My spread in Lisa's LYRICS Journal

I chose Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine by Tom T. Hall as it was a favourite song of my Father and always reminds me of him. It was the 1st thing that popped into my head when Lisa chose her topic.
I started with a watermelon napkin as the background and debated whether to Gesso over it...I didn't!
I then arranged the images which took some time. I added some Washi Tape with music notes and piano keys and tried to include a picture of Tom T. Hall. I ended up cutting out the Guitar that he was playing and used that and an image of a bottle of Watermelon Wine.
On the flap I used a couple of images shown below.

Hope you like it Lisa.

Lisa roaming in Louise's Gypsy Journal!

I was really looking forward to working in this journal: great  theme; Louise always makes lovely journals to work in; and last one of the round and year!

I'd done  a bit of research earlier in the year from my faithful  Pinterest, and decided I'd like to play with tarot cards.  But not literally.  I've never had my fortune told, my palm read, my cards read.  I'm not overly superstitious: I'm happy to have a black cat cross my path, as long as it stops so I can pat it.  I'm not a huge believer in portents, or signs, or religion, come to that.  I'm too pragmatic.  But I'm not a non-believer either (which probably doesn't make much sense!).  What I mean is: I think something is out there, but I'm not sure what it is.  And so many peeps have had wonderful (or scary) things happen to them, that I can't just put down to science.  Case in point: my mother in law passed away 9 years ago from cancer, and both my sister and law and her cousin have contacted her via separate clairvoyants.  So.....

Anyway, back to the cards.  Tarot cards are broken into two sections, Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.  I chose to concentrate on the Minor Arcana, or suits (similar to normal decks of cards).  Why?  Mainly because I sort of cheated and wanted only good readings - there looks like a fair bit of doom and gloom with the Major Arcana.  So I picked cards that appear to tell you happy stuff.  Which is why I did not do a 5 - not nice in any of the four suits!  I got all my tarot info from this website.

So first thing I did is make a dozen tarot cards, using an old deck of cards that I sanded, painted and teabagged.

• The Ace of Swords - for achievement, victory, determination, courage
• Two of Swords - balance, conflict resolution, mediation
• Three of Cups - celebration, success, security
• Four of Wands - new beginnings, happiness, peace
• Six of Cups - reconciliation, return, reminiscing
• Seven of Pentacles - perseverance, long term success, endeavour
• Eight of Wands - journeys & travel, ventures, goals
• Nine of Cups - generous, strength, satisfaction
• Ten of Pentacles - family, fortune, prosperity
• Page of Swords - reason, analytical skills, change
• Queen of Wands - thoughtful, loving, honest
• King of Cups - compassion, integrity, maturity

Then onto my gypsy.  I drew in my seer, then watercoloured the background with blues and purples,   followed by some salt.  I wanted it to look galaxy-like, which it didn't, but I liked it anyway.

Next I watercoloured my gypsy using Koh-i-Noor paints and a bit of white gouache.

She's holding the cards, and I wanted her to really hold the cards, so I created her hands from separate pieces of double thickness watercolour paper, and glued them on.

So all of the cards can be taken out, and switched around etc!  She looks a bit weird holding nothing...

And here she is holding her tarot cards.

I hope you like this spread Louise, and that your cards mean that 2019 will be a year of good things for you! xxx

Deb and guest art by Jake in Anabelle's Egypt Journal- Dec 2018

My son Jake got really interested in this topic as I researched for my entry in Annabelle's journal. So as I was getting ready to start , Jake asked if he could do a picture in the journal as well. I messaged Annabelle and she very graciously gave her permission for Jake to add his art to this spread! He has been watching you tube videos on drawing and so he went off and watched a video and came back with this drawing of Anubis that he had coloured in texta and coloured pencil. We cut it out and stuck it onto a piece of scrap gray card stock. we scored the top of this pieces so it could lift up like a flap. Underneath we added an Egyptian Pharaoh word search for you to enjoy Annabelle. I had prepped the background of this page in water colour. I then added some Egyptian hieroglyphics in fine liner above this.

