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.