Lisa J - Working in Pam's Monotone Journal

Pam's Monotone journal is a lovely hand made A4 journal, beautifully covered.  

Her brief was to create a page using only a monochromatic scheme - only one colour, but you can use all of its shades and tints too, plus black and white.

Hmmm.  What colour to do? Purple and pink were already gone, along with teal and blue-green.

I decided to go with blue, since it has lots of variations (and it's one of my favourite colours).  I had lots of blue paint sample cards, so thought I could incorporate them in some way, plus I gelli printed a stack of different blue papers.

I picked a page that had an extra flap on it, just to push myself a bit further, and decided on a little town on the edge of the water.  

The background was simply rolled on with a brayer to create a messy effect, then I built up layers of collaged bits to represent the countryside.  The water was created by adding scrunched up bits of paper tissue with gel medium.  I like the effect, though using matt instead of gloss would have been better.  Oh well.

The houses were then added, with windows and doors drawn in with white Uniball Signo (my favourite white pen!).  The lighthouse completed the page.

I also wanted the same scene to flow to the page underneath, when the flap was opened.  This was a bit of a challenge, getting everything to match up, and flow well!

Underneath I added a castle, again using paint sample cards.  Then, added a couple of quotes that I liked.

Hope you like my interpretation Pam!  I also did another page for you since there was a single page that was blank - but I'll keep that one as a surprise for when you get your journal back... ;)

Cheers, Lisa

Lisa J - Working in Wendy's Aphorism Journal

I know I keep saying this, but I'll say it again: I've discovered I love working in art journals!  Particularly other people's because I have a guide on what to do in them.  In my own, I fluff around looking for inspiration...

Wendy's journal is hand made and about A5 size.  To be honest, before this I'd never hear the term 'aphorism'.  I learnt that it's a witty saying or proverb.

I decided I wanted to do a saying that I've used before, so came up with that old classic that's dished out when you've just had a break up: You'll be okay; there are plenty of other fish in the sea!

This was quite simple in execution: sponged background with circles dotted on for bubbles, painted mermaid and some grasses and fishies at the bottom.  Outlined the writing in Micron pen and filled in with paint plus dots from a silver pen.

and a closer up look at the mermaid: 

Hope you like it Wendy; it was a quick one but lots of fun to do!

Cheers, Lisa

Aphorisms - Joans pages.

This page is a copy of a page I created digitally some years ago.  I always loved it, so I wanted to try and create a similar page in real life.

It started off with a dried babywipe I had used to wipe off a brush.  It was a mixture of blue and I thought it would make a great sky.  Using gesso and mod podge I stuck it on to the page.  It covered about two thirds of it, which was great. The texture created by it was wonderful and it was open to all the mediums I used on it.   Using dyes, acrylic paint, gellatoes and distress ink I then coloured in the bottom third of the page, to represent grass.  I then stamped and drew and painted some flowers in the background on both sides.  Collaged some paper fussy cut flowers and then some commercial flower embellishments on top.  I stamped and stenciled a few bits of text and patterns on background for texture.  Added tree, angel, bird, lady and clock, some more dye, and white paint and for further texture a strip of little flowers on a transparent background at bottom of left page.    I used transparent type letter stick- ons for the phrase and outlined them in white. Not quiet as elegant as my digitally layout, but pleased with it anyway, hope you are too Wendy.