Imagination........

I finally finished the August challenge on Limor1278 Mixed Media Art Group.  This month it's about Faber Castell Design Memory Craft.  I love the Artist Pens. They are permanent india ink pens and I can watercolor over the drawing without running ink.  They are my favorite.  I am going to try rouging over the ink next and I will let you know.  Actually, the Artist Pens are the only Faber Castell Design Memory Craft product that I own.  I would love to try the Gelatos  and Big Brush Pens!  Below are the details of my project for this month.

I started with creating the floral image on the right of the page and penning it with the Artist Pens XS.  I then went around the page with an outline to give me a border.

Next, I just started to watercolor.  I tried my new watercolors and even though I still have a lot of practicing to do, I really like them.  The only thing I did not like was the paper. I used Mixed Media 98# paper.  Although, it is smooth for the pen work, the pilling was immediate.  I did a water wash for the sky and I could not get my color on the page before the pilling started.  I will definitely need to find a smooth 140# watercolor paper for my future work.

So, not wanting to start over on a heavier paper, I worked around the paper and continued to paint.  All the watercolor was done without the use of masking medium, so you will see some slight bleeding here and there.  I left it over night to dry.  Then I went back and added some stamped butterflies and a bird.  I colored the butterflies with distress ink Peacock Feathers and some more watercolor.  The white on the butterfly wings is gesso.

I decided that I wanted to add a tag with a stamped sentiment on the left of the page. So I colored the tag with distress inks Spiced Marmalade and Peacock Feathers.  Then I stamped a Tim Holtz sentiment.  I used one of my stencils with the Artist Pens Brush to create the flowers on the edge.  Really cool effect. I will definitely be using the pens with my stencils in the future.

I finished the page by going around the border with the Artist Pens S to make the border line stand out more.  I finished the flowers with grey watercolor in the daisies and used the Artist Pens to make some dots around the centers of the flowers.  I added the clouds with white gesso.  I also added touches of black with the Artist Pens to the butterflies and the bird which was stamped with Black Stazon.

I hope you have enjoyed my walk through for my page.  I really loved the way the Artist Pens work with watercolor.  I will be exploring more of this in my daily journal.  As I said previously, I will also be experimenting with the Artist Pens with some pen & ink rouging. 

Hope everyone had a glorious August and will have a blessed September.  I love fall, so I am ready for cool weather!


Enjoy & God Bless!

Cottage Chic Mini Journal

Digital files are all the rage these days in the scrapbook/crafting world.  I made a journal from pages that I printed from a digital file.  Marion Smith has some of the most beautiful digital journal files I have ever seen.  She had a challenge for her Cottage Chic Mini Book this last month.  I submitted my journal that I made with her designs and I did so via YouTube and I want to share my experience with this project. 

To be honest I have always been skeptical of digital files.  I have printed some freebies out that have not been very "clean" digitally and I have an inkjet printer.  So when thinking about printing out 12+ pages of digital imagery, you want everything perfect so you're not printing over and over to get a "good" print.  Well, Prima has freebies on their facebook page every week.  Marion had a file for her new Romance Novel paper line with Prima, so I decided to print it out.  I was so impressed with the file that I knew I had to get the Cottage Chic Mini Book even with my inkjet printer.

I cannot say enough good things about Marion's digital files.  Every one is beautiful, digitally clean and easy to print.  The best part is you can print as many copies as you want.  Say you have 10 friends that you want to make journals for as gifts, you can print 10 copies.  There is not a limit on how many you can print.  When you purchase the paper pads at the store, you only get (at the most) 3 sheets of each print.  So you would need 4 paper pads! Ouch! Now you say what about the card and ink that you use with your printer?  So much cheaper than the paper pads.  I just purchased index card weight cardstock, 250 count, for less than $8.  Printer ink is expensive, but I printed my whole Cottage Chic Mini on the color ink cartridge low ink warning and I am still printing in color. 

To sum up my experience, I love Marion's digital designs.  I would recommend these to anyone looking for quality digital designs.

In the journal I did a lot of stamping.  I painted this dress form with black acrylic, Martha Stewart black glitter, and Liquid pearls.  The dress form is a two piece form from Mini Album Scraps ning site.  I then made a number of different pockets to handle all of the tags from Marion and multiple freebie websites.  The two butterfly tags are stamped images that I stamped in Stazon Black and then colored with colored pencils. 

I have attached my video below.  I go through the mini pretty quickly, so if you have any questions, please leave me a comment.  Hope you enjoy and go check out Marion Smith Designs.

 Enjoy life!