Art Journaling Class I am Taking

Hello Friends! I am in the process of taking an Art journaling class from Christine Urias on her blog;
Scrap Time;"More than just Scrapbooking"  and it is called "Exploring Art Journaling 3".  It is a 30 day class, each one concentrating on different media used for backgrounds and pages, with a different journaling prompt each day.

It is very interesting, and is helping me use many of the products I already have in my studio, to make amazing pages. I am posting a few of the ones I have completed so far in the class.

Some of them are two page spreads, and other's are just a one page spread.  I am doing them in my small journal from Dyan Revealy and Ranger.  If I really get into one specific technique or medium, I will do another page in my larger journal. The background for the Transportation page (above) is done in acrylic paints mixed with Gesso.

The background for the favorite TV shows page (left) is made with Lyra watercolor crayons.

And the background for the Daydreamer page (bottom) uses Stencils layered and then misted with Dylusions Sprays.

Most of my doodling and drawing is done with my Posca paint markers, and Dr. Ph Martin's Bombay India Inks.

I hope you enjoy seeing some of my Art Journal where I test out products and ideas, to see which I enjoy working with, and how they work together on a project. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave a comment or question below, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.  Have a Great Day!

Trick or Treat . . . . . . . . .

Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat! Why do I always hear this song in my head when I see someone in costume?  Halloween is just around the corner, and although I no longer dress in costume, I remember the days when I dressed in costume for work. I worked retail, and on Halloween we always dressed in costume to entertain the customers.  By the time I got home from work, and being on my feet in my costume all day, I usually changed into my jammies and went to bed, without handing out much candy. It seems the neighborhood I grew up in, grew up with me. So, in the later years there wasn't much action, except for the house across the street.  As the kids in that house grew up, the parents started putting up a large tent, and would be the waiting spot for parents while their kids were in the neighborhood trick-or-treating. They would serve coffee, hot chocolate, and cookies to the kids and parents, and would have music playing during the festivities.  Years later when the carloads of  kids would appear in our neighborhoods, their house was always the gathering place for frivolity and fun! If I had purchased candy to hand out, and no one visited our door, I would end up delivering it to "the tent" to add to their cauldron of goodies.

Now, the neighborhood I live in  has no children. I may buy a bag of candy that I like, "just in case someone stops by!" I usually don't open my door after dark anyway, you never know who is out there anymore.  So, Halloween is not that big a deal.  I do love the art of the holiday though!

In this card, I started with a Prima large tag, and stenciled black chevron stripes on it. I then added two cat die cuts, and an image from a vintage postcard.  The tag was trimmed to fit the A2 orange card base, and I then stamped "Trick or Treat" and a tiny star down the open side of the card.

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, and a spooky, kooky good time!

Where there is Love. . . . . .

Today's post is another page from my art journal. This page started out as a color book page I printed from my computer to practice coloring with my Copic Markers. I have saved all my "colorings" that I may use for card fronts or journal pages, or in mixed-media collages.

I started by covering the page in my journal with black gesso, so that the color book page background would match the background of my journal page. Using Gel Medium as an adhesive, I adhered the color book page to the center of the journal page.  Then using my Posca paint markers by Uni, I continued drawing freehand in the border around the color book page, trying to match up the colors and designs from the scrap book page. I continued to doodle around the page adding images from the coloring page until I had completely filled the margins.  To complete the page, I added some sparkle from a clear sparkle gel writer pen, and some dots from both my white Posca marker and white Signo Gel writer pen.

This is a very easy way to do a memorable page with a saying or quote that you love or want to keep. When printing from your computer, you can keep the art around it, or remove it and use your own art.
I hope you all have a wonderful and exciting  weekend. Be sure and visit again soon.

Art Journal - My Family Tree

Happy Friday, to all my bloggie friends!  To celebrate this weekend, I am posting my first double page spread from my art journal.  I had watched so many videos from YouTube on art journaling, that I was blinded by the thought of starting an art journal.  I wanted to, so badly, and even ordered one of the blank journals from my friends at Paper Wings Productions.  The problem was that I blankly stared at the blank pages weeks before I finally got the nerve to put some ink on the paper!  Once I sprayed the first splotch of color, my world opened up, and I work a little in it everyday!

I was afraid to start a page, and not know how to finish it. Now that I have realized you don't have to sit right down and complete a whole page at once, it has become a lot easier and not so frightening.  If you have several pages "in progress" at the same time, you can work on which ever one you feel like working on. AND, if you don't feel like working on one you have started, you CAN start another!

So, on this layout, I started by spritzing several colors of spray mists. I used  The Dylusion Mists by Ranger in the orange, yellow, and green. On the right hand page, I adhered a sheet of handmade mulberry paper to the page with Golden Soft Gel Matte medium. It was a green color, so I thought I would draw a tree shape, since I love nature so.  Well, I am not an artist, and my tree was a little lopsided.  I also had adhered a hand full of inchie squares that had a peacock feather "eye" around the tree's branches.   After looking at the arrangement for a few days, and not really liking what I had done, I took some white Gesso from Golden Products, and painted a layer of gesso over my tree!  1- 2 - 3- GONE!

I decided instead, to use Light Molding Paste from Golden, and a Family Tree Scrapbook Stencil I had, to stencil a tree right in the middle of both pages, making it a two-page spread. I scraped some of the gesso from the peacock feather "eyes", stamped some flowers at the base of the tree, coloring them with purple Lumiere paint, and stenciled the letters from the tree stencil "My Family Tree" across the bottom of the page.  I then wrote ". . is full of nuts" and knew this page was finally coming together. I added the Wheelie Girl stamped image from My Favorite Things below the tree, and wrote the names of a few of my relatives on the leaves of the tree; each branch representing a branch of the family. In the top left of the page, I added a die-cut that says, " the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, and added tiny white dots to the flowers with my picket fence white Distressed Marker.

It was finally to a point where I was somewhat pleased with how it turned out. I admitted to myself that I wanted this journal to be a learning and growing experience, and if I started out with a "Perfect Work" I wouldn't need to learn a thing.  Realization can be a very humbling experience!

I hope you have enjoyed travelling down this road with me, and have learned a lesson or two along the way!  If you don't jump in with both feet, you will never be able to learn or grow!  So have a great weekend, and go try something NEW whether it be a sport, or  craft, or dance, or wherever your interests lie. See you again soon.

Mindy