Bad Haircut

I have been watching the video Whimsical Faces by Jane Davenport. Poor Jane would be rolling her eyes and begging me to take down this post. Jane is a wonderful teacher; I think I am just hopeless sometimes HAHA! But, never the quitter and never afraid to share. I figure, if I am brave enough to share, I might motivate others into realizing that Art Journaling allows us to just enjoy the process and not really worry about the end result. So, here is the "Bad Haircut" girl.

I used so many different paints, markers and such, that I can't even begin to list them all. However, I went to Michael's yesterday and, at the checkout, they had a few Copic Wideliners for $2.00 each!!!!! I could only get four but I did use the yellow to add a background when I was done.  The circles are from an inexpensive set bingo type acrylic paint daubers by Do-A-Dot that I just love. Her hair was done with colored pencils and Spiced Marmalade Distress Stain. I used a black Gelly Roll pen for the journaling.

Journal 52 - Week 21 - Mendala

This week's prompt is "Making a Mandala". Kind of a love of mine anyway since I am a CZT (Certified Zentangle® Teacher) and teach "Zendala's" (Zentangle meets Mendala) to my students. I do love that Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, was very interested in Mendalas as applied to psychology. Do look it up if you are interested in that sort of thing. 

Cardstock covered with yellow acrylic. Added purple acrylic with credit card and textured with bubble wrap. Added text, "Zendala", circle mandala, and paper circles and went around with each with a purple Neocolor watercolor crayon and went over with Liquitex Matte Medium to blend and cover.

Art Journal using Shaving Cream = What a Fun Mess!

I have been looking at a lot of videos and realize that there must be at least a bazillion different things that can be done on a piece of paper. What fun! I'm sure I will never run out of something new to do. These pages began because I ran across a few suggestions to use shaving cream and inks to make the background color. I pulled out a floor tile and sprayed it with shaving cream, dropped in some alcohol inks, used the tip of an old credit card to slightly mix the colors. Then I took the whole journal and just placed it on the pretty mess. I picked it up and used the credit card to scrape off the shaving cream and got this:

Then, I played with my new Silks in Teal and Jasmine using a TSC Designs tree stencil, Festive Berries over the remains of cut out Alpha Stamps, and some Daisy Style from Hero Arts. Added some markers in pink, white paint pen, some glitter glue, used a homemade square stamp with VerseMagic in Plumeria and added a bit of journaling. I will play with shaving cream some more. It was really a lot of fun to do.

Book Inspiration with Journal 52

Week 20 of Journal 52
The prompt was "Book Inspired". That was easy for me since I do have a favorite book, Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates. This was the first, of many, books I read by Ms Oates. I picked the book up because it had an orange cover and caught my eye. But, then I saw it had earned literary awards, so I took it home. At first I thought, what a boring book. I didn't see the set up coming at all. When I got to the "punch" I sat frozen for a long, long time. This can't be, I thought, and reread it over and over. One day, many years later, I think I was able to face my own "punch" thanks to the lessons I learned from Ms Oates. You can let life push you down and stay there, or you can fight your way back. The choice is yours.

Green & Yellow acrylic and gesso base. Hearts from TSC Designs with Turquoise Dylusion Spray, Darcie's Hearts & Home stamp with Distress Ink in Evergreen. Stamped letters and edges in Brick Distress ink. Blue lettering from QuicKutz Lemon Drop dies. Bee and flower stamp, black pen and white paint pen added.

Journal 52 Week 19 Photograph

The prompt for this week's Journal 52 was Photograph. I wasn't too jazzed about this one and printed out, on photo paper, some flowers that I had taken a picture of in 2008. It came out all blurry, but it was still pretty. Not happy, I found myself drawn to a photo I had taken of some yarn that I had  dyed in that very same year. This photo was taking as it hung out in my backyard drying. (I made a drop stitch scarf and if you would like to see it, go to my Ravelry Link). I ran it on plain old computer paper and printed it to the right size so it would fill the whole page. Then, looking in my pile of ephemera, I found a birthday card that was recently sent to me from my best friend. I cut out the flower on the front and the sentiment and realized that I had cut through double paper. When I turned those over I saw words written by my friend that told me that this page would be about her. A little gel medium, some Color Box Copper on the edges of the flowers, a Pitt Pen in Sanguine for my journaling, and a leftover punched out flower paper that I used as a stencil using Craft Smart white. I did add a cut out from the photo of my own flowers and it is in the center, but it lost all of its color so I went over it with Copics and then topped it with one of the white stenciled flowers.

Thanks for stopping by. If you're looking for previous weeks, use the link on the right side. As always, I look forward to your comments.

Sing Like There's No Tomorrow Art Journal Page

Sing Like There's No Tomorrow was done in an 8 x 11 Inch Paper Blanks Journal.

Sing Like There's No Tomorrow FINISHED PAGE

Journey:

Gelli printed big book and leftovers on smaller journals.

I started by doing a gelli print on the right hand side with its ghost print on the right. I think I am partial to ghost prints as there is more white left on the paper. I used orange and yellow acrylics and a fabric flower stamp that I picked up at Hobby Lobby. I kept a couple of journals open so I could wipe off my brayer and use up ink from the stamp.
I added some Gelatos to the top and bottom, sprayed with water and created drips. Then, I stamped from a flower stencil using purple Versa Magic. I added a bird and small white flowers using a stencil and a finger dauber with Craftsmart White Ink. Colored these with Koi coloring brush pens. Then, added words stamped with Stazon Brown and white Molotow pen. I was happy up to here. Then I messed with the flowers and added stems and HATED (well, that's probably too strong of a word for something on paper, so shall we say "disappointed?") it.

Unhappy with results for this part.

 I went to bed and all night long, different options kept waking me up. Finally, I simply burried the offending parts with a White Pitt Artist Pen and restamped with the purple and white. Sometimes I should leave things alone. I loved the page before I added color to the white flowers. The finished page is okay but I lost some of the clear colors of the gelli print that I thought was so beautiful.

Journal 52 - Week 18, Storage Solutions

Week 18 - Creative Hands

This week, for Journal 52 - Week 18, the prompt was "Creative Hands." (Older pages will be found as a link on the right hand side of the page.) My first thought was to trace my hand and use Zentangle patterns to fill in the hand, but, been there, done that. I was kind of stuck for a moment so I thought I should just do a background first. I have a stack of pre-cut cardstock in the right size that I had printed out to do tangle step-outs on. I grabbed some gesso and put some blobs of that on the paper. Then, I dropped some turquoise/brown/gold acrylic and spread it all in a downward motion. When it dried, I placed a template of my hand over the paper to keep some of that color and added some stamping with white for the flowers and colored them with Koi Watercolor brushes, I added stamped black lines to the right and went around the fingers with a water soluble black pencil that I then used a water brush to move around. I added some white with a gel pen to the flowers and white paint pen on the fingernails. I have a book of Mehndi Designs, by Marty Noble that I used to come up with the designs for the hand, and then journaled with black pen with white accents.

I tend to work on several journals at the same time. If I have paint or ink left from whatever I just put it on, I grab another journal and clean my leftovers on a page. On some days, I may have 4 or 5 wet journals. I thought I would share how I deal with this without covering my whole workspace with drying books:

My bookcase full of wet journals.

Thanks to Sandra Strait for the suggestion to keep a small notebook by my work and jot down what I am doing as I am doing it.