Joans page in Jan's Journal "Favourites"

Jan's journal with the theme of " Favourite" is another lovely small journal.  It already has some gorgeous layouts created in it.  I was going away for a three day crafting weekend and this was one of the things I took with me to do.   I had planned to do heaps of things but actually did not finish one thing.

I started off thinking that I would fulfill the theme  by using my favourite inks and other media and would find a phrase to suit.  However my crafting muse was no where to be found that weekend and after gessoing over the background twice, because I did not like what I had done.  I finally settled on a pale pink background created using distress oxides.  I did no more to it that weekend.

Picking it up some time later in week at home, I was still not sure where I was going with it, so I added to background with some stencils and background stamps.   I then stenciled, drew and painted some flowers and grass along the bottom.  I then decided that some of the flowers needed to be raised so I used clear texture paste to paint on top of some of the flowers.  I still had no idea where I was going, so I thought I would approach it from another direction and find a quote that had something to do with favourites.  I started flipping through some books that were on my table, one of which was an older copy of Winnie the Pooh, which I have used in collage etc, so not much of it left and about two pages in I came across the phrase on the left page,  and a few pages down, the quote on the right page.

Now most of you know that I cannot draw to save myself, but the drawings in this little book were so simple, I thought that I could perhaps copy them.  Now to find a place for Pooh to sit amongst the grass.  I squeezed him in somewhat on top of a couple of flowers and drew Piglet further up the page.
Although no masterpieces, I was pleased with the drawings for me.  I then wrote the quotes by hand in pencil and went over them in gel pen.

After all that it was a very simple page in the end.  I hope Jan will see past the bad drawing and will know that I tried my best.

Joan's page in Pam's "Teesha Moore style" journal

Pam's journal is a lovely almost square journal made from good quality watercolour paper.  It already has some great pages done by Pam and the other artists participating in Round 3 of the circle/travelling journal event.

Pam has chosen the theme of "Teesha Moore Inspired".  When I first got it last month and I was talking to Lisa Jones, I flippantly said to her, that it was my worse nightmare to have to do a layout in this style.  Don't get me wrong, I like Teesha's art journal pages, and have since she first started using Zettiology in her art. It is just that it is not my "goto at anytime" style.   I read the information that Pam included on Zettiology and oohed and aahed over the layouts already in the journal, but I was still not feeling it.  Now I know I could have gone to Pinterest or the web and downloaded some digital sheets to do the layouts but in my mind that is cheating and taking the easy way out and besides I did not want to be unduly influenced by the the examples.

I started by going through magazines and pulling out pages with colourful backgrounds to be cut into strips to make the borders around the two and half pages. Pam's journal has flaps on every other page and the next blank page had the flap. I cut up about five different pages with some repeating colours.
Then I flipped through the magazines to find some interesting faces, legs, arms,and clothes that could be used for putting together some weird creatures. I also remembered I had some great wrapping paper that I have shared with a few of you in the group early in the year that had lots of doodling and colour and some animals, so I got the sheet and cut out some bits and pieces from there.

I still had no idea of what I was going to do, but I put some gesso, followed by dylusions paints in  various colours down on the page.  It was a mistake putting different colours, I should have used only one colour on each page, but I did not realise this till after I had started to collage and by then it was too late to change it. I then stenciled using stencils from Mike Deakin and Tim Hotze and white and gold paint. Anyway now as forecasted the nightmare began.  I must have had about twenty bodies and heads and loose limbs on the table by now and (A) I still had no idea how to begin, and (B) I constantly kept losing the cutout I was looking for on my crowded untidy table and everytime I could not find a piece, I had to turn it upside down even further.  After two hours I had managed to stick a border using the pieces around two sides of all the pages.  Did I like it, was I happy with it?
No, but it was a start.  Five days and nights later, after changing my mind a few times, I actually ended up with most of the pages done.  Now came the second part of the nightmare, I hate my writing and I had to actually write on the pages.  For this I apologise to Pam in advance.  I should have just left the pages with no phrases it would have been better. Unfortunately once I wrote with a black posca pen, it was too late to change it.  I tried going over it a few times with alternating between white and black paint, but I just made it considerable worse, so again I am sorry for the terrible job Pam.  You can always paint over the top when you get it home.  Anyway I managed to invoke my inner Teesha Moore, but maybe it would have been better if she stayed hidden. LOL.
 

MONOTONES is almost finished

It was a real pleasure to receive my mums travelling art journal- Monotones, and have it in my hands, to touch and look at and then to play in the remaining pages.

