Life Outside the Fishbowl

Art Journaling

I got to spend some dedicated time yesterday working on art journal pages. It's hard for me to say something is done, I end up going back and adding things, making changes.

Here's where several pages stand after Monday. You can see their beginnings two weeks ago down near the bottom of the post.

This page started as a way to try out a new stamp set and Distress Markers. I then put a light coat of gesso over the page and added some text image transfers. Next came the outline of the woman, which I used as a mask for some Dylusions spray ink. I've added Pitt Big Brush pens, Neocrayons and a bit of paint to that. And then I found this pack of Cosmo Cricket rub-ons sitting in the drawer and added a phrase. Is it finished? Who knows....

But this one's also changed. It started as random bits of scrap paper on the page. I was thinking that the scraps kinda looked like flowers. Then a coat of yellow, which I really didn't like. So....

more paint, including some Golden airbrush paint. I love the way it drips. And a stamped word that I was going to use on a card. More paint - this time black puff paint. And I set it aside to dry while I thought about what else I wanted to do to the page.

And after that photo was taken I had an idea... grabbed a pen to add some journaling and a white opal Liquid Pearl bottle....

And, finally, a page made with inspriation from Nathalie Kalbach's Uber-Media online class. I started kinda following her directions and then took it in my own direction. I did start with blue paint and use clouds. I didn't use traditional colors for the clouds, and they ended up looking ominous.

I dripped some Lumiere pearl white paint. Silver lining, right? And grabbed that pack of Cosmo Cricket rub ons again - the phrase "get happy" seemed to really fit the mood of the page. Fun! I like the drippy clouds and the text.

Art of Wild Abandonment -- a Blog Hop!

Stop back tomorrow for a blog hop - we've got over 50 participants!

In the meantime, here's a recent art journal page that I finished since it was posted on Monday. The journaling is a rant on the ridiculous cost of movies - and the snack bar. Nowadays you almost have to take out a home equity loan to take your family to see a film.

 

Work In Progress Monday

What's going on?  I'm supposed to be working with this, our May DT kit for ScrapbooksPlus. It's Basic Grey's Plumeria line.

However, this afternoon I've been dealing with this ....

Is it weird that my second or third thought was "hey, that's a really cool pattern and I wonder if I can print that...?"

So while I wait until I can pick up a new phone in the morning, I'll share what I've been working on for Scrapscene's Work in Progess Monday. This weekend it was art journal backgrounds.

I added a tranparency in the middle of this one. My thought was to put scraps of paper with thoughts, quotes or something on them. However, I like the way the background looks too much to cover it up! Maybe an image transfer over the transparency....

And I thought I was finished with this next one, but that circle garland from Little Yellow Bicycle decided it needed a home on this page. I cut off a piece and glued it with matte medium. I'll go over it with some paint & stuff. Right now the colors of the garland don't work with the rest of the page. But I love the circles!

And some backgrounds I've started:

On the left, I stamped the page with a Dylusions stamp the tried out the Tim Holtz Distress Markers. Then lightly gessoed the page and added an image transfer from newspaper. I love the look of the text in the background.

Next from 21 Secrets ... a mandala from Dion Dior's class. I didn't have the Twinkling H20s at the time but I did have some irridescant watercolors that I got at Red Lead Paperworks. I used Neocrayons, the watercolors and some Lumiere paint on the mandala. It's about ready for journaling or whatever. In the meantime, I signed up for her Mastering Twinks class and my set of watercolors arrived.... but I can't play with them until later this week.

Finally, the last page I started this morning with some scraps of paper I'd been staring at. I ripped them into small pieces, applied matte medium all over the page then started placing the pieces randomly (at first). It began to look more like flowers to me. Next up will be paint and ink.

Work In Progress Monday

Here's what I've got for Scrapscene's Work in Progress Monday.

This weekend I worked on backgrounds in my art journal. I'm slowly working my way through some of the 21 Secrets workshops and trying out new things here and there. Rachel and I did some "art classes" together and she basically has raided my supplies.... sigh...  where can I hide the Goldens?? Oh, and the heat gun, too. She loves using the heat gun.

