Lesley Alexander's page in Joan Mannix's "HOUSE" Journal.

So this month it's my turn in Joan's journal which has a theme of "HOUSE".
Not knowing where to start I decided to begin with a distress oxide background using 3 colors Peacock feathers ,antique linen and abondoned coral.

This page has literally sat like this for the last few weeks waiting on a brilliant idea to pop into my head. I have had the Amsterdam stamp set from darkroom door and had never used it. I bought it because my mum is dutch so this stamp set was going to be my theme.

Instead of stamping the images directly onto my page I decided to stamp them seperatly and collage them onto my page. I have then filled my pages with stamping, collaging and washi tape.

I have finished off with the stitching doodling onto the page and stamped images. 

Hope you like my page

Lesley x

Favourites - Colleen's pages in Jan Mullane's Journal

My favourite things are Gelli printing, Stamping & Quirky Birds by Tim Holtz. As Jan has loads of pages in her book I decided, with her blessing, to do 2 spreads. First layout I covered the pages with gelli prints, using mainly deli paper pieces to get lots of texture, gessoed lightly & added violet distress ink.

Then I used a leaf stencil & texture paste coloured with green paint to add the branches in the top corners, plus some stamping all over.

Then out came the quirky birds & dies. I stamped them onto Gelli prints & die cut them. Placed them on the page & drew a branch in under them, then added some outlining & more word stamps & it was done.

The 2nd layout was gelli printed directly into the book.

I built up the layers with masking & stencilling

I then added butterfly masks & put a light coat of white over the pages. Then outlined the butterflys with pens & doodled with paint pens, & added some stamping.

I hope you like them Jan. I enjoyed doing them so much.

WORD- Louise plays in Wendys journal

Wendy's gorgeous lacy journal arrived 

with a very open theme- use a word that inspires. 

 Nature inspires me,

In endless ways I am inspired by the colours and patterns and variations, the movement and the texture and sheer breathtaking beauty I find all around me. 

The pages were a little light for me I am a messer, so I collaged them with plenty of words- book pages.  Then I chose to play with my new DK artists inks in Wendy's journal and the day I sat down to play I had a beautiful blue parrot on my shoulder. so I started with blues and feathers. 

I had fun playing in your lovely journal Wendy. 

AASJ 5: Tree as Spirit for Louise...

Hi!!

Sharing my pages in Louise's "Tree" Round Robin Journal.

At first I was a little unsure how to tackle this theme but I found a great quote that gave me some inspiration and I had some digi stamps that I thought were just perfect to make this page in "my" style of journaling so I hope Louise likes what I have done - I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I started by coating the pages in gesso and then adding some acrylic paints in tree and sky colours and I used my brayer to move the blobs of paint around on the pages to cover them.

I added some stencilling to both the top and bottom of all the pages using white paint - I love the effect this gave - nice and subtle.

I printed off the digi stamps I wanted to use on the pages - they are from Vera Lane Studio - I'm on the DT so I really love creating with these great designs!!

Quite a bit of colouring with my pastel pencils - then sprayed with fixative - took awhile and then had to fussy cut everything out!!!!

I also printed the quote out on kraft coloured paper, tore each word out individually and arranged on the front flap - adhered everything and added a few paper leaves as well.

Some close up pics of the main images:

And here are the pages - I loved having the flap to work on as part of the pages - it made a great place for the quote to then open out to the full pages with the characters and TREES!!!

Happy Journalling!!!

Sharon



Grimms' Fairy Tales - Red Riding Hood Down-under for Jenny James by Janie O'Brien

Firstly, I painted my pages with water colour wash in appropriate outback sunset colours and sealed them with spray-on British Paints "Spray Easy" Clear Gloss. I "fussy" cut all my collage elements and readied them for placement.

I then proceeded to stick down all my collage elements in layers, letting each layer dry before proceeding with the next one.