I wanted to try and work in the colours not present yet and it was pretty hard because this gorgeous journal already had a rainbow




Monotones is a bit of a challenge for me who is very partial to the entire range of colours and using them quite liberally. I found there was no gold and no red so I went with them. 

The first 2 pages were play and fun and I am also using them as journal prompts in our Australian Art Swap Group and the third one was much more personal.

I recount memories from a long ago family holiday and include some natural elements from that trip.

I have another page in process and am leaving a double page for my beloved mama to play in and then her whole journal is filled!

I did this little one on the back page and I made a video if you want a look through the whole thing. It features many artists work from the Australian Art Journal Swap.

Lisa J's entry in Robyn's 'Travel the World' Journal

Robyn's journal has nearly finished its 'Travel around the World' and there are some great pages in there of where people have been, and where they'd like to go!

I'd like to travel... um... pretty much everywhere!  If I were doing a spread on where I'd like to go, I would have a hard time choosing.  Two faves would be Paris and Ireland, and they had already been done, by Pam and Joan.

So I decided to concentrate on a place that I've been to twice now - Vietnam.  We first went about two years ago, and took the then 15 yo boy and 13 yo girl, for four weeks.  They tolerated it, but didn't love it as much as Scott and I did.  So in May '16 we left the kids at home for almost three weeks and went on our own!  (Don't worry, there was some supervision... :))

We took a huge amount of photos, and I chose two of the places, and photos, that resonated with me, to do 'urban sketches' in Robyn's journal.

The pages are basically A5 size, so an A4 spread.  For my first spread, I drew a scene that we'd had the pleasure of witnessing in a small town southwest of Hanoi, called Mai Chau.

I've included a couple of process photos.  My favourite medium is watercolour, and I generally do a pencil outline first, followed by inking in with a .1 waterproof pen.  Pitt pen, Uni Pin or Micron are my usuals.

 

Then I'll watercolour and add journalling.   

The journalling reads: Mai Chau, pronounced My Cho, is a small town southwest of Hanoi.  Here you'll see the quintessential Vietnamese countryside: terraced rice paddies, bubbling streams, stilt houses.  It's a beautiful part of a beautiful country, and this scene is from a photo we took in October 2014 whilst bike riding.  Scott and I have now been to Vietnam twice and hope to go again!

I have done this scene before, for a theme in the FB '52 Week Illustration Challenge' that I'm a part of.  Much easier the second time around!

For my second spread, I chose a scene from a village on the central coast, Nhon Ly.  Tried to do this one in more of a loose style.  The woman in the right foreground didn't turn out too well; she certainly wasn't that ugly in real life!

The journalling reads: Nhon Ly, pronounced Ne-on Lee, is a small village near the city of Quy Nhon (Kwee Ne-on) on the central coast of Vietnam.  It has amazing views of the South China Sea, dotted with fishing boats, and several huge statues of Buddha.  Like every village in Vietnam, it also has a central market where you can buy your fresh food for the day.  A lot of Vietnamese people don't have fridges so need to buy fresh every day!  Which is why the food is always delicious!  Sadly for Nhon Ly, a massive golf course and resort is being built nearby, which will likely change things greatly for the locals...

We heartily recommend Vietnam as a holiday destination if you haven't been (or even if you have - so much to see!)  The people are friendly, the food is great, it's amazingly cheap, and the scenery is breathtaking.

As I've said, Scott and I will be going back again.  Scott is pretty much hooked - he's now a destination expert on TripAdvisor for Vietnam, and has started a blog with his trip reports and some of our photos - Seriously Not.

Hope you like it Robyn!

Cheers, Lisa

Deb's Pinterest - Water Girl by Natalie S

Hi everyone, I've created this journal page for Deb's Pinterest journal. I've used Pinterest as a means to teach myself how to journal with different mediums. In this piece I started out with gesso stencilling a few ferns. Then I watered down blue, green and yellow acrylic paint to create a wash. I used these colors to create my background. Then I drew in my Water Girl using Derwent Color Pencils and markers. I then made thicker mixes of green and blue paints and gave her hair. I hope you like her xx

Aphorisms as I see them.

Wendy's journal is a delight.  I love the feel of it, it's very light and very colourful.  Thank heavens for Prof Google, as I had never really heard the word before.

So armed with all the knowledge I could gain from said Prof G I set to work. I decided to base my work on being kind and so, here it is.

While I had Wendy's journal I decided to photograph the other pages to share as not every post gets blogged.  I will include names where I can read signatures.

Cover and Wendy's spread.

Not sure who did the Picasso.

