My spread in Annabelle's "Walk like an Egyptian."

I found this Paper Doll via Pinterest and some images from The New York Library. I used spray ink and a stencil for the background and added the beaded fabric that I had in my stash.
Hope you like it Annabelle.

Here is a close up...

Life is a (Vintage) Circus

Some times I think my life is a circus,

 there are certainly enough dare devil occurrences

and no shortage of clowns.  

This month has been very circus focused

 as I live near the show ground 

and the Rio circus from Brazil 

has been there performing 

so I have had their lights and tent viewed from my window

 and some folks from work also attended and enjoyed it. 

However aside from my own very dramatic family circus 

I have had the pleasure of playing in 

Sharon Rogers's lovely Vintage Circus

 travelling art journal from round 6 of 

the Australian Art Journal Swap. 

I have been super busy but had my vintage circus radar peculating in the back of my mind and nothing was grabbing me. I was in a shop though and there was a notice up from an old news paper story about a long ago flood that had a circus stranded in town and Samson the strongman was assisting in the rescue efforts and also put on a benefit show to support the town. 

He must have loved our dear Grafton as he then stayed on and became a shop keeper or maybe it was a publican. 

We almost had a strongman theme  but unfortunately I didn't make the Vintage Circus connection at the time so went on my merry way and can not remember the shop or all the details beyond my curiosity in that moment and googling gave me no answers either, meanwhile time was ticking so I went back to good old google and started looking at Vintage Circus images for inspiration. While looking I didn't want to use any animals and I don't think animals in circuses are a good idea even though they could have been a great page and of course once I go going I just had fun and played and I think they fit the theme ok. 

Lisa playing in Annabelle's Egyptian Journal!

Annabelle's journal is a lovely A4 affair with 300gsm paper, and all the entries in it look great!  I love how peeps can come up with so many different ideas for a theme.

I had an urge to use teabags, and something to do with hieroglyphics.  I'd made a hieroglyphic piece last year for the 52 Week Illo Challenge I was in, and used teabags in that too.

So I
actually
remembered
to take progress
pics this time!

First step was to collage the teabags onto the journal.

If you haven't tried playing with teabags yet, I really recommend having a go - the colours that you get from the different teas are beautiful. 

and each teabag is different! 

If you'd like to have a go, all you need to do is have a cup of tea (or just steep some teabags, if you're not a tea drinker). 

Once you've finished your tea (or give it 5 minutes if you're just steeping), squeeze the excess liquid out of the teabags and leave them to dry out.  I just stick mine on a plate in an out of the way spot in the kitchen, or leave them in the sun if it's a nice day.

You can apparently dry them out in the oven, but sometimes if they dry too quickly they can become a bit brittle, and tear when you're extracting the leaves.

Once dry, either cut the top off, if it's a crimped style, or remove staple or thread if it's not, and empty the tea leaves.  I don't mind if some leaves remain, as it adds texture.  Open the bag out fully.

Adhere to your journal using matte gel medium.  Because the teabags are porous, you can just actually put the teabag down where you want it, and paint the medium over the top.  Easy!

 Next I added some lines
down the page with a
water activated pencil. 
I just like the colour and
interest that it gives.

Then I sketched in my design
and outlined it all with
a Uni Pin fineliner pen. 
These are great because they're waterproof.

For my next step I firstly
watercoloured the design
in Payne's Grey, and then
highlighted bits with my
trusty Uniball gold pen.

Take care with these pens
because unfortunately
they're not waterproof!

I felt that the gold didn't really stand
out enough, so I then outlined
everything with my General's
charcoal white pencil. 

These pencils have a really
nice feel, and you can water-
activate them too.

I added some words to the left of the
spread, sealed it all with gloss gel medium,
and I was done!

Here is a closeup, and the
full spread!

I found all of these images on Pinterest, so they're probably all from different eras!

Nevertheless...




The main pic is of the god Heh, spirit of the million years. 
The birds represent Horus,
the falcon god.

Hope you like it Annabelle, it was fun putting all the different elements together!

