More Polka Dots and a Bit of Recycling

When your friend names your studio room for you and she calls it the Batcave, you may be in trouble.  Thanks, Kelly.  I am a bit of a supply hoarder and a found objects hoarder.  I did a page of polka dots last week and mentioned that when I was cleaning off the ink from the stencil, the ink went onto the paper towel underneath and left a cool pattern.  I kept it.  I was going to use it.  Yea.  Right.

Well, guess what?  I did.  I have some pics of an art journal page on FUN that I made this weekend and I used the paper towel for the flowers.  I just randomly cut out some circles, hot glued them on and voila!  Flowers.

Here are the actual remnants of the paper towel.  Should I save this?

I wasn't sure if the paper towel would take rub-ons, but it did.

The stems were made by cutting up an old hand crocheted doily style  furniture cover.  It was ripped and I think that I paid a dollar for it at a garage sale.  The leaves are the scallops from the same piece.

I colored the stems and the leaves with alcohol inks.

This quote is from my nephew and I want it to be said about me after I have left this world.  "It's like she isn't even a grown up!"

FUN  yup that's what it's all about.

Friendship Balloons

In doing this page for my art journal I thought of the different types of friends that we all have:  forever friends, good friends, crisis friends, etc.  I also thought about balloons for some reason and how they are kind of like friends.
The pics were taken outside on a cloudy day.  I should have put the camera on auto, but I am trying very hard to do this myself.

I couldn't help using some lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "For Good" , from Wicked.

I kind of love the way the bumpiness of the layers of tissue paper take the paint, pens and watercolors.  It gives it cool texture.

I used light blue tissue paper only for the background.  I rubbed a smidge of blue and yellow paint around.  I tried to use more translucent paints (Claudine Hellmuth and Golden Fluid Acrylics).  The balloons were done with a stencil (remember, I can't draw) and the little ones were done with a stamp.  I used a lot of paint, Faber Castell Big Brush Pens, watercolor pencils and Neo Colors for shading.  Lots of rubons, a little bit of texture from stencils and a music stamp and some doodling.  That's it.  I like it.  I like the balloons especially.

Pearls, Polka Dots and Waves

Two new art journal pages are finished.  I know, it's like I'm not working this summer or something.  The first page is a cool take on the ocean.  The page is gessoed and the waves are different colors of alcohol ink, blending solution, Faber Castell Big Brush Pens and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.  I put the blue inks on a blending tool and 'waved' it across both pages to make it look like the water.  The pearls are just for a fun look of sea foam.  It made me think of mermaids and if I could draw, she would have been in there.  I wish that I had not used modeling paste for the sun as I think the look is too harsh.  Fabric would have been better, but live and learn.
The second set of pages is a result of my love of polka dots.  It is done on a gessoed page with a stencil and alcohol inks again.  You need the gesso to make the inks move.  I framed off the page with some canvas tape from Scarlet Lime (see sidebar) and there you are.

This word gave me fits and I had to re-gesso, re-ink and do it over. 

The circles were just a bunch of lids and things dipped in paint.

I love the way the ink kind of bled a bit through the stencil.

Cool Footnote:

When I was cleaning the stencil (I don't usually do this, but when you use alcohol inks you have to or they will reactivate), it left polka dots on the paper towel that was underneath.  I plan on using that paper towel some day.  Hoarder!

Fun with Flowers

As I am progressing with my art journaling class (Your Living Canvas) through Scarlet Lime (link on side), I find myself getting a little carried away with all of the layers.  I can't help it.  I tell myself that I am going to keep it light and then something like this happens.
I used my Canon Rebel T3 for the pics outside on a sunny day.  I used a different lens because I wanted to get closer to some of the elements.  I used Pic Monkey for my edits.  It is a cool photo editing service by the same dudes who did Picnik.  They are still pretty basic, but that's okay.  I'm sure that they will add more features as they progress.  They have added a cool collage feature already.   And it's free!  I am all for free.

I wanted to do something different for the flowers.  When I happened to look up while I was in the Batcave, I saw these beads on string high up on a shelf that I had purchased for a different project.  I wrapped them in a spiral pattern and hot glued them to the page.  Then they needed something so I made centers out of clay, baked them and hot glued them.  I think the flowers are cool.

The orange flower is modeling paste over a dot circles stencil that I am sure I purchased through Scarlet Lime.  Sorry, but I don't remember the name of the stencil.

Okay, this is weird, but I was looking in my fabric box for something to use for the stems.  I saw these jeans pieces.  I had some jeans altered and they gave me back the fabric that they had removed.  Surely I could use that in my art!  I did.  I think that is what I am most proud of, quite frankly.  The stem is with the right side facing up and the leaves are with the right side facing down.

The clay was left over from another canvas that I did and it just happened to be swirled with the correct colors.  I am so glad that I hoard things sometimes.

Tragedy Revisited in a New Way

During the journaling exercise for the first week of Your Living Canvas we had to write a bit of our history and how it relates to our life now.  One of the major events that I chose to journal was a hard one, but something I needed to do.  Last February, our amazing neighbor, John, was tragically killed in a snowmobile accident not too far from the house.  He was a special guy and we all miss him dreadfully.  I can talk about that night, but I find that writing about it is more difficult.  I am guessing that it is seeing the words on paper that makes it that way.  Somehow, I got inspired to represent that night, the period after and the present in the journal.  I know that it isn't pretty, but I felt that I needed to do it.  Below are the results of my thought process.  I did show this to John's family and they really liked it.  We cried a bit, but they are the bravest people I know and they appreciated what I had created.
For those of you who are interested, I took these photos outside on a sunny day with my Canon EOS Rebel T3 and a 50mm lens.

So this is the first page.  If you read the words, you will get the gist of our involvement.  The face was done in untinted flexible modeling paste and glued on.  I did the words with a Sharpie paint pen (love it).  The flames were sculpted onto the paper with the modeling paste.  I gessoed the pages, then put black gesso over the top so that I could scratch into the layer.  That day was cold and it was nighttime.  We had just had 16 inches of snow two days before.

This is the second page.  I wrote the words "Is that a light in the distance" because it took a while to start to feel better after that night.  The butterflies were punched out of regular cardstock with a Martha Stewart punch.   I mutilated them purposely to show that we were severely damaged.   The calendars were Tim Holtz dipped in white paint.  The clock stamps were from Christy's shop.

Here is the page for the present.  I know that it is totally cliche to use the song "Here Comes the Sun" but it was perfect for this.  The butterflies and sun are made out of (drum roll, please) flexible modeling paste (did I mention it's my new fave?).  I tried to use lots of shades of colors to indicate a lightening of my soul in places.  There is still a lot of black and the family agreed that it is those unexpected black periods that throw you.  The zig zag stitch is Christy's (love it) and for me it represents my world being stitched back together a bit.  I made the flowers using the ends of a couple of paint brushes dipped in paint.  I did edge the pages in black ink and rubbed a little ink over things.