                                     

 This is Robyn's cleverness

This spread is from Gail Bourke.

Can't see a name on this luscious spread.  It is wonderfully detailed and textured.

From Lisa Griffin-Gledhill

This lovely piece is from Rose Bosse/ Rose/ Possum.....not sure which name :)

Lisa Jones has worked her magic.

Some lovely work here from Joan Mannix.

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

Monochrome by Joan

I started this Journal page at the inaugural real life meeting of  the ArtMesaJ group. (Melbourne Eastern Suburbs Art Journalers) last month. I decided to once again get out of my colour range comfort zone and go with Pink for this journal.  I painted background with dylusions and other paint  ranges of various tones of pink.  Then I used stencils and texture paste to make some flowers in corners. Added some pink  tissue paper on top right of right page which had some inbuilt sparkles.  I did not like the colour that the left page had ended up, so I covered it in white with pink tissue paper. I then used some sprays to drip some different pinks on it.  Then some more stenciling over both pages with some lighter coloured pinks.  Added half a doily coloured with gelatos to edge of left page, added some random text paper pieces , with had been coloured with distress ink. Used some cardstock borders on edges of pages, which had been give to me at the meet, by Lena. Then added some plastic  flowers stickers to background. Also added  a piece of pink, white and black outlined paper to bottom left of right hand  page.  Stuck some button stickers on right hand border and large one on left page. Then I covered all the buttons with glossy accents to give them a 3D appearance. Painted and doodled on some chipboard cogs and stuck some on both pages. Put a 3D plastic butterfly on the right page as the focus point. Wove ribbon through a piece of cane type fabric I had, which frays as soon as you cut it,  but when it is glued to page it works great. Made the ribbon long enough to hang below the page and attached a button to each end of the ribbon.  Stuck this on the left page.Created a paper doll, using some of the same paper to make her dress, and stuck some little bling on her hair, neck, gloves and shoes. Added glittered chipboard alpha to make the phrase, 
"Everything is better in Pink", a saying I had used on a digital postcard a few months ago.  Then lastly stuck my doll on the left page as its focus.  I really enjoyed doing this piece, it has great texture in real life and much more vibrant than the pictures show.   Getting it started at the meet was a great jumpstart to my creativeness.  Hope you like it Pam.

Pinterest for Deb.

I have never really used Pinterest, not at all sure how it works, not at all sure I want to know as I waste enough time already on Facebook  :)

Having said that I do search there sometimes for appropriate quotes for journal pages and ATCs.  So I thought that could well be my subject.

Deb is sending round an unbound journal in the making and has supplied some beautiful paper to use.  So my first task was to bury the white page.  Out came the Dylusions spray, some modelling paste, stencils and gesso.

So that was the beginning.  Then I needed to decide what kind if quotes I would use.  I thought about Buddha, Confucious, Rumi, politicians and celebrities, but finally decided to honour the wise woman Maya Angelou.  Her gentle but strong words are inspiring.

With the words I chose printed and affixed, with faux ATCs and framed Journal Pages, I was done.

Hope it fits your criteria Deborah.

Lisa J - Working in Natalie's 'Emotions' Journal

Natalie's journal is a nice A4 size binder, though when I received it, I didn't actually know whose journal it was - sorry Nat, your instructions have gone missing along the way!

A check back through the blog showed what Natalie was looking for in her journal.

I decided to base my pages on the green eyed monster - envy, greed, jealousy and all those other unpleasant emotions.  Sometimes the grass does look greener on the other side of the fence, or we try to keep up with the Jones' (easy for me, since I'm a Jones!), but a reminder now and then to look at the positives in your life and be happy is always good!

I started with a gelli-printed background with some collaged bits and some stamped flowers.  

On the right, same background, then I painted a green eyed girl on it.  The writing in the background is the lyrics to Jesse J's 'Price Tag' which I thought went well with the theme.

And both pages:

I enjoyed doing this spread, hope you like it Natalie!

Cheers, Lisa

Lisa J - Working in Lee's 'Layers' Journal

Lee's journal 'Layers' has a real junque journal feel, and Lee's brief was to "stretch yourself, try something new, don't worry about the result." She said she was "not precious about art, it's all about expression," and "above all, I don't believe that 'tidy', 'neat', or 'pre-planned' have any place in the process."

Great! I thought.  Though Lee also said this journal wasn't so much about physical layers, I did want to try and incorporate some layers into my work.

On Pinterest, I found an amazing quote to use, which I printed using a new font I found:

This quote gave me an idea to do a face with many different layers.  So I drew a template,  

and used it 5 times with different mediums.  

