Weekend fun

Here are some things I've been working on this weekend...

A cute little doodle tag. Lots of time for such a small piece, but it was very fun.

I planned on turning this canvas into a similar piece – doodles and dots and swirls...

but it's kind of calling me in a different direction. I'm going to sit with it some more and see where I decide to go with it.

This is a work in progress from my art journal. I glued a magazine ad to the page, covered it with gesso and then painted over it using my fat Pitt pens/brushes and some black ink. Not sure what else I'm going to do to it, but I really like how it looks. 

And here's something I've been working on for a little while. 

This is before I messed with the hair/circles area. I'm not happy with what I did, so I'm going to fix it, but I love love love how it looks here. The texture is from tissue paper. I LOVE what that does to the painting. I think it adds an incredible amount of interest. 

I hope you did something fun this weekend!

Art Journal - Doodling in Paint

Here's a page I finished up today. I created the background about two weeks ago and set it aside because I wasn't sure where to go with it. I really liked the way it looked but knew it wasn't finished. That's a tough place for me. It's my sticking place - afraid to "ruin" what I've done but knowing it needs to change.

So I reminded myself - There is nothing precious about this. You made it for fun, just keep going.

I flipped through Traci Bautista's fabulous book Doodles Unleashed to gather inspiration. It worked! I grabbed my white Sharpie paint pen and started doodling. I added more acrylic, covered up, made circles, added dots, and on...

I covered up much of the initial Sharpie doodling but wanted to bring that whimsical feel back, so I used the end of the paint brush to "draw" petals back onto the circle flowers. LOVE.

I added some journaling and called it done. I really liked the initial background, but by pushing through my sticking point and moving forward, I now love the page. Flora Bowley says (at least something similar to this) we have to let go of what we like to make room for what we love.

Art Journal Calendar – February

I follow a number of art blogs and thoroughly enjoy seeing what others are doing and getting inspired by them. One such is The Kathryn Wheel by Kate Crane. She's a wonderful mixed media artist and does a monthly art journal calendar which I thought was brilliant. One place to keep a year's worth of short notes for each day. I missed January, but got my act together for February. I forgot to take a "before" photo, but here is the completed month.

I'm using a leather bound journal I bought years (like 9 years) ago originally as a gift. It's a gorgeous handmade paper journal with a warm, deep brown leather cover and tie.



Then I remembered the intended recipient was vegan and realized a leather bound journal would probably not be the best idea. It's been sitting on my shelf, waiting for... I'm not sure what. I'm terrible about "saving" things for a special occasion or the "perfect" time, and decided that NOW was the perfect time. I mean, look at these delicious pages!




p.s. Here's a peak at March...

Quick Tip - How to keep lids from sticking

Here's a trick I came up with after battling one too many stuck lids.

Put a piece of wax paper between the lid and the bottle. The lid still screws on without problem and the wax paper keeps a barrier between the contents and the threads. No more sticking. Hooray!

Easy Art Journal Background – Use Your Table Paper!

Here's a really easy way to create an "instant" background in your art journal - if you use paper to protect your work surface, that is. If you use a fancy wipeable one, you're on your own. ;)

I love how my paper looks after it's been thoroughly used. I hate to throw away such deliciousness, so I cut away the good parts and keep them handy for future use. One of the quickest and easiest things to do is use them as your ready-to-go art journal background.



Slap it into your book with some gel medium under and on top and BAM! You're good to go.

I didn't add anything to this background, just used it as is and added more paint on top for the face and used a Sharpie paint pen (extra fine) for the journaling.

I love how it turned out. Try it some time. It's a great way to get a jump start on your art journal page.

Fun with Tags

So I bought some manilla tags the other day.



Some = 1,000. Yes, really. They were a great deal, I'd been wanting some for a long time, and I have Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket. So what the heck!



Back in late fall, I took advantage of a special Andrea Sher (of Superhero Journal) offered for her Mondo Beyondo e-course. I'd been eyeing it for at least a year, so when it went on "sale" I just had to sign up. For one of the exercises, I decided to put the new tags to use.

First thing I did was line them up since I figured I'd create a bunch at one time. I used Golden fluid acrylic paint, some cosmetic sponges, a few 12" x 12" stencils and went to town.



I used the sponges to apply the paint through the stencils. They work great and I can pick them up cheap at Dollar General. I also used them to distress the edges.



Quick and fun. Gotta love it.




Here are the two main stencils I used.


"Art Is" by Crafter's Workshop


Random Dots by Donna Downey

Paint colors used:
Golden Fluid Acrylic in Nickel Azo Gold, Phthalo Turquoise, Permanent Violet Dark, and Quinacridone Red.

Art Journal - Reverberate

I've decided to dedicate more time to my art journal. Have fun, explore ideas, mediums, products, techniques. So yesterday I had the start of an idea and went from there. I knew I wanted to punch circles out of various things and stitch them to paper. That's all I knew. The rest I just made up as I went along.

I pulled a page out of my "for art purposes" copy of Jane Eyre as my base, grabbed my stash of various paper pieces and rifled through them. I found more book paper, ledger paper, a map, a receipt, a ticket, a tea bag wrapper (yes, I saved a tea bag-it was still attached to the wrapper), and a wine label. I have a number of wine labels I've soaked off bottles intending to put them in a wine journal for future reference but never got around to it. I like the idea of using them in my art journal even better.

I used various stencils, homemade "spray paint", Donna Downey's hollyhock stamp, acrylic paint, various tubes to get the red circles, masking tape, a white Sharpie paint pen, black pen and drywall tape.

OH! And I FINALLY set up my sewing machine in my art room and added stitching. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and finally did. Yea, me!

I thought the circles looked like the were pulsing or echoing, and the word "reverberate" came to mind. Today, I went ahead and finished it up buy putting the page in my journal. I had a incredibly icky page that I covered up with more paint, and added the page. I was looking for my glue but saw the drywall tape and thought it might work, and I love it! I then added more stitching, zig zagging the book page directly into my journal.

I love the colors, repetition of the circles and the stitching. Very happy with this page!