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!

Happy Girls are the Prettiest..........

It's been awhile, so I thought I would post my art journal page that I submitted to the Limor1278 MM July Contest on her Facebook group page.  I have a Glitz stamp set that I love the quote stamp in by Audrey Hepburn, "Happy girls are the prettiest!"  It's sooo true.  Beauty comes from deep within.

For the page, I first layered 4 or 5 torn scrapbook paper pieces and covered the whole page.  I then white washed with gesso.  I tried a couple of masks from Prima with Tsukineko color sprays.  I then tried a mask with some green acrylic paint, which didn't work.  So, I washed the whole page with the green, which I liked and brought out the two other masks I used first.  I then grabbed a Crafter's Workshop stencil and using Black Soot Distress Ink, stenciled the while page.            

     










            
I then decided to try drawing a girl again.  She's not perfect by far, but I kind of like her.  For her clothing I created a pattern and cut from Prima scrapbook paper (Alla Prima & Annalee). Her neck area I cut from Alla Prima as well.  I then colored her face and hair with Distress Inks and Tsukineko color sprays.  I cut her headband from the Annalee paper to match her pants. Inked edges and put together.

I stamped with Black Stazon the Audrey Helpburn quote and then from Prima the Beauty and Style stamps.  I decided that she needed shoes, but she has no feet.......hmmmmm?!  Ok, it's the end of the day and she is headed for the beach, she can carry her shoes.  These were stamped with a Prima stamp on a paper from the Annalee Prima line.

I had fun creating this page while watching the Olympics.  I have been behind with the Tim Holtz monthly tag challenge and hope to get caught up soon.  I am currently working on a journal that I will show soon.


Enjoy!

Street Art Anyone?????

Here is the second page in my art journal that I posted to the art journal ning site.  I know my posts have been short, but I am still recovering and my shoulder is screaming at me this morning. So, hopefully I will be back to normal soon.

This week's study was on Street Art or Graffiti.  This was a challenge for me because I do not do graffiti, have never done graffiti, so I winged it.  Still not sure how graffiti my page is...........but I tried.

I call this page Faith.  I did an original drawing showing faith growing from my heart.  The stems of the flowers have faith written in them and all is colored with colored pencils. The scripture is written with a black bic pen.  Yes, bic pen.  It worked with the background.

Oh, the background! I started with white gesso, then acrylic paints.  I wasn't happy, so I used a credit card and scrapped on more gesso.  I used a stencil, paper towel and water to remove the paint from the stencil area which created the "flower" areas. Then i decided black was needed and I wanted a stencil with little circles. So I pulled a scrap piece of card stock and started punching holes.  I used two different sizes of hole punches and made a "design".  Then I used the Tim Holtz Ink Applicator with Distress Ink Black Soot.  Over-all I like it.  I may at some point go back and add some stamping here and there, but for now it's done.  If I do add stamping, you will see a re-post with the updated page.

Enjoy.......

A smashing page...........

So I am behind on my art journaling.  I have been dealing with a pulled muscle in my shoulder and some others, so I have been resting.  Needless to say, i know........

So I was finally able to complete my two art journal pages and I posted them to the ning site. It was a smashing page that I want to talk about today.  I will post the second page tomorrow.

We were to put acrylic paint on one side of the journal and then close the book.  Smashing the opposite page into the paint and creating a background or design.  It was a disaster at first.  The paint did not transfer and then if it did, it pulled the paper apart. Yikes! You can see below where the white bits are in the middle of the painted areas, this is where the paper pulled off.

So, I tried again.  I used so much paint on the next try, it oozed from the journal.  Still do not think I got this technique down right, but I will keep trying.  So, here is my finished page that I posted on the art journaling ning site.

All of the color was smashed between the pages.  I then went in, using black acrylic paint, and added all of the black accents.  To me this looked like a close up of a butterfly.  Not sure it came out correctly, but I really like it and that is what matters in your art journal.  Do what you like and keep working even if it's not working, keep at it.  Enjoy........

No More Headaches! Art Journal Entry

I wanted to share my art journal entry for this two week challenge from Art Journaling Ning site. This challenge was to document the mundane and make it beautiful.  Using our watercolors was part of the challenge as well. I chose my Lemon Verbena Hand Soap that I get at my local Dollar Tree store.  I have such a hard time finding soaps, lotions, perfumes, hair spray, shampoo, etc. that does not give me a headache.  It is a beautiful thing when I find that product.