I finished adding my elements - the wolf (thylacine) and the cockatoos flying, and adding more colour by paint and metallic sprays to achieve the desired atmosphere.

details left side

detail, right side

Lisa - Working in Joanna's Fairy Tales

Ooh what a theme.  There are so many hundreds, if not thousands, of fairy tales.  How to pick one?

Good question!  Mel still has her old book of fairy tales, so I went through that.  Nothing really grabbed me.  I thought about my favourite fairy tales, at least visually: Hansel & Gretel, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast.  I even thought about 'modern' fairy tales, and was so close to doing a page about Harry Potter!  But that could be another journal theme... 😜

I wanted something bright and colourful, so looked into foreign fairy tales.  The African tales were mostly about animals, and I remembered one about Babaji and the tigers which I liked... but it has many connotations of racism, so I didn't want to go there.  

In the end, some music kept popping into my head.  Not really a fairy tale; more of a musical.  But traditional and oft told, so I went with it - and thus did my spread on Peter and the Wolf.

For those that don't know the story, it's about a boy who lives with his grandfather in the woods.  His grandfather tells him not to go outside the gate, for there is a wolf who lives in the forest.  His duck does not heed this warning, and is promptly eaten by said wolf.  Alive, of course.  Peter's bird decides to torment the wolf, and while it's distracted, Peter climbs a tree, intent on catching the wolf!  

Miraculously, Peter does catch the wolf by lowering a rope around it's tail, and pulling it tight.  Sounds a bit unrealistic to me...  

Two hunters in the woods come upon Peter with the 'captured' wolf, and want to kill it.  

But surprisingly, Peter doesn't want to kill the wolf.  He decides that they should take it to the local zoo instead.  What kind of fairy tale is this, where no-one gets killed?  Well, unless you count the duck, but apparently he can be heard quacking from the wolf's belly... 😁

So here's the whole spread.  I gessoed the pages, then did the sky and grass in watercolour which was applied with a sponge.  It was then painted with Dylusions paints - I just love the luscious colours.  Then finished with black and white fineliners.  

Hope you like it Joanna! 💝

Cheers, Lisa

Things With Wings Journal

Well, I'm unable to get all my pics off my phone to the computer so I'll do what I can.....

My plan for this page was ever evolving. It started out as a Pegasus silhouette with background with border then a pop up butterfly between the pages but then my computer played up and blocked all USB access leaving me unable to use my die cut machine so I decided instead to go with butterflies as I had a butterfly stamp available.

I firstly covered the page in torn pieces from an old German dictionary (no pic), mod podged them down and then added white gesso over the pages.  I then spayed the pages liberally with a LSG teal and brown spray. This turned out much more brown than blue which was not what I wanted so I added blue spray as well but decided to leave a lot of the brown after some consideration.

Next I stamped my butterflies with versa-mark ink and heat embossed each stamp with various colours of embossing powders. After the heat gun, I added a variety of drawing inks that I had to the butterfly wings to add bright colour to the page. I then cut the butterflies out.

Next I wanted to add some dimension so added a lime green spray to white texture paste and mixed well. I then stencilled this across the pages through a vine stencil. It was still a bit too brown so I hit the page with another spray of blue. 

I then arranged the butterflies across the page until I was happy but the page still needed more so I added lots of flowers in as well.

Next came the search for the perfect quote.  I then simply printed this out on brown card stock and edged the card with brown ink and attached to the page in the space I had left. 

EMPOWERMENT an Art Journal by Lesley Alexander.

Not at all sure what to do in this journal, I went looking for a quote that pleased me.  This is what I decided.

Look at the stars

look how they shine

For you

and 

everything you do.

My first task was to get some colour down to represent the sky. I used a mix of blues, purple, black and white.

Next I used texture paste through some stencils to give me some stars.

I touched up the texture paste with silver paint, cut foil stars with a little punch, added some splatters and my words.

I really hope it is what Lesley was looking for.