Cheers, Lisa xx

Deb's Entry in Pam's Words of Wisdom Journal

Children say the most bizzare and honest things and are often really wise because they see things so literally.

So my journal entry was about words of wisdom that children say called Out of the mouth of babes.

I started with Dylusions paints for my base with broad brushstrokes. I used a set of script alphabet stamps and opaque white stayoz ink to stamp out the title in the middle of the page. I went over this with a paint pen. 

I then used a stamp set from Inkadinkado which had children's quotes on it to stamp onto the page. I finished this with random background stamps to fill in the spaces.Below are some of the children's words of wisdom which make me laugh. I hope you enjoy this simple page Pam.

Deb's Post in Colleens Paper Napkin Art Journal

This is my entry in Colleen's PaperNapkin Art journal. 

I first used a pink paper napkin base that had shoes and Cupcakes on it and secured it ti the journal with Gel medium. I then took another paper napkin that had ladies on it and some words and tore them then stuck them on with Gel medium as well. I then applied crackle clear paint all over it and let it dry. Once dry, I used Mr Huey's calico brown ink and painted it over the crackle and wiped off the excess. The ink stains in between the cracks to give the pages a look of being agds and water damaged. I then went over some of the images with Posca Paint pens and sharpies to outline the words. 

I hope you like this page Colleen, even though it has a darker theme than what I usually play with, I'm acknowledging my issues lol.

Music & lyrics in Lisa's journal by Colleen.

Music & Lyrics, what a great topic Lisa.

I chose "Colour My World" by Petula Clark as it's always been a favourite of mine.

I started by painting some card with orange paint, & then stamping flowers all over it.

I cut them out ready for the pages. I also stamped on orange card some more images & punched them out.

I painted the pages with blue, yellow, & green paint, & stamped & stencilled some grass.

I then arranged the cut flowers over the yellow & glued them down.

I punched out some small circles & drew smiley faces on them, & glued them on too. Painted some Hearts in the sky & added some more grass. Printed out the words & added them.

So you can colour my world with sunshine yellow each day

Oh you can colour my world with happiness all the way

Just take the green from the grass & the blue from the sky up above

And if you colour my world just paint it with your love

Just colour my world, mmh

Sunshine yellow, orange blossoms, laughing faces everywhere, yeah

Just colour my world.

I hope you like it Lisa, it was a lot of fun to do this page.

Gypsy by Pam.

Another month, another beautiful Art Journal delivered to my home.  In September I received the amazing and imaginative Gypsy Journal by Louise.  Loaded with brilliant art by my fellow artists.  And so, another panic attack by me.  What should I do?, will it be good enough? I hope so.

Finally an image in a magazine prompted an inspiration for me to follow.  My spread would be a Gypsy camp. And so it began:

To begin, some background.  I stuck down some tissue for texture and painted the  sky and foreground. Then I did some stencils and stamping to add some forest types to background.

Next I drew the campfire and coloured it with Neocolor11, water colour crayons. added some highlights to the flames with glitter gel pen. I painted some paper and punched out some rocks to surround the fire and glued it all down.

Next I had a frantic search for my inspirational image, which was the caravan.  After turning the house upside down, I finally found it on the kitchen table?? I thought it was in another title. I copied the image and cut it out and stuck it down as well.

This is actually the finished spread and you can see I have added a lot more greenery with leafy die cuts.  A little pen work added a quote...."In winter I plot and plan. In spring I move."

Here is a close up of the camp fire.

I hope it lives up to Louise's expectations.  It was a real pleasure to add to her lovely Art Journal.

Janie O'Brien: Stuff and Nonsense

September brought me Jenny James, Stuff and Nonsense. I have very much enjoyed creating this double spread, and I hope Jenny enjoys it too.

This month I didn't bother with the steps, as the end result is pretty well a self explanatory collage.

Each of the above pages form the left & right hand sides of a double spread.

