Messy Textured Journal page

This page is for Lens Guy who puts up with a lot and as I don't do Valentine's this is it and he really is "For Keeps and Forever". It is my entry into the Stampotique Challenge SDC86 Red, Pink and White and the Simon Says Have a Heart Challenge. I am fascinated by creating texture on my art journal pages at the minute so I began with some texture paste through chipboard waste and by splodging a heart shape on the facing page with my finger.

 I then pressed a sheet of corrugated card on top to create ridges (and impatiently waited for it to dry and getting fed up I sprayed some Dylusions inks onto the damp paste). There was also some alphabet stencils under the heart in gesso from a previous use up of waste paint.

As I had been sewing I decided to sew a border onto the page as well. I stuck masking tape down the centre, a tip I picked up from Donna Downey as many of my previous pages have ink incursions from later pages and this helps contain seepage between pages and is hidden once the page is finished.

I then used 3 dylusion heart stamps on the page facing the big heart and as a border round both pages which I highlighted with more watercolour paint in red and pink, ink and white acrylic paint. I then stamped Oh My Deer and Eric (from Stampotique) 3 times onto white tissue paper and glued them onto the page. For two of the images I went in with red and pink watercolours and blended them into the page and the third one I left the stamped images uncoloured and ghost like.

Close up showing stitching, doodles and traces of the alphabet stencil.

Lots of hearts and texture.

Thank you for dropping by.

Art Journal Stampotique Challenge SDC82

Stampotique stamps, paint, layers, tonic border punch and snowflake punch

The first pages using Dylusion and Studio 490 stamps and tonic border  punches and the lyrics from "Brain Damage" by Pink Floyd. 

 I am entering this in the Stampotique Challenge SDC82 which challenged you to use die cuts and punches. I finished the page but found it very hard to photograph, partly because the "page" is a double page layout with another double page inside that double page. I also used lots of mod page to stick all my layers together which gives the page a high shine. I think this page is perhaps too much and is one of those pages when I should have stopped about 4 layers back but I still like all the layers and texture.
These were the pages before I went a little overboard...

I like the snowflakes I added but think I should have left the text and the waste from the punches white.

I suppose that is the fun of journalling you never quite know what will happen. I like the fact that other pages of my journal will have the cut out shape and you can glimpse areas through the punches.

Thank you for stopping by.

Our dreams are free - so fly one today

In my last post I had explained why I was missing and my lack of time but as I wrote it I began to think I was just making excuses and if I wanted to craft I would have to find a way. I pulled out my journal and found this background I blogged about back in July and decided to see what I could do sitting with family, journal and some pens. I began to doodle around the sprayed images and create shapes and then added the border. At this point I liked the page (did not take photo) and left it there for the evening thinking perhaps I could find ways to be in more than one place at a time.

 I had decided that today after domestic stuff was done I would have some me time and pulled out the page again. I felt it was missing something so added the "Head is a machine" text stamp from my Studio 490 Steampunk set. Then I dug out my old dictionaries and the word conundrum just seemed to fit how I was feeling. Finally I stamped the Queen of Hearts from Octopode on some TH paper and coloured her in. To make her seem part of the page and not the afterthought she was I then doodled the page border onto the cut out stamp.

I feel the pages sum up my feelings at this point in time and I like the colours which are not my usual go to greens and purples. In the spirit of I can do this rather than I don't have time to do this I am off to finish machine stitching the binding on my quilt so I can take the quilt and finish the hand sewing off when I stay at mum's for the next few days. I am not promising I will keep this up but I will try. I have also found a Quilt along, Row along at Bee in the Bonnet and might see if I can keep up with this. I think this is what I need as a beginner quilter, if you are interested you can find the details here.

http://beeinmybonnetco.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/announcing-bee-in-my-bonnet-row-along.html

Art Journal

I created this page at the same time as the tag for the Stampotique challenge as you can see by the similar colours. I began by transferring a photo and had to glue pages as was a bit gunky and then added gesso and china blue distress stains.

More distress stains and splodges and wet wipes

Some doodling and mini butterfly stamped smudged with posca white pens, I stamped a Paper Artsy flower over the thistle image in black felt it was much to harsh and added some titan buff paint and white doodles.

I hid the more personal journalling under the paint layers and then added the title. I stamped Paper Artsy Butterfly and Dragonfly on some paper I had altered with paint.

Art Journal page

It's been a while due to school holidays and illness - I  am writing this from my bed. Being a responsible teacher I  a scheduled a minor operation in the first week of the holidays to avoid taking time off and  planned to relax and recover up North in the second week. It all went well and we began our holiday with friends and then I became ill. Anyway it appears I have a post op infection and I am now on round 2 of antibiotics and off work for the week. The best laid plans...
The page was in response to a prompt on UKS about composition. This time of year is always hard for me as it is 7 years and 4 years since my dad and brother died. I wanted to focus on the positives and have been trying to look forward instead of back and this was what the journal page was about. As we were away I had taken a few stamps, limited inks and a water colour box. I decided to limit myself to the three primary colours and black and white and play with the colour after dividing my pages into 3's. I found a John Lewis catalogue and cut out some images.