So.... these three pages started life as something else. Two of them I use to blot ink off of stencils. Once I tried out a new stencil and the more I added the less I liked it. I started off adding paint and ink to the background and just went with the flow. At the same time Rachel was playing with paints as well, making her own page. A lot of the paint & ink I used on these was just trying to use up leftovers from her.  And some newspaper for image transfers. Love how text looks on the page.

On the bottom page I adhered pieces of newspaper I pulled off of a canvas panel. I did image transfers onto the panel and instead of throwing the pieces away decided to stick them on a page - something I'm definitely going to do again!

So this is what I've got. I also have parts of several scrapbook layouts lying around waiting to be finished... but no pics...

What did you do this weekend?

An Unruly Art Journal Page

There's a new emag that debuted this month, Unruly Paper Arts, dedicated to both mixed media and papercrafting. They are releasing articles periodically throughout the month on their blog. My friend Karen Bearse has an article coming up on the 25th. And they have a corresponding Facebook page and yahoo group....

So I decided to do a bit of art journaling this afternoon and finish a page I started at Karen's a while back.... playing with her Dylusions stamps (until I bought my own set!).

It just so happened that inspiration came from an Unruly reader challenge - using ink and sponges to create a background. And everything clicked from there. In addition to Distress Inks I added: some crumpled and ripped book pages, Colorbox pigment ink sponged thorugh punchinella, some paint via bubble wrap, Cosmo Cricket stickers, Jenni Bowlin tag, Gelli Roll pen with a Crafter's Workshop stencil, and some light journaling with a gold Gelli Roll pen (you don't see if if you're not looking for it!).

 

Meanwhile, Rachel's decided that I'm her new art teacher, and that we're having art class in the next five minutes. Luckily she left the curriculum up to me - I'm going to try and stay away from more paining this afternoon, suggesting we add more things to the tags & papers we made last night.

 

Work In Progress Monday

So I finally managed to get a couple of photos early today of what I've been working on and get it posted for Scrapscene's Work in Progress Monday. These are all half-finished projects at this point.

Tag backgrounds --

Using some leftover Dylusions spray to create backgrounds. I had enough for three tags. After the spray was dry I added: some Distress Ink; an image transfer from a magazine page; paint with punchinella and bubble wrap; and Dylusions stamp with archival ink.

Art Journal Page --

This page started as a way to use up extra matte medium from the canvases below. I grabbed some scraps I didn't use on the canvas, added some book pages lying around and kept going. I didn't think, I just did. And I love how it's coming along.

Canvas Backgrounds -

I had two partially finished canvases laying around. I think I last worked on them around January. I just wasn't satisfied with how they were turning out. I found a this blog and knew what I wanted to do with them. I added more collaged paper on top of what I had and transparent paint (mostly around the edges).  I think I'm going to try an image transfer on top of these and see what happens.

The top canvas started as a base of sewing pattens with a few other small pieces of neutral paper. I did a bit of stenciling on top and then lost steam. The bottom canvas wasn't change that much - only three pieces of paper were added, plus a magazine image transfer to add some type (and it seems I have a bit more paper to rub off...) but it's made a world of difference.

What I've Been Up To....

The kids are out of school this week for spring break. So far we've seen a movie, got our nails done and went for ice cream.  Oh, and in the process I managed to buy a new arm chair for the living room. Which will arrive in 10 - 14 weeks. Sigh...

I started my pastel painting class this morning. My first big realization was that this is going to be messy. Very messy. Just opening the box of pastels left my hands all black, blue, red and brown before I had even touched a pastel! And it's going to be quite challenging for me - definitely pulling me out of my comfort zone.

Speaking of art, I finally had a chance to get a picture of a few art journal pages. This first one was from Christy Tomlinson's Art of Wild Abandonment. I decided to go ahead and do a page in the style of the class, even though it's not my style at all.

