Shine

This page came about as part of the Well Spring 2019 course I did over at Mixed Up Creative. The exercise involved using a self photo but I didn't have anything to hand so went for a pencil drawn face instead. The background was sponge stencilled, the dolls dress is a gelli print and her hair was circles of text with finger painted flowers over. I really enjoyed making this one.

Until next time
Cxx

Happy Birthday Sister

This was the birthday card I made recently for my husband's baby sister. A mix of textured card and die cutting resulted in this simple but effective card.

I couldn't get the circle to sit exactly right so I chopped it in half and budged the two halves over a bit until I was happy. I utilised the small pop outs from the die cut as my "buttons" on the edge of the sentiment panel... nothing needs to go to waste if it can be put to creative use.

Until next time
Cxx

Taking my own advice

Whenever I talk to people about art journalling, or if we are art journalling in a workshop, people will often say that they "aren't artistic"... or they are sure they "couldn't do it"...or they are worried about "making mess of it"... and I always say its just paper and if it does go horribly wrong and you can't save it then you can always gesso over the whole thing and start again.... and this week I opened what I thought was a fresh blank journal to find the most ugly test page in the whole universe... it was truly horrible and beyond saving.
 I think I may have just been testing products rather than trying to build a page, but what was there was totally unworkable. Of course I could have simply pulled the page and started with my fresh new journal, but then I thought of my own advice and decided to follow it.

Out came the gesso and I used a liberal layer to cover what was beneath. I had previously applied  colour using a spray and  the wet gesso reignited the colour and I was left with pinkish and yellow tones in my gesso, but that was fine because the gesso muted them from their former vibrant shades and I knew I was going to do a real cover up job anyway.

I added lots of different torn strips of papers...everything from scraps of patterned paper left over from projects, left over gelli prints, scraps form magazines and old book pages and once they were dry I lightly added some white gesso over the top with a palette knife, paying particular attention to the edges and lightly going over the centre to highlight the texture.

Next I  added some random stamping before adding some modelling paste through a home made circle stencil. Once this was dry I added colour to the circles and then added additional finger painted circles in a different colour. After that is was a little more gesso and some doodling...and finally the word Dream was added and I "called it done."

I love this page now... and thee is no trace of the ugly thing that lies beneath. I am so glad I took my own advice.

Until next time
Cxx

Magical - an AJP

This was something that came about from a challenge prompt from the lovely Marta Lapkowska.

It had to include a door, a wall, some brickwork, some handwriting and something upside down. 

This was a very wet and messy project but I really enjoyed the process. I used ordinary poly-filler through a stencil for this. It gave the depth and feel or real brick and was super cheap because I bought my tub of filler from the pound shop (why not?)

Once the poly-filler had dried - I zapped it quickly with the heat gun to dry the surface and set it aside overnight to be sure it was fully dry  because I planned to use a lot of wet medium and did not want to end up with a soggy mess.

I used DAS air dry paper based clay to make the door and windows and the toadstools and I also zapped them with the heat gun and left them overnight to dry out (actually they dried over two days while I worked on the other stages)

On the opposite page I used a  fairly thick layer of gesso applied with a palette knife and then  randomly added a mix of crackle paint and crackle paste with the palette knife and that also had overnight to dry.

On day two I began to add the layers of paint washes to build up the layers and depth of colour to add detail to the wall and the brickwork. Messy and repetitive but I kept going until I was happy with the result... I gave the same paint and wash treatment to the clay elements and left everything to dry thoroughly before adding it to the pages.

The hedgehogs and flowers were stamped, coloured and fussy cut before being adhered with gel medium. I really like this page, even if it is heavy and bulky in my journal.

Until next time
Cxx