Here is the run down. I hand drew the bottle of my lemon soap in pencil, then I used a grey watercolor and a 00 liner and went over some of the lines and around the label area to "pop" the white label of the bottle. I used this same grey to shadow the bottom of the drawing. I tried to use the white of the paper as much as possible for the white needed for highlight.  The white of the label is just the paper with no paint.  I am happy to say that I preserved the label and was able to paint the lemons and leaves with watercolor without any bleeding of the paint. First time for me. I used a black pen (Prisma 005 and 03) and a green marker (Stamping Up!) to finish out the label.

For the rest of the background I used watercolor in blue and yellow and slapped on the colors.  I used a paper towel dipped in the watercolors and sponged all over the page.  I did mask off the drawing area creating a frame of color.  I then used a broad tip black marker (Prisma) and "framed" the drawing.  I used a BIC pen, Prisma pens and the green marker to journal.  The additional leaves are stamped in Stazon Black.

I truly enjoyed this challenge.  I am looking forward to the next challenge.  April I believe is Paula aka Journal Artista. 

Enjoy!

Cowgirl Up!

I love all things Cowgirl!  I have owned horses, rabbits, ferrets, dogs and, currently, cats.  Not that this in anyway makes me a cowgirl, but I have always been a country girl at heart.  I have envied ranch life and have always wanted to live on a horse ranch. My favorite family outing was the National Stock Show and Rodeo in Denver and Ft. Worth.  Every year spending time watching the Equestrian events and the smell of horses, still my favorite smell in the world.  I miss cleaning my horse's stall, brushing him down, conditioning his hooves and turning him loose to run.  The best feeling in the world is turning a horse loose and watching him rid himself of his pent-up energy.  I could sit and watch him for hours.  In fact I did.  Then I would work with him on his manners and ring training.  I spent everyday at the barn and still miss it all.  That is probably what makes me  a country girl at heart. I love the smell of horses and all aspects of ranch life.


Okay, okay, yes I have never actually lived on ranch and now unable to physically work with horses or certain parts of ranch life, but a girl can dream.  This brings me to the first challenge on artjournaling.ning.com.  Leslie (aka comfortableshoes) has the first turn to present a challenge (to see the schedule, click on the artjournaling.ning.com link above).  Her challenge was to create a cowboy page, colors of sepia, yellow and denim, in our art journals.  So, I took the challenge and created a Cowgirl page.  I really loved this challenge.  So here is my page.....

"One girl who would rather wear boots than high heels."

On the right side of my page, this was my first attempt at drawing a person.  I am in no way a portrait artist and have lots of problems with faces, henceforth the hat.  But it's drawn and shaded in pencil.  Then I added color with colored pencils.  I stamped the saying in Black Stazon using two alphabet stamp sets (Stamping Up! and The Paper Studio), on brown packing paper. The background paper is a vintage newsprint gift bag that I cut open and glued down.  I then sprayed the background with the Tsukineko Cornflower Walnut Stain Spray Ink (it's a blue color).  Which I think it gave silent blue worn look.

On to the left side of my page, I have drawn a boot in pencil then went over with my sepia Prismacolor pen.  Then I added the floral design and colored the background with a purple copic marker.  Note to self copic markers and Prisma pens do not mix well, well they mix, altogether that is.  But I think it turned out okay.

The picture in the middle is of my Rafferty.  Full blood registered Quarter horse, Rafter Figment West.  He was my beautiful guy.  He loved apples and cookies, which I spoiled him with.  He learned the sound of my car and would talk to me as I was approaching the barn, knowing I had treats and he was going to get to run. He is truly missed.

I finished the page with some stamped images in White Stazon.  I am not a fan of White Stazon, but the small white flowers with the blue around them is a really cool technique.  I am hoping to do a video tutorial next week on this.  I discovered it while playing with my inks and stamps this week.  I have not seen a video for it, so hopefully it will be a new technique for some.  I also have drawn barbed wire around the pictures and through out the page, which was really fun.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and if you have ever wanted to get involved with art journaling, the artjournaling.ning.com site is a wonderful group of people. Every two weeks another challenge will be posted.  The next challenge will be posted on Sunday March 18th.

Until next post.......Enjoy!