Négatif et Papillons’.
The page features lots and lots of layers of distress inks, acrylics, scraped gesso, and Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks, as well as Tim Holtz life quotes and tissue tape.