Art Journalling with words

For week 7 of Book of Days the journal prompt was: what brings you joy? and the challenge was to use words. I was inspired by this challenge and got out a whole bunch of different alphabets from my scrapbooking stash to use. I went to a new home improvement store the same day and was looking at the vast array of wonderful looking paint chips thinking I would love to use these blocks of colour somehow. As I looked closer I noticed the wonderful names of the colours like: apple cake, chocolate dream and summer raindrop. They are things that bring me joy so I collected a big bunch of chips to use in my journal.

When I got home I worked out the size I needed to make a grid pattern and cut the paint chips to fit. I laid them out on my page and started to dry emboss them with my Cuttlebug machine.

After I had embossed them all, I sanded some of them to make the designs stand out more and glued them into my journal with gel medium. I added the tape down the middle because the paint chips were catching on each other when I closed the book. Next I wanted to unify them a bit more so I sprayed them with pink and purple sprays. I let that dry then stuck on the words using the scrapbooking letters. I used alcohol markers to change some of the letter colours before putting them on the page. I wanted to stay with blue/purple colours. I used the cuttlebug to cut out some gold butterflies and sprayed them too before sticking them down. I really like the way the page turned out.

Things that bring me joy.

Lifebook week 6

As I have not been very well I have fallen behind a little with Lifebook. Now that I am on the mend I decided to get my week 6 page finished. It was a little difficult to get motivated because I started the page a while ago. I always find it difficult to finish off something if I have been away from it.

The topic was to do a paint over collage about our achievements. I decided to concentrate on my children. I am very proud of them as adults.The first step is the collage and then I sketched in the bodies. I added a flap to my page because I knew the long quote I found would not fit onto the original page with the two figures on there.

Some of the paper stuck to itself when I folded the flap over but I was not worried about that as the paint will cover it later on. Next I blocked in the colours of the people with acrylic paint.In this photo I started to sketch the male face with a brown pencil.

After sketching in the faces I shaded the figures with waterbased markers. I also used the markers to add the fine detail on the faces. I painted the background with metallic inks that have photographed very dark here. In real life they are semi-transparent and I can still see some of the collage. The dragonflies are stamps. I printed the quote on the computer and then traced it onto the page. I did that because I wanted to make sure it would fit on the page.

Stripes???

Sometime ago I received a present from my son that was wrapped with lovely blue and white striped paper. It had such a nice feel I kept the paper to use in one of my art journals. I am not really sure why...
I used it for my week 6 page of the Book of Days journal. I was a little disappointed that there was no prompt or challenge that week so I decided to use a quote and image from the "Where women create" newsletter that is emailed out once a week. This was a quick page to do using watercolour crayons for the drawing and colouring of the stamped bird. I am still deciding whether I will continue with BOD.

Valentines heart challenge

The wonderful Jane Davenport emailed a challenge to all her online school members on Valentines Day. She wanted us to create some art with a heart in it and upload it to her album page. When I received the email it was perfect timing for me. I have been under the weather of late and unable to draw or use the computer for a while. On Tuesday I was starting to feel better and the challenge was all the encouragement I needed to get out my pencils again. I used acrylics and pencils on top of a gessoed background. The heart was coloured with pan pastels. A new product for me and I had a lot of fun with them.

Journal Page

Today I am sharing my latest art journal page for the Book of Days course. The prompt this time was "something you need to tell yourself" and the challenge was to include an envelope on the page. After I watched the videos I also wanted to include a napkin on my layout like Effy did during the week.

I didn't have any fancy napkins (well I think I do have some but I just couldn't find where I have put them, lol) so I used coloured tissue wrapping paper instead. It is sort of the same thing. I gessoed the page and then glued the tissue paper on with watered down PVA glue. I hadn't tried this glue before so I wanted to see what it would be like to work on top of.

Next I used Lumiere brand metallic paint to fill in the rest of the page. I then stamped some gold acrylic paint on top with a swirl stamp. It is hard to see in the photo. I also stencilled on some stars with gesso.

At this stage the paint still looked very streaky so I sprayed the page with pink and yellow sprays for a more uniform look. I added a little green contrast paint using corrugated card to stamp with. I used a pocket instead of an envelope and put a postcard inside. The pocket was coloured with distress inks and decorated with some sequined braid. Then I edged the page with purple ink and used the same colour to stamp the quote and glued that in. I then drew the border and outlines with purple pencil to unify the page.

Oops I forgot one...

I realised I forgot to show one of my Book of Days pages.

First I collaged a magazine image of flowers along the bottom of the page then painted over the whole page with some acrylic paint. I added another layer of paint and scraped a lot of it off with an old credit card. I added the picture by Kelly Rae Roberts and used scrapbook letters to do the quote. The image came from  an email I received from the "Where women create" website. They send out weekly quotes with some beautiful artwork attached, sometimes it is too nice not to save the images for my journal.After everything was stuck down I sprayed the page with some glimmer mists. The only one you can really see is the orange. I used punchinella and acrylic paint for the page border.

The next page for Lifebook was a sort of self portrait. We used a transferred photo of ourselves to make a goddess and surrounded her with descriptive words. I am happy with the way the page turned out but I think I prefer to just draw faces instead of using transfers.

I heart drawing ends...

I finished my last assignment for the I heart drawing class. It shows how much I have learnt while doing this course. I am longer afraid to try different poses for the people I draw. I still need to practice the side profiles a bit more. This is mainly acrylics with waterbased markers on top for detail and shading.

I also did another page for my Book of Days project. When I first saw a glimpse of Effy's Monday spread I thought the white area was made by ripped paper. I thought that was a great idea so I wanted to do that for my page. I painted the face first and then couldn't bring myself to glue torn strips over it so I put them on the rest of the paper instead. Originally I was going to have the girl peeking out from behind the paper. I will probably still do that sometime later in the year.

I was going to put the writing in the gaps between the papers but I liked the patterns made by the sprays I used so I put it on the paper instead. The prompt this week was surrender  and the challenge was painted words.  I have to learn to surrender to Father Time and stop worrying about time flying by so fast. It is a little hard to do sometimes...