It’s a sketch challenge over at AAA Cards blog this week – use the supplied card outline to inspire your design with the optional theme of ‘thankful’. My card is possibly the quickest and simplest I have done for the design team and I’m wondering if it will be inspiring or not! Still, it keeps to the sketch and is clean and simple so it counts 🙂
Craft Label has released their Christmas goodies, and one part of the bumper crop is the Dovecraft Premium ‘Winter Wonderland’ collection. There’s premium paper pads, decoupage pad, clear stamps, embellishments, washi tape, ribbons and gift tags in a blue and silver colour scheme. I’ve used some of the elements to put together this 12×12″ scrapbook layout:
In tonight’s art journal session, we’re going to look at using large scale layouts. Though we will be working in our normal journals (mine is A4 spread), we’ll be using 12×12″ stencils and very large stamps to build our layers, only adding detail towards the end. This exercise is designed to encourage the breaking down of large patterns into manageable chunks… a lesson for life too!
As a follow up art piece to my ‘Dream’, I thought I would add another 3D word to my studio – this time, Create. The letters are again paper mâché, all undercoated with two layers of gesso and then decorated. I wanted this assemblage to reflect all the creative pursuits that take place in various forms in The Studio, both by me and my studio guests. Sculpture didn’t quite make it, but then I can always say the whole thing is sculpture 😉
It’s been a little while since I posted anything art journal related, what with one thing and another. One thing being completing the Creative Chemistry 103 course – definitely worth the investment. Another being design and installation of a new sand filter for the studio so that I don’t have to empty a stinking waster container prompted only by the stink as it overflows. It’s a simple enough idea – grey water goes into a tank of sand and gravel, filters out the large particulates and then drains out to my irrigation sump ready for watering the garden. No more overflows!
Another another was the creation of a water feature which is just outside the studio. I’d gone to look at the self-contained fountains/water features at our local garden centre, and somewhat astounded by the price tags was asked ‘surely you can do something yourself?’. So with a bit of thought, a quick shopping trip on Amazon, a tube of mastic, and some terracotta pots, a plan came together. Throw in a watering can previously belonging to my grandfather and a personal, upcycled, repurposed water feature now trickles away in counterpoint to the gushing waterfall that has just been installed in a neighbour’s garden.
But, back to the point! It was raining today, so I got to work in my art journal with the intention of putting together the next art journal session samples ready for September. The theme is ‘pockets, flips and flaps’…
I’m having a go at catching up with some of my art journal online challenges and classes I’ve been neglecting for a few weeks (actually probably months). I’ve caught up with the Wanderlust One Collage Challenge, but part of the deal with that is that I can’t show you it until the last stage at the end of the year. But I have been taking pictures of each stage, so it’ll be worth waiting for!
Then I moved onto May’s Pick A Stick Challenge – ten prompts drawn at random and completed in order. I pulled out the very first journal I started way back in 2011 and found a background to work on – oh how my art journaling has developed! Continue reading
So you have grand plans to start art journaling, and you’re wondering what your first step should be? It’s important to find a journal that will take all that you throw at it. It has to be able to take wet media without the pages getting flimsy or buckling. It has to be able to lie flat so that you can work in it. You don’t want pages easily detaching, nor a wire-o spine stopping you getting to the middle of the spread. Pages shouldn’t be too absorbent, or too smooth – or be able to take a layer of gesso if they are. Hardback or soft cover – well that’s down to personal preference. Here’s a couple of pages I’ve done this afternoon whilst testing a new journal. Above – Dylusions Paints. Below – Distress Sprays/Inks and pigment inks.
I was watching a film last night, and notice for the first time the motto above the roaring lion on the MGM titles: ‘ars gratia artis’ – art for art’s sake. What more apt saying could there be for an art journal page? This is part two of my bleeding tissue layouts – I stuck down the dried used up tissue strips using matte multi-medium over an acrylic paint background. I added more strips of Tim Holtz tissue wrap and tissue tape as well as some washi tape from Ikea. Finally, the text was printed using colour laser printer onto imitation rice paper to keep the tissue paper theme. The laser print has the benefit of not moving when using wet mediums over the top, unlike inkjet printed equivalents.