Robyn's Exotic Fantasy

These are my pages I did in Janie O'Brian's Exotic Fantasy Journal. I used a Digital Program to create the background pages found images on google and altered them in Digital Program with Janie's face hope you like it Janie xxx

AAJS6: Sharon's Pages in Lisa's "Music Lyrics" Journal

Hi Everyone!!!

 

 

Here's my spread in Lisa's Journal - what a great theme - fabulous pages in this one - a great selection of music lyrics by the contributors so far!

 

 

As you can see I've gone back to the 60's with Sonny & Cher and their classic "I Got You Babe" song!

 

I started by covering the pages with some white paint. And then I printed the song lyrics on tissue paper - always a process fraught with danger!!!!!!!!! I coloured the digi stamp with pastel pencils and fussy cut. Digi stamp is by Sandra Caldwell and is a perfect caricature of Sonny & Cher!

 

 

I adhered the song lyrics to the journal page with gel medium. Note: I tor around the wording to give a jagged edge and make it blend into the page better when adhered and not look like a piece of paper just stuck on!

 

I chose a stencil that I thought looked a bit 60's/70's LOL and sponged yellow and purple paint to match the colouring of my image.

 

I cut out little scrabble type cardboard letters to make the title "I Got You Babe" and "Sonny and Cher" and glued them to the page with the main image. I also stamped a tiny little flower stamp from Blank Page Muse over the pages for some added "Flower Power"!

 

 

I am so happy with how this turned out!

 

Lisa - I hope you like it!!

 

Sharon

 

 



You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth ... Meatloaf

It was a hot summer night and yes, I took the red rose from the wolf - but only because I thought it was Michael J Fox as Teenwolf :) lol It must have been while he was kissing me! :)

I don't think we need the lyrics here because I'm sure, just like me, you all already have the whole song dancing around in your head! This is one of my favourite songs :) 

Also bouncing around as I painted was Lambsy squeeling "it's the wolf, it's the wolf" ... then, because it just happens, I hear Mutley sniggering and Penelope calling "hyelp, hyelp" :) lol #thenuttyinsidesofmymind - I love all the old cartoons <3

So anyway, back to Lisa's beautiful book...

The background started as two colours of Distress Inks, Peacock Feathers and Salty Ocean. Its created from blending over and around each other using the Mini Ink Blending Tool, taking the ink straight from the inkpad.

I then spritzed the page with water (spray bottle) and let it dry in front of the heater. When its not so cold I use a heat-tool and when its summer, leave it outside in the sunshine!

I repeated this layer a second time, blending around and around until it was like a pretty blue sky.

For the third layer, I used Distress Oxide Inks in Broken China and Faded Jeans, blending everywhere, then splattered (flicking with wet fingers gives bigger drops than a spritz!) and let it dry again.

Next I blended around the outer edge (and a bit in the middle) with Distress Inks in Chipped Sapphire and Blueprint Sketch, spritzed and splattered more water, blended some more - then lastly, blended over more Peacock Feathers along the bottom and Chipped Sapphire along the top.

Jane Davenport Gesso was used to block out the two characters of my page... animals are always so much easier to do than people!

The rest of the painting happened without the camera witnessing the process!

The girl was painted using Jane Davenport Acrylic Paints. Having the fleshtone premixed helps alot...   I used to waste so much paint trying to mix skin colours (everyone would end up being orange or pink).

The moon was dry brushed using gesso and the wording was drawn by hand using a black marker.

My lovely wolf (oooh, I've just noticed I missed putting his tooth back in) ... he was mostly coloured using Derwent Inktense pencils, with some layers painted using a waterbrush as well as paint to get the thick fluffy fur.

The rose and its stem was painted with JD acrylics with highlights on the petals added using gesso.

Thankfully its art, so it didn't stress me out too much when my rose didn't look like a real one (not even close!), and my wolf, while still looking rugged and furry, lost his wild streak somewhere between the pencil sketch and giving him green eyes.

It was mostly enjoyable to create and as long as Lisa likes it, its all good :)

Thanks for reading my blog post :) Hope you have a wonderful, creative happy day!

:D

Jenny