Today Is a Good Day

There was another beautiful month of inspiration over at Lindy's Stamp Gang.  However a difficult one for me.  I have several Lindy's colors, but I guess I need a wider variety in my color options! I didn't have a green that would work well for this challenge, and I have no purple at all, so to get the colors I wanted I used a mixture of Yellow Rose of Texas and Hydrangea Blue the resulting green is so beautiful!

I didn't have a green that would work well for this challenge, and I have no purple at all, so to get the colors I wanted I used a mixture of Yellow Rose of Texas and Hydrangea Blue the resulting green is so beautiful!

Normally I just use texture paste and shading instead of three dimensional embellishments in my journals to keep the bulk down, in this case I used microbeads mixed with softgel and one of my favorite Finnabair stencils, but I loved the little bird cages with this page.

Since I don't have a purple in Lindy's I used alcohol ink which I then gesso'd over to tone it down a bit.  I really liked how the alcohol ink mixed with the gesso to give that really soft purple color.

While I can no longer fully close my art journal, I really love how this spread turned out.  

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Love is...

Hello dear friends!  I've been in a funk lately, but the amazing race challenge has gotten the juices flowing, and I was able to create a few new pages that I will share over the next week or so.

I have been watching a lot of Marta Lapkowska's videos lately, as well as Vicky Papaioannou, and while they have two completely different styles they both have so many amazing tips and are so inspiring.

I have been using lots of Lindy's and Faber Castell, and I love all the texture and looks that can be achieved.  Especially mixed with layers and stamping.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by!

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A trip to China

I have recently joined in Irreversible Moi's Amazing Race art journal challenge over on Facebook-and I have found it is a great way to stretch my creative legs.  There will be several stops long the way as well as a few detours thrown in.  We began our journey in China and while I always enjoy seeing Chinese art in museums, I never thought about using it for inspiration.

My first page I used some of my favorite symbols from Chinese art, Koi and cherry blossoms, I wanted to make it look a little more antiqued so I did a tinted gesso wash on the background.  And while I have discovered I need a lot of help with my kanji-I am very happy with the overall results

Our first detour also came in China, the detour was either draw a dragon and use it in an art journal spread, or try your hand at Chinese kanji.  Since I am lacking drawing skills I decided to try Kanji.
I covered the entire background of the page with kanji before turning right around and covering it up again, but some still shows through the edges.

Again, there are a few changes I could have made-the branch for my bottom bird disappeared into the background so he looks like he is just hanging out-and the phrase on the right should have been centered a bit more-but overall I had a great time creating this!

Please stop by and join us for the challenge-a lot of great ladies and beautiful art!  Next stop France!

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All is Bright

I have always loved the Lindy's Stamp Gang monthly color challenges, but for whatever reason I found that the month would just slip away from me before I could finish anything for the challenge.  But after seeing this month's colors I knew I had to find time for it.  It is just such a happy combination.  I have been waiting for a sunny day to come around to get the best photos, but unfortunately we haven't seen the sun here in the last 15 days and I'm running out of December to get these up.

I used Rudolph's Nose Red, Hydrangea Blue, Delphinium Turquoise and a moon glow starburst spray, Wild Honeysuckle from ages ago, it has one of the original labels on it.  

I used some of my favorite Christmas wash tapes to create a collage after spritzing my background, and a vellum tag for the title.  I just loved the subtlety of the snowflakes and how they added a little texture to the page.

Keep your fingers crossed we get some sunshine here so I can get a better photo..eww!

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Live Life Dancing Through the Rain

Last week we had the most amazing rainstorm here, and I just love being outside in the rain.  Well most rains.  This was the last rain of before temperatures dropped and we got our first 6 inches of snow.  It was so peaceful watching it rain from my studio window.  It also reminded me of a phrase I read on a piece of patterned paper from My Minds Eye, so with all that inspiration I pulled out my art journal and got started.

I realized while I was working on my background that I didn't have any mists that were the right shade of blue for the whole page so I used my gelatos and a baby wipe.  I did spray first using a darker blue but the baby wipe blended a lot of the drops with the gelatos.

The figure is a stenciled image done in black acrylic paint-I don't actually own this stencil, I borrowed it at a friends house and used it a few times on a piece of vellum.  I fussy cut this one out for my journal.  It was adhered down with softgel and then outlined using a white signo pen.  

I used homemade texture paste but before I removed the stencil I spritzed with Mister Huey's in Seafoam.  

I stamped with bubble wrap and gesso before splattering the whole page with watered down silver acrylic paint.  I pulled out my rusty cursive for the title and highlighted that with a glitter pen. 