For my half of the spread, I drew a cat. This represented the Goddess Bast. I painted it with Gansai Tambi water colour paints with swirls. I highlighted it with Posca paint pens. I did the background with Lyra water soluble crayons then used water and a paintbrush to get rid of the scratchiness of crayon so that it looked like a desert sunset behind the cat. I then drew some flowers with Fabercastell pitt pens to finish off. I hope you enjoyed this Annabelle and Thank you so much for letting Jake contribute to this lovely journal. He was very proud and learned a few new things along with his mum on the subject.

Colleen's pages in Pam's Words of Wisdom

Pam, your journal is beautiful & I love the big pages in it.

I started with some gesso & a napkin that I had bought recently.

I then used my distress paints over the napkin, allowing little bits to show through, & using the dauber on the paints, made circles for flowers. I added some tissue paper with flowers & birds as well.

I then outlined the painted flowers & birds & did some stamping & doodling.

There was an oops moment when I discovered black pen all over my hand & arm, & smudged flowers, Baby wipe to the rescue, & I think it turned out ok.

And here is the finished page. I love the pretty colours & they are so bright.

I hope you like this Pam.

Deb's contribution to Jenny's Stuff and Nonsense. Nov 2018

Hi Jenny. I loved your theme, it let me be as complex or as simple as I liked!

Seeing as we are close to Christmas I decided to do a non-traditional Christmas theme.

To start with I applied white Gesso to the pages in this Journal. I then applied black, blue, violet and white paint with a sponge to create an Ombre background.

I then used some embossing paste (as I had run out of modelling paste) and mixed it with some yellow Dusty Attic acrylic paint which I then applied through a Dusty Attic stencil called Cityscape. I repeated the pattern across the page adjusting the position of the stencil to make the skyline vary in the height of the buildings. I let this dry naturally.

Using another DA stencil called Map, I applied distress ink in Twisted Citroen through it on both pages. I then used markers and gel pens to draw looped dashes around the pages and writing various cities and countries names, linking the maps across the two pages to show Santas' flight.

I hope you have enjoyed this layout Jenny and wish you a Merry Christmas!

Last journal for me

I have had a lot of fun this year it’s been a great journal swap. The only problem I have had with it is this..blogging. I keep forgetting to take process pics, I just get in the zone and well need I say more. I haven’t found Blogger very iPad friendly (of course it could just be user error) I can only see so much of the page I can’t scroll down at all so half way through I can’t see what I am doing, so I have to keep them short, all that aside I have loved working in everyone’s journals, they all have fantastic themes.
Sharon’s Vintage circus is my last one.
What a fantastic little journal, so much easier if you can remove the page to work on...I am a messy artist.
I decided to do front and back of the page.
On one I did a tightrope walker, I found a great reference photo to work from but I could not get in as much detail due to the small page size but I still think it works. I used watercolour and watercolour pencils.

The back of the page I decided to some animal cages, once again using watercolours and then adding collage. They are very shiny gold but I can never get a good photo of metallic watercolours.

I thought I took more photos but these are the only 2 I could find, sorry about that.

Thank you all so much for letting me join in this fantastic journal swap. I have felt very privileged to be able to work in everyone’s precious journals. And thanks for all the hard work put in by the organisers,you did a terrific job!

Dreams with Pam

Well what can I say.  Last one! What a great year of Art Journal sharing it has been and I have ended up with Robyn's lovely little Art Journal.

This post will be short and sweet as I forgot to take progress pics.  I was inspired by a picture I saw somewhere on the internet and tried to give it a go from memory, but my memory is not so hot, so I hope it worked out OK.

I gessoed the pages and then added dylusions paints because I wanted a rich colour effect.  Stamped with black in and gold paint.  I used Viva Gold through a stencil and then added some bling.  I hope you like it Robyn.

The Magic of Alice created for Deborah Stephens by Janie O'Brien. The is the last journal I completed for round 6.

