Louise in Wonderland

Alice blew into Grafton is a whirlwind of crazy activity, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do so I gessoed my spread in black and Debs gorgeous little journal sat patiently waiting for me to find the time to play day after day and suddenly- its the end of the month!

Deadlines are great motivators, I had a day off today and besides the other million things, I needed to do I made sure to put some time aside to play- and play I did!

I wanted a grungy background with the iconic image of Alice stripped back to a silhouette and the harlequin diamond pattern distinctive but grungy. Where to next? I was lost and then I remembered the quirky wrapping paper I picked up at IKEA recently so cut out some collage pieces to add.

The flower faces and the mushrooms were rather Alice-ish and as it's my wonderland the funny little woodland creatures came along too. 

My Spread in Deb's "Alice" Journal

This is it!!I used a napkin that was too big for the page so I had to tear it up and make a cohesive spread. I also added some ribbon and fibers and glitter pen to finish it off.
Hope you like it Deb.

Lisa Playing in Deb's Alice Journal!

I love all things Alice!  So many interesting characters in these books (and movies.)

I decided on a collage, and wanted to add a page or two of the book as well.  I found this double spread online which fit perfectly!  Plus it was free 😊.

Next I drew some characters based on the 2010 movie, on a thinner watercolour paper, watercoloured them, and fussy cut them.

I added some vines to the book pages using some music paper which I then watercoloured.

Finally it was just a matter of adding my elements to the page!

...And then adding just a bit of journalling.  Here's the final page!

Hope you like it Deb! 💗

Dreams and Fantasy- Debs Entry in Robyn Osbourn's Journal

In true Alice in wonderland style..I'm late.
This entry was inspired because I love to day dream. Daydream about the art I can make out of recycled materials, about the welding course I will one day do so I can join all sorts of junk together to make art, to the successful business I will have selling all my crazy art and the people who are inspired by my work and want to come and create craziness along side me in the wonderful studio and gallery I will build near a beach... Ah dreams.
So for this entry I dreamed in living colour. I used alcohol inks on Yuppo paper and played while it was wet. These are some of my favourite colours to play with.once finished I  applied Rose Gold foil to it it random abstract slashes across the paper.

I then cut it down to fit Robyn's' Journal and stuck it in. I used a chipboard sentiment from Dusty Attic that says "dream with your eyes wide open". Its pretty fitting for me really. 

Now, to look at in daytime, the chipboard sentiment looks pretty boring, it just has a tinge of green. But if you turns the lights off the sentiment glows in the dark! This is to represent me being unable to my brain off at night, that even though all the background colour and distractions fade, at night my attention can sometimes be so focused on an idea or task I am completing, that its hard to turn off and rest.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my entry and explanation in your journal Robyn. Have a great day everyone!

Deb

Robyn's Magic Of Alice

My Page in Deborah's Magic Of Alice Journal .

Hope you enjoy having tea with the white rabbit xxxx

The Cheshire Cat

I've always loved Alice in Wonderland so painting something with this fabulous theme was absolutely awesome. I loved every moment, even when it wasn't going so well (I messed up the background and started again). Thanks for choosing this theme Deborah, its been a good boost to the ego cos he's turned out to be a bit magical looking! So happy... I'm grinning like he does! lol :) Hope you like him too!

above : the one, the only, the amazing... Cheshire Cat!

Portrait version of the finished happy cat... I used only a few treasures : Dylusions acrylic paint, Jane Davenport Gesso, paint brushes, a watercolour pencil for sketching out the cat after painting the background and coloured pencils for deciding upon the colour scheme.

I was going to add a quote but forgot all about it after I started the actual painting! I remembered after I sent the book to Sharon. It was going to say either “If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take.” or “I am not crazy, my reality is just different from yours.” or “which way, that way, here, there, anywhere” (with arrows).

Scribbling out thoughts, deciding upon design, characters and choosing colours. So many fantastic characters from these books that are fun to portray in art!

The final design is based upon the original sketch of the Cheshire Cat by John Tenneil when he (CC) was telling Alice the best way to go.