After playing around with their placement I stuck them down and added doodles and paint. I then stamped some random stamps and the TH skeleton as it was about conquering the past and its associations.

I used a posca white pen to add white doodle lines and then wrote my journalling in white/black to blend it into the page. 

It helped to write down thoughts and focus on the positive and showed me I don't need many supplies to journal.

ATCs - Faces

I created these for a Swap on UK Stampers and the theme was faces. The first one is called Tightly sprung and uses Lady  from Octopode. I added cogs, wheels and springs from a bargain book called "Workbench Ephermera". Some of the pages are vellum and let me have layers of detail. I also used a piece of the wood paper as a background. The stamps were coloured with ink and watercolours.

I gessoed the background and added layers of inks. The face is Dylusions Dependable Dotty which was masked before stamping with Paper Artsy ledge stamp. Scrabble letters and title added and watercoloured.

I stamped a flower head from Paper Artsy Hot Picks HOXT02 numerous times on scrap paper. I also stamped it directly onto the inked background. I coloured all the faces using dylusion inks and cut out and added to the effect. I then overstamped using the complete stamp. If you look hard you can make out various faces.

This is a continuation of the idea of faceless numbers. I created a reverse mask and stamped ruler stamp from Paper Artsy into head space. On an acetate I traced the Dylusion head shape and filled it with alcohol inks. I then journalled on the actetate using black and white pens about the power of faces and stuck the acetate to the inky background.

Synchronicity

I was trying to create a lo for a challenge on UKS using spring colours, ribbons and sewing and food. The photo I had in mind was a halloween one... I created a background stamping the skeleton and crow from TH and decided to stamp the waste in my journal. I sprayed the lo and then the journal page and so on... Although as you can see I did end up with quite different pages. At this point there was some similarity.

But after more ink, paint and stencil layers the journal page became very different.

I wrote my journalling and then wanted a title to sum up how I felt. I used a stencil and modelling paste to create the letters - be warned it is messy and if you are impatient like me you make a mess.

Meanwhile back at the scrapping lo I created coffin style two tone tags for my journalling.

and once the modelling paste was dry on the journal page I coloured the letters with aqua pro markers but left some of the white showing. 

I do like the linkage between the two and the fact that using similar materials and supplies you can create something quite different.

I am not sure if there is such a word as synchronisity (and blogger spell check thinks not correctly because it is synchronicity - doh) but I think this is exactly what happens when two mediums collide and its my blog so I decide to correct the error (thanks to Angelnorth even though blogger does not recognise this either)

Altered Box - stamping with hot glue - part two

Metal, image transfer and ink embellishments from stamps

This is the technique courtesy of Annepat on UKstampers. When I first read it I though this will never work and it will ruin my stamp. But it does work and the stamp is fine... Grease cake cutter with vaseline so glue does not stick. Coat red rubber stamp in Versamark. Pour in hot glue.

 I tried putting glue in using my glue gun but it was too slow so I just cut up the glue sticks and melted them with my heat too. This time I had stamp facing up. When dry it comes out of cutter as below.

 Trim round edges and peel off the stamp from the dried glue.

 Finished piece - there was an air bubble so not perfect but I like this effect and I just swiped some distress stains over the stamp to highlight colours more.

This time (now I knew stamp was safe) I used PaperArtsy butterfly and dragonfly.

 I quite like the look of it embedded in the glue before I cut it out and I imagine this could make some interesting fossil like embellishments.

 For this one I just reused the glue I had cut away from the ones above and although it was slightly dirtier I hate to waste all that glue.

I also made these embellishments using a sandwich of PaperArtsy metal, double sided tape and image transfers which were then stamped, metal embossed with metal tools and swiped with alcohol ink.

Art Journal Page

 These pages have a simple sprayed ink background and my new stamps from Paper Artsy, Hot Picks HP1109. I used Dylusions burnt orange and blue sky for the background and added some extra colour to images using jade green.

I highlighted parts of the images and completed my journalling using a sakura white gelly roll pen.

 It was a horrible cold wet day which inspired the journalling.

Romping to the end of the art journal challenge

More of my finished pages. I am working on my very last page of the 2011 journal today but still have more to do. I never thought I would get there but I have and I have enjoyed the process so much.

Toys and the changes over the years. I found a fab vintage cut out doll on Graphics Fairy blog which I added to a barn door distress stain background. I added adirondack silver dabber and then stamped images from a Lost and Found Set and a the time piece from Craft Stamper.

This was about Christmas trees and I found some stencils and blasted Dawn Bibby moonlit silver spray over them stencil - bit messy in places. Once I doodled around the images I journalled all over the page about our Christmas tree - I found there was lots to say.

The next page was lots of fun. I created a background using paints, pva glue resist technique I had seen in the latest Craft Stamper (the squiggly lines) and lots of shiny spray inks. I loved this effect.

 We were to be generous with the stamping so I went to town with Tim Holtz bird and text stamps.

 I added more wild honey and worn lipstick to the the torn text and to try and blend it all together. Photographing shiny pages never seems to work that well. I will have to give in ask Lens Guy for a lesson on this...

 Finally a page on Christmas traditions.