My Favorite Art Journal......

......so far, at least, is the one I put together using some of my own pages, and pages I've received from friends.  Some were fully worked on two sided journal pages, some were backgrounds with art on one side only.  I blogged about the journal here, and loved it then.  But now....boy oh boy, if that was love then this is out of control obsessive all encompassing LOVE!!  The blank pages are blank no longer, and I've included the tags I've received as well.

I do intend to do some actual journaling (you know, put pen to page and write words), but honestly, this is stunning just as it is.  I might be biased, of course, as the pages were done by some of my favorite peeps in the world.  I even included some stuff done by friends who are not in the group, just because I had to include them somehow.

Well, enough blabbering.  Here it is, from cover to cover.

Got Inky.....Finally!

I had the chance to get a little inky yesterday and it sure does feel good.  Until I get my family stuff squared away it will be hit and miss, but I'm determined to steal some creative moments when and where I can.

I've been in a background technique swap, and did this easy and (I think) interesting one for my friend Inge in Belgium.  I'm calling it Dryer Sheet Delight, because we're supposed to give our creations a name and that one, though admittedly kind of dorky, at least gives you a hint as to what's involved.

Glue used dryer sheets to a light colored piece of cardstock, overlapping and leaving some wrinkles in for texture.  You should be able to cover an 8 1/2 x 11" piece with 2 or 3 sheets.  Use a white glue that dries clear, and cover the dryer sheets with another coat of it.

When the glue dries, spray with 2 to 4 colors of your favorite spray.  On this one I used Adirondack Color Wash in lettuce and sunset orange, and Perfect Pearls Mists in blue smoke.

As a final touch, I loaded a paintbrush with Golden Fluid Acrylics in raw umber, smacked it against my hand to create the splatters and dots.

I also had a chance to work on Jacquie's Marie Antoinette journal.  Jacquie challenged us with her theme.....Sex And The City.....so we were free to place Marie in more modern times.  I think that Marie Antoinette and Carrie Bradshaw share a shoe obsession, so I went with that.  Oh, the other challenge, is that Jacquie's entire journal is made of canvas.  (By the way, Ranger's Glue N Seal worked perfectly on this material).  We each had two facing pages to do, and here are mine:

I found the image of Sarah Jessica Parker (AKA Carrie Bradshaw) on google, and those red heels called to me.  To make the very trendy Ms. B more Marie-like I plunked a bunch of flowers in her hair.  On the second page I created some special shoes from some very pretty Prima paper, and paraphrased a quote from the TV show.  The actual quote was about it being hard to walk in a SINGLE WOMAN'S shoes, so I just changed it to a QUEEN'S shoes.





I'm A Tagmaniac!

I'm part of a group called Artistic Portfolios....mainly the women I do collaborative art journals with, and most of whom I get to see in Key Largo at our (now) yearly Keys4Art retreat.  We've been creating backgrounds and journal pages and sending them to everyone in the group.  Our next project is tags, and we're making two for each participant.  Of course we can do whatever we like with them, but the idea is to incorporate them somehow into the journals that we're going to make with all the pages we'll be getting.

I used this as a way to play around with some of the techniques I've been doing lately, some from weekly challenges and some from workshops. 

These use the brushless watercolor technique that has popped up on TWO recent challenges (see prior posts for the details), and I've used Wendy Vecchi stamps (except for the sentiment, which is Stampin' Up):



This next set of tags has the nice and easy color blocking technique by Sir Tim (see last week's Grungy Monday for the deets):

The background stamp is Tim's and of course, umbrella man, who looks great on the colorful base, is a Tim die.

One of my all time favorite techniques (and I don't know who to credit it with because I've seen it in so many different places) is a variation of Joseph's Coat.  You stamp over patterned paper with clear ink, emboss it with clear powder, and then cover the whole thing with dark (usually black) ink.  The embossed areas retain the original pattern, and if you've used colorful paper it really pops.  I did several tags with that method:

I did the technique on 12x12 papers and used very dark blue ink instead of black, then cut the papers up into tag size, which is why each background is slightly different.  They're also all embellished differently.  I've used Spellbinders butterfly and dragonfly dies, Tim's mini butterfly and cage/bird dies, and one more.....

To get that rich deep and very distressed looking blue finish on the butterflies on the ribbon, I stamped the row of butterflies from Tim's Papillon set on black paper with clear ink, and then used blue UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel).  Then I just cut them out and fastened them to the tag with the tiny attacher.

The next few tags gave me the opportunity to play around with the use of stencils over collage. 

Small squares from a previously done collage were glued down on the tag on the left.  The entire tag was covered with adhesive.  After the squares went down, gold UTEE was applied....embossing powder/enamel sticks to glue just as well as to wet ink....which created the mosaic effect.  Final touch:  stenciling in black paint and then some black crystal bling.

On the right, the collage was not cut up, but the same stencils and bling were used.

All of the following started out as collaged pieces, mainly text and patterned tissue paper.  Some had a little embossing added, others received images, and all were stenciled.