Round and round and round I went with the paintbrush ... Dylusions paint in After Midnight (dark blue), Laidback Lilac (pretty purple), Vibrant Turquoise and Black Marble.

Adding white splatters of paint is much easier using a splatter brush than the old toothbrush! But then spilt some paint so turned that into a spiral. Next thing I knew, I had all these spirals over the page...

I drew the Cheshire Cat's basic shape and a rough tree branch in watercolour pencil after the background had dried properly.

Ground Coffee tree branch decorated with Melted Chocolate swirls... sounds delicious!

Quite a nice combo, the two browns. Pre-mixed colours make life easy :) I love mixing colours, even just adding a smooch of white or spot of black to anything makes me smile...

The leaves were painted in layers, one colour at a time ... first I used Melted Chocolate, then Dirty Martini (yummy earthy green, my fave). With this paint, the colours underneath show through adding a bit of depth.
Next I added a line of Lemon Zest (yellow) along one side of each leaf then waited for them to dry before painting over it with Cut Grass (bright green). then a line down the centre with the brown.

Next was the cat himself... I painted his basic shape in Jane Davenport's white gesso. Its not as thick as some, its more like the Liquitex gesso - smooth and creamy. Anyway, I painted his stripes and features a few times to get the shape and stripes looking how I wanted.

Once the white shape was ingrained into my head (don't ask), I mixed up some Laidback Lilac and Vibrant Turquoise to get a blue-purple mixture. I painted the Cheshire Cat in the purple and blue, then where the colours met, blended it with the new mix.
I should mention that I don't clean the paint brush inbetween the purple and blue... which why having a palette is so important - it keeps your pots of paint clean :)

Don't forget, if you use pots of acrylic paint like Dylusions (and live in warm dry climates like Australia), to add a spritz / mist of water into the pot before closing the lid. This puts back any moisture that evaporated while the lid was off. I didn't do this with my black and it looks like black cottage cheese! lol Still works :)

The Vibrant Turquoise and White Linen makes it look mystical and magical :) So pleased with how its turned out.

A splash of white, dash of black, smoosh of turquoise and he's a completed cat.

Oh, and it has a strip of Jane Davenport Washi Tape down the edge because I made a mess :) lol

Hope you like him Deborah!

Thanks so much for reading this blog post :) Hope my Cheshire Cat inspires you to get arty and crafty!

Happy Creative Day!
:D
Jenny

Deb's entry in Louise's Gypsy Journal- April 2018

I'm Late...I'm Late...for a very important date...

But this post isn't about Alice, it's about the gorgeous Gypsy Journal that Louise created. I love how interactive your entry is Louise (and Janie's entry in there as well.) I enjoy doing these journals for our group as I always end up learning something new as I research my ideas for my own entry. I was amazed by the history the Gypsy people have and how far back it goes.

My entry in Louise's journal was about the art of Palmistry. Like the crystal ball, palm reading to tell your future was something mysterious and exciting the Gypsy's did and it intrigued me. I used a mixture of Dylusions paints randomly for the background.On the left page  I traced the outline of my own hand and painted/filled it in with acrylic and highlighted with  Pitt Pens. I then drew some of the symbols and meanings that people interpret when they look at the anatomy of your palm and drew/wrote them in. 

On the right page, I wrote a Romani Proverb using a white POSCA Paint pen. 

This journal is now traveling on its way to the next Gypsy in line. I hope you enjoy this entry and have a great day!

WENDY M. - LAYOUT IN DEB'S PINTEREST INSPIRED JOURNAL

Today, I remembered I had not blogged and shown pictures of my work in Deb's Pinterest Inspired Journal. I found working on the loose pages rather relaxing and after spending hours and then a few more hours going through the pictures on Pinterest, I finally found some inspiration from a few pictures. Mainly a couple that I had wanted to try for a few months and then another that kind of jumped out at me and said..."Do Me!...Do Me !...lol...and of course, I did.

This is the front of the folded page with a saying "Believe You Can". The background, I have used different colours of gellatos as well as a couple of distress paint dabbers. I have done a little bit of stenciling and some stamping. Placed a slither of washi tape along the bottom of the page which gives my little angel girl something to stand on...heehee

My angel girl has been made from a left over gelli print and her legs from black cardboard and drawing  the lines on with a white paint marker. I have painted her face on the page and used a piece of one of my grandsons painting for the wings. I think she turned out pretty cool. I used a credit card to put the black paint markings on the page for added detail.

