The Beginning of Christmas

In my last post I wrote about Dawn Sokol’s  on-line class called 12.31 Art Journal.  I’ve made a lot of progress the past two days.  Today I finished up the canvas cover for the journal.

This was created on a piece of green duck canvas about 10 inches by 13 inches (I wanted to use up what I already had on hand).  I covered it with a coat of gesso, let that dry overnight and then painted the whole piece using three shades of pink that I mixed.   (I used Claudine Hellmuth’s Studio acrylics because they have a hint of gloss to them when dried).  Once the pink background dried I then sketched the scene of three snowy hills with Christmas trees.  I applied dots of white paint to simulate snow and them smeared them to look like it was really storming and windy as the snow was falling.  I used my sewing machine with a heavy-duty (#18) needle and sewed a zig zag stitch to hem all of the sides.  The finished size is 9 inches tall by 12 inches wide.  When I fold the cover in half, the page size will be 6 inches by 9 inches – a perfect size to carry with me.  I had planned to add some 3-D embellishments but decided to leave it as is (at least for now).  Another tradition has begun.

Tomorrow I will be collecting the pages to make signatures and then sewing them into the  journal.  Stay tuned for more.

I hope to have some graffiti covers and papers to show you soon from Mary Ann Moss’  –  Stencilry class.  Check out her blog – Dispatch from LA - very cool.

Merry Christmas.  Keep it simple and start some new traditions.

Background Pages – Part One

In the March/April issue of Somerset Studio is a wonderful article “Blogstock Divas – Manifest Journaling” by Elizabeth Bunsen.  The concept of manifest journaling drew me in and I have been pondering it for weeks now.  I finally sat down at the art table and decided to try my hand at creating this background paper.  I pulled out a sheet of 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press watercolor paper and followed the ideas from the article.

Above is layer one and two.  For layer one I used liquid waterproof ink and a bamboo calligraphy pen to write loopy lettered words.  I let that dry overnight.  I then applied masking tape and drywall tape to create a grid like pattern on the paper.  I painted yellow tinted gesso over the paper and tape and let that dry then peeled off the tapes.  Notice the texture from the drywall tape.  Very cool.  Once this dried I replaced the tapes in a different pattern and then began to paint areas with Golden tube acrylics. 

I then pulled out a selection of stamps, stencils and other oddities to stamp with using the Golden acrylics and StazOn ink.  I also sprayed liquid watercolors to give the page a bit of a graffiti look.  Once these layers had dried, I retaped areas and then pulled out the liquid ink and bamboo pen and wrote more loopy lettered words on top.  I will be adding a bit of gold Luminiere paint to add some sparkle.  I will art the backside of the paper in the same way and then cut/tear the sheets into smaller sheets to create a handmade journal.  Click here to go to Background Pages – Part Two.

How Cool Is That? Part 2

I worked a few more pages using Michelle Ward’s Street Team Crusade #25.  Remember the page from yesterday?  Well here it is with a coat of yellow acrylic added over the top then sprayed with a water spritzer.  I took the heat gun to it for about a minute and then used a paper towel to blot off the water droplets.  I wiped off the yellow from the center of the pear as well.  Pretty cool, huh?

I decided to leave this page as is and start another one using Gesso as a resist.  Here is that page.

This page has 7 layers of paint.  Each layer has at least one Gesso’d image on it.  You can still see the one layer of red towards the upper right and the echo of the stamp.  Same thing with the yellow on the lower left.  I tried using the Gesso with my script letter stencil and it worked out very well.  This will become one of my favorite techniques – it is simple to do and creates a wonderful layered look.

Thanks again Michelle for another fun fabulous technique.