Art Journal Pages

As you can I have used some of my new purchases. The first page was asking whether or not we are spiritual and I am not, I am much more of a free spirit summed up by the quote from Nietzche: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I swiped on marmalade distress stain and then added Adironack Espresso randomly. I stamped the Dina Wakely Grungy Silhoutte onto the still wet ink so it blended into the page and then scribbled with a sharpie pen. I used my white pen to write the quote and stamped with paint and ink using the free Jo Capper Sandon  stamp from craft stamper.

 I'm not sporty but I do enjoy water sports and used to sail, windsurf and water ski. Now I am content to kayak around beaches watching seals and surfing waves. The second page is a succession of layers or ink, paint, ink and more ink and paint.

 Once I had built up layers and used gesso to make shapes in the pattern I drew round some chipboard starfish and then sprayed through the waste sheet.

I stamped Smushsasha from Stampotique on the page and then on card and coloured her with aqua pro markers, cutting her out was tricky but it allowed me to place her hands round the distressed surfboard and keep some definition. I also stamped circles with the distress stains in peeled paint and broken china.

I used a glue lid to stamp white and black circles of paint and a card to add white paint lines - some of which I smudged. The title was done in aqua promarkers and sprayed with water to make it run. Finally I added the wavy journalling and a few more stamped circles over it.

Guilty Pleasures and work in progress

We all have Guilty Pleasures and I came home from another hard day at the chalk face to find two. The lastest edition of Craft Stamper and a lovely box of goodies from Art from the Heart. Some of you might argue that these are essentials and do not constitute a guilty pleasure. However, we are trying to cut down on our spending so cannot justify these. Oh wait I can. I have stopped smoking for 7 weeks and 4 days so need a treat that does not pile on the calories. Just opening the box and seeing the tissue paper, string and hearts made me smile after a pretty awful day. For those of you who don't know I am a teacher (boo hiss, too many holidays) at a High School teaching English. We have been back for a few weeks now and with cuts leading to less staff, bigger classes and less resources we are all a little frazzled. But enough of the day job... what's inside?

Smushasha and Eric from Stampotique, Lady Audrey from Octopode, Dina Wakely Grungy Silhoutte, Dependable Dotty from Dylusions, more Dylusions paints, more TH distress ink pads and three of the TH distress stains from Ranger. I had to get them out to play. I have been working on a journal page about water sports and Smushasha seemed perfect. It's too dark to photograph the finished page now but as you can she is holding a surf board.

When I showed my daughter my new purchases she just looked at me and said "You are just getting weirder!"

On the occasional comments from pupils here is a response from a pupil asked to name a  famous Scottish Inventor by one of my colleagues. "Sir, is Napier one?" (prounounced to rhyme with happier). Encouraging nod from teacher and pupil goes on "He invented Nappies!" Needless to say he struggled to make a suitable reply.