                                                             "Believe You Can"

When the page is opened this is the center layout, below. I started by laying down some bright coloured paints so when I blocked out the background colours, those colours would show through the images I had drawn. For the flower heads, I used a gelli print and I drew on the stems. The leaves were also cut from a gelli print. I used some flower stamps at the bottom of the page and went over them with a black gel pen and some highlights with a white signo pen. I drew the shape of the raindrops and the background colours can be seen through them. Pretty cool effect, I think.

                                          "You can't make a rainbow without alittle rain"

I was very happy with the outcome of this page and found that I actually like doing this 'blocking' technique and having the colourful background showing through my doodles.

The last half page was my cute little birdie. My inspiriational birdie was actually a lot brighter in colour than mine but I thoroughly enjoyed working through this process. I started with the brightly painted background and then some stenciling and stamping. I lightly drew the little birdie and then tried my hand at dry brushing the colour to fill him. A drawn little crown on his head and he was complete. I was very inspired by the one I found on Pinterest, that I can see myself trying my hand at this one again sometime. I used a white signo to highlight around the little bird and his wings and called it complete.

                                                     "Life Is An Adventure"

 So,there you go, I think you will be pleased with my contribution Deb, I had a lot of fun, especially trying to work out how it had been done in the first place. Thoroughly enjoyed this process in Deb's Journal. Thank you all and hope you enjoy! xox Wendy

Deb's "Guest entry" In Sharon's Vintage Circus Round 2 Journal

Firstly, I have to tell you what an absolutely stunning piece of art this journal is, Sharon and I am so thankful you let me have a "Guest Spot"  in it as I am a Round 3 Blogger/Journal entrant. She's ready to come home!

I started with Distress paints in Fossilized Amber and Candied Apple which I applied to the paper with baby wipes, blending it all. I also stamped a vintage globe/map stamp in Archival Ink randomly across both pages.

I had already cut out my images in Black and red plain card-stock using my Pazzles Inspiration machine. The Circus tent image I resized several times and cut out block silhouettes of a bear, monkey and unicorn as well as a Signpost. I left out the Hippo insert, crossed out the sign and then wrote "Unicorn" on the signpost , as we would all pay money to see one of those! I then shuffled these images around the first page till I was happy and stuck then down with gel medium. I also used on eof the Admit One coupons that I was asked to include in my spread, after I crumpled it and then covered it with Distress inks in Vintage Photo and Black Soot . I then applied a coat of Prima Clear Crackle texture paste over it all and let it dry. it looked a bit bare still, so i stamped some background texture stamps in archival coffee and some stars in pink.

For the right page I stuck down the large red circus tent with gel medium. I then filled in a piece of watercolor paper with some Lindy's Stamp Gang Colorshots Sprays in Lump'o'coal and green. These are such gorgeous metallic colours that have a lot of pigment to them. I then had a Kaisercraft stamp and die set that I absolutely adore (funnily enough named Elephant) and stamped it onto my prepared water colour paper using archival ink in black. But it turned out light gray so you couldn't see all that lovely Zentangle detail on the elephant. So I decided to re stamp with embossing ink and used gold embossing powder to create raised texture on the elephant. It didn't work out as nice as I had hoped but it is still lovely to see. When I recreate this for my own journal, I think I will use a Black pigment ink to stamp with and then use clear embossing powder so it should hopefully stand out more. Anyway. I then journaled in my own writing (which I am NOT a fan of) on the left and finished off with the quote that came with the stamp set on the right. I used Stampers anonymous Mini Circque Alpha Stamps to stamp the title and a flattened beer bottle cap that I had saved from some beer my husband tried at the start of the year when I first started thinking about this entry. It says "3 Pub Circus Australia" which I LOVE! to make my gorgeous elephant pop some more I stuck on a mixture of small and large iridescent sequins around the page and finished off with small spots of glossy accents.