Most of the work is collecting images on my computer and filing them for later selection. I usually do this during the preceding month, in bed at night. I gradually developed an idea and honed in on suitable images. I then resized them for their purpose, fancy cut and glued them down. I used holographic foil for the keyhole and touched up the metallic items with gilt ink. The fumes from the "drink me" bottle were created with white distress crayon and glitter glue.

I decided to "do" the back as well, using Dylusions sprays and collage components. I hope you can read the dialogue: click on the image to make it larger.

My Spread in Louise's Gypsy Journal

This is it with the flap as well. I started with a napkin for the backgound and used a different napkin on the flap. I had so many ideas that I almost became overwhelmed. I have a lot of Gypsy pics on my PC and then found a magazine that I got from The Salvos a while ago. It had pictures of Indian Gypsies and that got me going. The metal and bead embellishments came from a top that my Sister-in-Law had given me. It was fun chopping it up. The beaded trim came from a placemat - once again from The Salvos.
I really enjoyed doing this spread and hope you like it Louise. Your journal is sensational.

Here is a selection of close-ups

This shows the other side of the flap.

Pondering the Exotic

Janie's Exotic arrived the other day and I was determined to get to it early this month, so I had thought about the spice markets and wonderful tiles and colours of Morocco as being about the most exotic thing I could imagine- however the lovely Lisa Jones already took Janie's journal to Morocco so the pondering continued. 

Thinking back over my life - what have I done that is exotic, I mean I love gardening and herbs and trees and art and making compost-  There was that time the circus came to town and I raced down there as they were leaving to collect the elephant poo to make my most exotic compost heap ever!

Hmm - maybe not- there are already elephants in Janie's journal and the other images, well nothing exotic came to mind, however the kaffir lime tree and the lemongrass that eventually got that compost loved it. 

Oh well, I had some time to play today so bugger it I will just jump in and let it unfold.  

I started with a magenta oil pastel - that is pretty exotic, right?

and I scrawled the word exotic across the double page.

Looking around my desk I spied the stencil I used for Alice so I grabbed 2 warm and 2 cool 'exotic' colours. I love pink and orange together, it makes me think of Indian sari's and teal is very exotic, as well as my favourite colour, next I picked ultramarine.  I played with the stencil to cover the page and my word.

It was wonderfully vivid, but all those blank spaces! Grab another exotic stencil and some black paint and work in strips to cover some of those spaces and I am loving it.

 Then I scratched off the acrylic paint from the oil pastel to re-expose my word and outlined it in a white posca paint pen.  And in all of that exotic- maybe even chaotic background what would be more exotic than a calm white egret.  He looks like the page was built around him- pulling the whole thing together.

 So I went in without any idea of where I would end up simply following my impulses and intuition and I am very happy with how it turned out and it was lots of fun.

Robyn's Art Nouveau

This is my pages for Roz Art Noveau Journal 

I did a door page with Ros all dolled up in her beautiful  Art Nouveau outfit

 I am going to post it off to you Roz so you get it before Christmas

 I had so much fun doing the journals

 I hope we have one next year xxx

AAJS6 : Pam's "Word's of Wisdom" by Sharon

Hi Everyone!

 

Sharing my pages in Pam's "Words of Wisdom" journal!

 

I loved the A4 sized pages - lots of space to work in!

 

 

I started by adding blobs of paint to the pages and them rolled over all the paint in different directions with a brayer until the pages were covered - being careful not end up with a mess of blended colour that looked like mud LOL!!!

 

 

Of course I used paper doll elements from various collage sheets from my fav collage store @Etsy "Art Tea Life". I had a lot of fun putting together all the bits to make these paper dolls!!! It was time consuming fussy cutting all the bits and pieces and gluing them together but well worth the effort!

 

 

 

Next I stamped all the letters to make the wording for my "Words of Wisdom"!

Whatever you decide to do make sure it makes you happy!

 

I then arranged everything on the pages and glued all the elements to the page - quite a few elements to glue on!!! Love how the pages look!

 

 

Hope Pam enjoys her journal when it arrives home soon!!

 

Sharon :)