I wanted to try a few things on the background. There's a light coating of gesso over the book pages. I then used Neocrayons and Golden's irredescant pearl fluid acrylic paint. The clouds were made with a Crafter's Workshop stencil. I started with Tim Holtz's new Distress Markers and later added both Neocrayons and Inktense watercolor pencils on top.

The next one is more my style. It's still in progress, but I thought I'd share as I go. I had been wanting to try out this new stencil, part of Christy Tomlinson's new line. And it was inspired by Christy's class in 21 Secrets. I painted the background with Claudine Hellmuth's Studio paints. These can be pretty translucent and I wanted to test how they'd work on my gessoed pages.

I pulled out a random Golden fluid acrylic color and mixed it with light modeling paste. After letting it dry over night I added more paint, spraying it at the top to let it drip down the page.

And, back to shopping .... as I was looking through Arhaus trying to make sure the kids didn't break anything I found some cool things (besides the chair). They have these old batik stamps and metal print blocks. Today when I went back to return some fabric samples I had a chance to really look through them. And brought five home with me....

I can't wait to try them out. I've got plans for these babies.  Probably while I'm listening to Gotye... or watching the Glee video ... again....

 

21 Secrets

starts today! And it's not too late to sign up.

Really excited about this class. I'm still trying to figure out what to do first :)

 

Decorating the Cover

So I decided my craft area needed a bit of cleaning up today. It's amazing what you find when you start looking around!

One of the things I rediscovered were some unfinished wooden swirly frames I got on clearance at Michaels. I had thought about using them for stencils, but decided cutting them into pieces would be more fun. However - don't try this using a craft knife. I broke the blade off and it flew across the room!

To decorate the frame, I treated it first with ScraPerfect's Perfect Crafting Pouch so I'd be sure to get a crisp image. Then I stamped with archival ink all over, followed by a bit of Hero Arts Shadow Ink.

Next, I grabbed a bottle of Mica Gloss I'd been itching to open and applied that around the book and frame. I used my black Permaball pen to write all over the cover. Next, I adhered a scrap of paper and the frame using ScraPerfect's Best Glue Ever -- love this stuff!

And here's a quick photo using my phone .... sniff.... I miss my camera....

And typically, I couldn't leave things alone so after I took the photo I added a bit of classic teal Studio paint... and I may not stop there.

Recycled Art Journal

I decided to sign up for Christy Tomlinson/Junelle Jacobson's online class, Art of Wild Abandonment. While my style is nothing like theirs, it's been fun to try out a few ideas. I'm a more realistic sketcher and really don't like drawing cutsey stuff, so my projects are reflecting that.

But it's gotten me back into thumbnail sketches and really using my Neocolor crayons - which is something I needed a push to do. And feeling braver to try color on my drawings - something I don't feel very comfortable doing. Which is funny, since I'll be starting a pastel painting class is a couple of weeks....

Anyhow... a few sketches on a page...

 And I stopped by the library to check out their book sale books. For $2 I picked up a hardcover copy of Her Fearful Symmetry. It has some cool images and fonts throughout the book. I knew it's be perfect for a journal (and besides, I still have my paperback version in my bookcase).

And then proceeded to start ripping out pages. It was a bit scary at first, but then I really got into it.  A bit of gesso and drying time....

And I have another journal. But this will be fun, because I'm going to use a light coat of gesso on the pages first, so that the words will show through. And I'm thinking if I use Claudine Helmuth's paints I can still get the same effect, since they're a bit more translucent than other acrylics.

So, a start on the first page. I sketched some tulips I picked up over the weekend. Tulips have to be one of my favorite flowers. I started with a pencil outline, filled in with Neocrayons then used black pen on top. For the effects on the vase I rubbed a piece of punchinella that still had a bit of oil pastel left.

I'm still working on this page, and trying to decide if I want to add a background, or just leave it plain. Hopefully by the time I'm done Tom will be back from England with my Nikon. He just texted me a photo of Big Ben ... of which I'm insanely jealous.

Which reminds me - it's time to do a bit of art shopping. I've got an art journal book on hold at Barnes & Noble and a Plaza Arts coupon just waiting to be used since Lynn was kind enough to send me the supply list for the pastel class.