In conclusion, I have really enjoyed this journal spread and I hope you do as well Sharon. I will post her off back to you on Monday! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone from our Journal swaps. Wishing you all the best for today and the year ahead.

Deb Stephens. 

Deb's entry In Lisa Jones- Summer Journal- Round 3.

I'm late with this entry (story of my Life lol!)

For someone that loves Summer this one was hard for me as I always think Beach when I think of summer...but Lisa's journal was full of gorgeous beach scenes already.

So I actually asked my students to help me do a "summer in Perth" brainstorm on my classroom blackboard when our content was sending them to sleep:)

So..my perspective is looking through my imaginary Art Studio window, in my imaginary home where the family and I will retire (which will be on a beach somewhere in beautiful W.A....Hey! Dreams are free right??) We are looking out the window at my dream backyard with green lawn and an opening in my fence (made from corrugated cardboard, complete with bore water sprinkler stains) so that I can just walk down to the beach whenever I want. There will be a tree house, cricket,  BBQ's (with Shrimp cocktails) and cold drinks and all my family and friends are welcome to come and visit any time they like! A bit of nostalgia is the lace and crochet curtains framing my window.

the sunset and background was painted with water colours. The paper piecing and title was designed and cut on my Pazzles Inspiration machine.  the tree house was a chipboard embellishment I have had for so long that I no longer know where I got it from.  The 'tiles' on the windowsill were paper scraps, and the tap was hand cut. I have put 2 small shells my son, Jake, collected on that windowsill as decoration too. I hope this mixed piece survives future travels and that you enjoy it as much as I do Lisa.

                                                       

                                                                           Perth Summer
                                                                         By Deb Stephens

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

Deb's entry in Robyn's Travel the World journal

Hi everyone. I have had this Journal for over a month now and only just hammered out this page as inspiration struck. I decided to do a page on Pakistan as that was where I was born. I researched all the stuff I remembered about living in Karachi, but I just couldn't pull it all down together on a page. I printed road maps and currancy and landmarks before the journal arrived and then I saw that it was already in other peoples entry's and I drew a blank...what now? what else did I remember as a kid? Painted trucks, Weddings, the stunning fabrics, jewels and the lavish henna designs on a brides hands and feet. Trucks and Brides????? Hmmm tricky....
I started breaking the blank page with Colour Shot sprays from Lindys stamp gang and then stencilling a Persian (ish) design with paints in brown and coral as a contrast. I stamped a face image from Stampendeous in archival ink and drew in the hair and head covering around it.

I then stuck on some Truck inspired Pakistani art with script as borders that I printed out from Pinterest with Gel medium and covered it all. (sorry about the bad quality pics as my phone camera is on the blink)

 

 I then used acrylics to paint her face in and liked the idea of the bride looking downwards. I used a mix of acrylic paints, posca paint pens, Silks acrylic glaze and  big brush pens to finish off her face. I heat embossed a silver pattern on her head dress. Accents were liquid pearls, old earings, heat and stick powder with distress glitter for the title.

I finished off the piece with some stamping in a henna type, feather pattern with dylusions archival ink in Calypso Teal. It has a beautiful metallic sheen to it that just doesn't show in the Pics, but I hope you like it Robyn.

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.

Roses Visual Jornaling

Recently, I worked a page in Deb's art journal: Inspired by Pinterest. This is how my page spread came out. As you'll see, I'm becoming very keen on learning to sketch and one day, while browsing for a few hours (days!) on that visual feast of a site (and very addictive!), I came across some Pins of other artists' Sketchbook pages. Some of them were so inspiring and exciting to look at, my brain went into overload with ideas for my own visual sketchbook too. So, when I received Deb's art journal based on Pinterest Inspiration, well, I just had to share my new-found interest in visual sketchbooks. I'm always keen to develop my drawing skills in addition to the painting and mixed media techniques that we all use in our art journaling.

 One of my latest sketches of our little ginger cat, Possum. And I also shared what it was that inspired me on Pinterest that day.

This is a colour chart of my new watercolour pencil set. It's fantastic the way the colours suddenly transform into wet media as soon as you wet them with a water brush. Very portable and easy to use. Hope you like it, Deb.