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph each of the faces after I was done!

The mediums I used were: 

• water soluble pencil
• acrylics
• gel pens
• texta with different stencils overlaying it, and
• Micron pen on a scrap piece of paper that was used under whatever art I was working on.

I then tore all of these new faces up (that was hard!) and put them back together again all mixed up.  

It looked weird but I liked it!

I covered the double page spread with different book pages, then laid my new face on the right hand page.  I intended to do the above quote on the left.

But then, I had so many face pieces left that I thought, I should do one on the left side as well!  

So I did.  But then came the dilemma of where to put the quote?  

Easy, I thought.  I'll print it on baking paper and lay it over the top.

But that didn't work; my printer wouldn't recognise the paper as it was too thin.  

So I glued a piece to some photocopy paper, thinking I'd remove the baking paper afterwards.  Still wouldn't go through.

Next I tried a Creative Memories plastic page protector cut to size.  Yes!  That seemed to work - until I realised that the ink wouldn't dry and it just smeared everywhere.  

Must be my el cheapo printer, I thought, so decided to email the word document to myself at work to print there.

The next day at work I attempted to print it, on another CM page protector.... but since it was on a word document, it didn't recognise the font I'd used, so gave me good old Courier instead.  No thanks!

So that night I again sent it to work, this time as a PDF.  Yes, that would work.  

Thus on Thursday at work I again attempted to print it, using the bypass tray (I was a bit worried about the page protector getting stuck in our expensive new copier, and having to explain to the boss why it needed a repair...!)  But again it didn't work, getting stuck half way and smearing everywhere.

I was almost at wit's end then, thinking there must be a way I can do this!  As a last resort, I tried printing again with an A4 heavy duty page protector.  Success at last!  Though it did get stuck again, and one of the lines is very light.  BUT IT WORKED.

This is definitely not the prettiest art I've every made, an my daughter Mel thinks the gel pen face is really creepy. but I'm quite happy with the result.

Here are the two faces:         

And here's the end result, with the quote over the top!

Hope you like it Lee!

Blogging about Lee's "LAYERS" Journal

Lee's journal is a lovely size and has a real grunge art appeal on the outside.  I love all the pages created by  the other artists.

I started my page inspired by a saying which my late mother {very Irish}used,  when we or someone else was been judgemental about someone who had upset us, or whom we were talking about and making assumptions.  Mum use to say that regardless of how things seem on the outside that no one knows what really goes on in a persons life or what they were experiencing that we did not see or know about that may be  effecting how they were acting or reacting.  Her saying was, "No one knows what goes on behind the curtains." 

After my layer of gesso had dried, I stuck some a sample piece of lovely pink and green stripped linen across both pages. This was to form the background/wall/ behind the windows.  Then from a piece of watercolour paper that I had used to clean off my roller when playing with my gello plate, I cut the outline of two windows I had in my stash.  On is square and made from wood, the other is rectangle with round top and made from chipboard.  On the pages with the material I stuck three characters, in a postion to be looking out the window spaces.  The one on the right was a whimsical girl which I had printed on a page from an old book, then I had stuck very wide clear tape on top of it  and ripped it off, so that the girl and some of the book text remained on the tape.  On the left were two little characters I had drawn and coloured in with gellatoes.  Originally I was going to put them on an index card I was doing, but they ended up in this page.  I add some layers on the watercolour paper with texture paste, stencils, stamping, etc. I then stuck it on top of the book pages with material, placing it so the window cutout spaces were over the characters faces.  Then I stuck two photo transparencies with phases on them over the window spaces leaving them the full size so that white text would be an adder layer. Then I glued the windows on top in the appropriate places. I added a few more things in line with the theme "Layers" flowers on windows, some homemade stickers to reinforce the centre of page etc.   I then added typed text with my saying, which was a bit of a play on the original phase.  "The eyes may be the window to the soul, but no one knows what is behind the curtain."

As I had wanted to do a double page, and Rose's page had been a single, there was a spare page prior to my layout.  I painted this with dylusions paint using three colours. Coincidentally I had come across a poem some months ago in a book and had copied it down as I like it a lot.  It is called "layers of the face" it fitted exactly with my saying and my layout, so I typed it out on dylusions ink dyed paper, tore it out, and stuck in on the page.  I was going to put some flowers around it, but I liked the simplicity of it and so I just left it as is.  All three pages were edged with black archival ink and a little of the material shows between the edge of the pages.   I really loved how these pages turned out and I hope Lee does also.