An evolving group of Australian Artists working collaboratively in our travelling art journals.
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As usual when a new journal arrives my first reaction is one of terror as in What on Earth can I contribute that will enhance this beautiful Art Journal that I have received. This was no different as my art education is very limited to what I learned at school and that was a very long time ago.
I had encountered an artist in a previous journal round who inspired me. Her name is Bebe Butler. There was an artist profile on her in an Art Journaling magazine I read and so I decided to try her style. I also admired Traci Bunkers and used some of her tips for building a background. Acrylic paint, stencils and reverse stencil work.
Step 2 was to collage a face from book text and add neck and shoulders.
Next I drew the face and added her jewellery.
Some more stencil work and a quote And I was finished.
Close ups of face and quote
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I hope this fits in with what you envisioned Lisa. Once I got started I was fine. The quote says:
Some great work in this journal! I was going to go with stamps I made from meat trays and foam but then thought that would be too much of the same and so the other idea I had been toying with was inspired by Sharon Tomlinson's Towers and Turrets.
This is how it started and you can see my stamps in the top RH side. Used some stencils to add some texture to the background.
Then I made my towers so that I could collage them on.
What I ended up with was some more mark making and collage. I added some script and felt that the main thing for me about a house is that it keeps you grounded! Was a fun spread to do and hope you like it Joan.
This time I didn't bother photographing the steps involved in creating this picture, as my method is always pretty similar. I painted the paper first with water colour delineating the sky and the water with different blues : cerulean for the sky and green for the water. I fussy cut all the collage elements I might use, then mixed and matched on my background until I was satisfied with result. They were then glued on. The last step was to glaze over the finished work to increase the underwater effect and finally a pearlised green spray with Shadow Mist. Sharon I hope you don't mind I chose a merman, Poseidon, instead of a mermaid.
Lesley's journal is so beautiful & about A4 size. I started by doing a colourful painted background & added some stencilling
Then I mixed up some magenta texture paste & added the flowers & dragonflies. Then mixed green texture paste for the stems & leaves. Added some blue to the leftover magenta paste to make purple, & used the small writing stencil here & there. I drew the girl on some extra card, then cut her out & pasted her into the journal
I couldn't get on with her face side on, (she looked like miss piggy), so covered that area & drew another face, this time front facing. I emphasized the yellow area behind her & added more stencilling. The dress I stencilled with white paint. Over her hands I glued ribbon with dangly bits to look like she is holding it while dancing.
The words on the left page say Believe you can & you will. And on the right page So she danced with her Heart & soul.
I really enjoyed working in your journal Lesley & I hope you like it.
I based my layout on the tale of Hansel and Gretel for Jenny's journal. This is a well-known fairy tale of German origin and published in 1812.Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children escape with their lives by outwitting her.
I started by putting some colour on the page using gelatos and then decided to do a collage spread. The left side being the imagery of the children walking in the forest where Hansel is dropping pebbles on the ground so they could find their way out. And the right hand side being where the children come upon the house made from all kinds of sweets.
I collaged the trees on as well as the images of Hansel and Gretel and in the center of the layout is where they were coming out of the forest finding the witch's cottage.
I tried to make the witch's cottage look child like, for something different, so I used some patterned paper, cut the cottage shape out and they collaged some sweets on the front.
Not forgetting about the witch, the front of the cottage flips down to reveal the wicked witch with the imagery of the flames around her from when Gretel had pushed her into the fire. I drew the face of the witch from an image I found off google, coloured some flames around her head using coloured pencils and printed the title on the flip down side of the house.
Colleen's journal is a lovely A5 sized, material covered journal with some delicious art in it already.
"Things with Wings" is a great theme because there are so many things you can do! So, predictable perhaps, but I decided to go with fairies. And a specific fairy - Tink. Not the pretty, bubbly Tinkerbell from the Disney cartoon, or the giggly, smiley Tinkerbell played by Julia Roberts in 'Hook'. The grumpy, mischievous and often nasty Tink from the 2003 Peter Pan movie - a movie that I still love to watch now and then!
I've picked a scene that I love in the movie, where Tink has died after drinking poison meant for Peter....
I started doing this journal page while at our monthly get together with the Art Mesaj group, and luckily Lena took a pic of my progress!
I picked a double page that also had a flap. This page is between two signatures, so I had to work out how to tie the two parts together.
The paper is a nice thick watercolour paper, so that made my decision to use watercolour and pen easy!
It's not easy trying to draw something from a still frame from a video clip. But here's my Peter shouting I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRIES, I DO, I DO! I think he turned out okay! Though maybe his neck is a bit long...?
And here's the right hand side, with the closed flap. Whenever doing a page with a flap, I always try to match what's under the flap to what's over. Which is not really needed, and often difficult, but that's my thing. (For case in point, check out my entry in Pam's Monochrome journal...!)
Pretty dull really, isn't it. But I wanted what was underneath to be a surprise! So here's Tink.