The perfect rainy day project!     

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Crooked Beauty

Hi friends, can you believe how fast November is going already??  Yes I know it is only the 7th, but I got an email from my boss yesterday, thoughtful as ever...

Thanksgiving	20 days
Christmas Day	48 days
New Year Day	55 days

Talk about a slight panic attack!  I haven't even started Christmas gifts yet!  So naturally instead of buckling down last night and coming up with some clever gift ideas I had to retreat to my studio for some fun.  I was sick for most of this week so the only crafty thing I did was lounge on the couch and watch youtube videos.  Yesterday was the first day I felt somewhat normal again so I worked on another spread in my art journal.  

I had started the background at crafty day last weekend and didn't like where it was going, but last night it all kind of fell into place and I grew to love it.

This turned out to be a fun page to do, I had a chance to play with mica flakes and watercolors as well as some pigments to mixed with softgel.

I used a flocked Prima rub, just too bad it ended up going on crooked-that's what an art journal is for though.  

I loved these little birds but the chipboard was thicker than what I wanted in my journal, so I used a brush to dampen the back of them and peeled off one layer at a time until they were thin enough.

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In the fall

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall"~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm not one to spend much time reading magazines, but I was flipping through a copy of Glamour at the hospital last week and I came across this quote from F Scott Fitzgerald, and I fell in love with it.  There wasn't much that was able to take my mind off of where we were, so I spent time imagining how I would use this quote.  I tried envisioning on layouts, or maybe a card, but in the end I decided on a spread in my art journal. I have to admit I'm addicted!

The background was covered in distress stains in various colors and then misted with a combination of sprays, mainly Lindy's Stamp Gang.  

Before I created the background layer though, I adhered a few skeleton leaves down using mod podge and gave the whole substrate two coats of gesso.  I also stamped the text in black archival ink before colors were layered on.  I'm not a huge fan of how the stamping turned out, I think I'd have rather used torn pages from a book.  

I used a Dylusions mask and some homemade modeling paste to create the vines and then colored over them with Lindy's Magicals, Distress Markets and Luminart paints.  The skeleton leaves also had some layers of magicals and luminart added for some shimmer.

The leaf is a leftover from the wreath I made, I had a big empty spot and thought it might fill the space nicely.  Before I adhered the leaf down I stamped with a piece of craft foam that had been heated and pressed into a leaf embossing folder.  I stamped with distress ink and clear embossed it for texture.  Once the leaf was adhered down with soft gel I went around the edges with Inkagold in bronze.

Here is the full spread again, I just love how turned out, even with the stamping! 

Keep an eye out for two new journal pages coming up over the next week-until then thanks for stopping by!

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New toys!

As many may already know Tim Holtz recently announced his new spray inks that are making their way into stores now, and in true Tim fashion he had a giveaway, which was just a bonus-I was just thrilled that he had sprays coming out.  I love sprays and I love the distress line, which makes distress sprays an absolute must have for my collection.  Of course I had to leave a comment and test much luck, but more so express my excitement.  Imagine my surprise when I found my name on the list of winners!

A week later here comes a lovely package from Mario with four shinny new spray inks!  The packaging even had a little bonus inside.  

Love the tissue wrap and scattering of number tokens!  At this point it was all I could do to keep from tearing apart, but I wanted to keep the tissue paper for a future project.

A few of my absolute favorite colors, Tarnished Brass, Peacock Feathers, Crushed Olive and Rusty Hinge~Bless you Mario!!!

What better way to test them out than a new spread in my art journal, The new mists from Tim were used on the background, just playing with how they mix with water and react together, although I saved the Tarnished Brass to be used with a stencil.  

I love the shimmer from the metallics.  I decided to make this page about trying a few new products that have been sitting around my studio.  Mainly some new twinkling H2Os from Luminart.  I used some archival in to stamp my images and play with the new shimmers to color them in.  I also used some perfect pearls to add some dimension to the dandelions.  

I've had this stamp of this little girl in my stash for ages and haven't used it, but she fit so nicely in my garden.  I ended up stamping her on a different sheet of cardstock and fussy cutting her out. She was colored in using distress markers in Spun Sugar and Broken China.  I used  a water color brush to pick up color from my craft sheet and built up the layers to add some shading.  The wings were highlighted with Waterfall stickles and the whole image was outlined in black soot distress ink.  I give her a bit of pop I used a black gelato smudged around her.  I also went around the entire page with the same black gelato.

I just love my little garden scene, and was very exited to see experiment with the new spray inks.  Now I wont feel as bad when I order the rest of the colors available!  Thanks for looking!

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