Seasonal fun

Good afternoon my lovelies!  Fall has lasted so long here in Minnesota, and outside the window of my craft studio I'm seeing our beautiful little maple in all its fall splendor.  My husband even brought me a beautiful leaf he found.  What perfect inspiration for a new project!  I happened to find a pack of 5x7 canvas boards sitting on a shelf at the local craft store-that was all I needed to get going!  That and some Halloween fun...

Love these crazy ladies and their antics!

Over the next few hours I had a great time letting these panels evolve.  And there really is nothing like getting your fingers inky!

All four panels, they will eventually be mounted to matting of some sort and framed, either like this or in a square-thoughts on that?

Spring-lots of light greens and yellows with a touch of pink for those fun spring flowers that we love seeing

Summer, the bright rich greens with a dash of yellow for those dandelions that I secretly love!  

Fall, with its beautiful rich colors, it really is my favorite time of year.

And finally winter...while there are no leaves on most trees during the winter this is probably my favorite of the panels, I love the coolness of it and the glimpses of the pattern paper that can be seen through the gesso.

 Here are a few close ups of  a couple to give you an idea of the texture and colors.  I just love the mottled look of the leaves.

Thanks so much for stopping by-and happy early Halloween!

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Dreaming

With Halloween just around the corner, I've been busy working on my costume, it is mostly finished and I adore how it has turned out!  Photos to come on that after Friday!  In the meantime something I've been working on when I haven't been sewing...

I love unexpected twists, when I began this spread in my journal I had something else in mind completely but as I was adding my layers the page took itself in a whole different direction.  The colors and stars ended up giving the page a very dream like quality so I just kind of went with it.

The photo had a very sharp edge to it, and I wanted to blend it in a bit more to the background.  I had some light tissue paper that I had intended on using as clouds on the page, however when I used gel medium to adhere them down they were kind of lost on the page and I couldn't really see them, so I used them at the bottom of the photo to soften the edge.

The stars were done using a Memory Box stencil and some homemade texture paste-I just love how the mists pool around the texture. 

The last detail was to add a few butterflies from BoBunny's Gabrielle collection, the colors were perfect for this page and I really love how they add to the dreamy feel of the page.  They were outlined in a grey gelato to give them a bit of pop, I loaded up my brush to give them a nice water color look.

Next up...a tribute to one of my favorite characters from one of my favorites shows!

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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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An Adventure

Ever have one of those times that, for one reason or another, you aren't able to get crafty for a few days?  Never any fun.  Last week my dad was in the hospital for heart surgery, so there were limited opportunities to scrapbook.  So what else is there to do-but come up with an adventure!

This Renaissance Festival season I found a new little treasure, I'd like to introduce Winifred the Spider, and she was my creative outlet, and stress relief in the hospital.

While I'm working on finishing up a few projects come follow along on Instagram as Winifred (#adveturesofwinifred) and I (@annieschriever) run amok the month of October together!  Remember only 25 days to Halloween!

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