Okay, so I know that Tink doesn't stand out very well amongst all the leaf matter. Well duh, she is a wood fairy, she's not supposed to...! She does sparkle though (Perfect Pearls). 😁
And here's the whole double spread. I hope you like this Colleen, I had a lot of fun doing it! Still working on a tag for you in the same theme. Cheers, Lisa xx
I am sharing my pages just completed for Danie's "Under the Sea" Journal - loved working in this journal and there are certain "special" additions that Danie will "understand"!!!
Here's a pic of the completed pages with little tag I made to accompany the journal as well:
I started the pages with a layer of Gesso - quickly used my brayer to spread the Gesso. I also used the brayer to cover the page from bottom to top with several colours of acrylic paint plus a glitter paint to add a subtle sparkle - like the light shining through the water to what is below!!
Once the background was dry I grabbed some homemade stencils (made with Cameo Silhouette Files) - firstly a "fishy" one which I used my new Nuvo Mousse - a nice soft shimmery green!
I also wanted some "bubbles" LOL so used some white paint through a circle stencil.
Then I started to place my fussy cut collage elements and embellishments - all collage elements are from a great Etsy Store "Art Tea Life" - great quality sheets!
And just a little pic here of "MY" hand with my red thread - now Danie will understand this - bet she didn't think I would still have it on - but it was still on and I finally removed it today to use on these pages - I used it to tie the charms to the little fishing barrels and you will also see it on the tag I made!!!!!
Now the sticking down bit - quite fiddly with all the bits and pieces and the fishing net has to be stretched out and secured and held in place til the glue dries - LOL you can imagine my fingers were almost glued together by the time I was finished!
And Danie will also recognise this wording from the "Secrets of the Deep" - I thought it was the perfect saying for the pieced mermaid and also has "meaning" to Danie!!!
I had lots of little collage pieces left over and as Danie has tags for us all in the back of her journal I decided to make one to replace the one I have taken to match my pages - front and back pics shown below!!
And here are some more pics of the completed pages - I LOVED working in this journal - love underwater themes and mermaids.
Hope you like it Danie & the special little additions that have meaning for us!
Hello everyone! This was a very fun layout I did in Annabelle's journal. Sometimes it is hard for me to 'Just be myself' but I think I did achieve it with this layout. At the start of my layout, I had put some 'washable' craft paint down and of course by experimenting with it, it wasn't working how I wanted it to. So staying true to myself, I gave it a good wash over with gesso and started again. This happens to me quite a bit sometimes...LOL...
So after covering up the first layer with gesso, I then grabbed out a few gelatos and gave the background a good patching with all the colours. The next layer was some stamping with a black stazon ink and a script stamp.
Not really sure with what I was going to do for a focal image, I decided to grab a make-up sponge and play with making circles. This is a fun and relaxing process for me, I love circles. So I used some purple and white acrylic paint and then brought in some blue and white acrylic paint making and layering the sponge circles. I was only going to put them on either side of the page but I ended up bringing them together in the center and I really liked the simplicity of the way it looked. I used the circles as a focal and then added a saying, "An artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist."
The page ended up with some subtle texture from using the brayer with the gesso and also by squishing the make-up sponge into the circles. Below is the full final spread. Fun, Bright. Cheerful. A lovely 'spring time' layout.
I also did a speed through video of my process which can be seen by clicking below.
I thoroughly enjoyed working in Annabelle's journal. Thank you xox
For the background I used fluid acrylic paint and squished the pages together to get the dendritic effect. The fish are cut out of a napkin and were added next. I fiddled with them a lot with markers and copics and wax. I also used some stencils and homemade modelling paste to add the bubbles and the sun rays. The sea horses and sea plants are stamped and then embossed. I really enjoyed doing this spread and added some extra colour here and there with copic markers.
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Joan Mannix's page in Colleen Mulholland's Journal
Colleen's journal theme is "Things with wings". It is a lovely little journal made from 2 signatures with only two pages or 4 spreads in each signature. I thought that others would probably use birds, fairies, dragonflies or angels in their layout so I wanted to find something else. When the kids were young they used to love flying their kites and I vaguely remembered that the actual kite bit is referred to as the wing, so I went with that for my theme.
I used distress oxide ink pads for my background. I used about 8 colours all up. The great thing about oxide ink, is that provided you dry it in between layers, you can combine warm and cool colors
without ending up with mud. I then stamped randomly with a stamp, using back and front which gave me two slightly different patterns. I used stazon ink to stamp them. Using gesso I stamped some circles and using my glue gun I put some circles in the middle of the stamp circles. This gave it a bit more texture. I had some clear round stickers in colours similar to what I had used on the background, so I stuck them on randomly.
I printed a girl I had in my digital stash for ages and cut and pasted her. Then I paper pieced 4 kites and stuck some string and the kites on the page. I also use some scraps to stick embellishments on the strings of the kites. I doodled etc on the girl to give her a bit of lift. Whilst I was doing this the words from "Lets go fly a kite" from Mary Poppins kept going through my head, so I wrote sentences from the lyrics around the stickers and the stamped circles. I finished the page off with faux stitching around the edge and Distress oxide Vintage Photo ink all around the edges. Colleen had included tags in her journal for each of us and asked that we make one in return. I made mine to match my page. I have made a quick video which wont upload here but I will include a link in the comments on the AASG page, when I post notice of this blog. Hope it is ok for you Colleen.
