Daisies at Play in my Art Journal

♥♥♥ make today ridiculously amazing ♥♥♥

I am looking forward to teaching this page in my art journaling class this coming Saturday. :) Not sure what to call it. 

Daisies at Play?

I took step out photos for my whole process, so here goes: 

Supplies List:

Art Journal

Matte Medium

Book paper

Brushes: soft bristled - med size, a sponge brush, and a med fine line.

Heat gun

Modeling paste: I used Light Modeling Paste by Golden

Palette knife

Floral stencil: I used Scribbles stencil by Tim Holtz

Dylusions Paint: London Blue, Bubblegum pink, Crushed Grape, Squeezed Orange, Cut Grass, Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise,

Black acrylic Paint: I used Liquitex Basics - Mars Black

Opaque white paint: I used Tulip fabric spray paint

Yellow paint: I used Golden Fluid Hansa Yellow Medium

Baby Wipes

Floral Rubber Silhouette stamps: I carved my own

Black permanent ink pad: I used Ranger Archival Ink - Jet Black

A quote from a book you can cut out, or print your own

Black Stabilo All pencil

Step 1: Tear book paper into strips and glue to journal page with matte medium. Place randomly, making sure you get the spine as seamless as you can. Heat set with heat gun.

Step 2: Gesso over everything and heat dry. I used a sponge today. I like the easy and smooth application it allows versus using a brush. Dry with heat gun.

Step 3: Choose your stencil. I had this cute one called Scribbles by Tim Holtz that I figured would go well with my floral theme. Apply modeling paste through a stencil, ensuring you create a random inner edge. I tilted the stencil this way and that, and didn't smooth the paste to the edges. You want an uneven edge. If you lift the stencil and you see a straight line, you can use the knife to remove some of the paste while it's still wet. It WILL give you extra texture when you get to the painting stage, but I kind of like that extra bit of texture. So, MISTAEKS ARE GOOD! ") I applied paste all around, staying away from the center of the layout, and going to the outside edge. Think a garden with flowers surrounding all the edges of a photo frame. Dry thoroughly with your heat gun or let dry overnight.

Step 4: With a very light hand, apply London Blue Dylusions paint (Any kind of paint should work.) to the top area, making it your "sky". Blend into smooth, non-textured areas with baby wipe. Blend on the texture too, making some areas lighter than others. If too much blue, take a clean wipe to remove some paint. In hindsight, I wished I had left more blue in the smooth areas, making the edge look less like camel humps and more graduated into the middle area. Seriously, that's what I keep seeing! lol

Step 5: Apply Dylusions Bubblegum Pink to three areas. I always think in three. An uneven 3 casts a comfortable vision for your eyes to travel across the page. Again, make sure you apply with a light hand, as you don't want the paint to get into the crevices of the modeling paste very much. You want most of the crevices to remain white. Blend with wipe, graduating into the center and away from the texture. Thy Dylusions is very pigmented, so a little goes a LONG way. Take a clean wipe if you're having trouble blending lightly. Don't be afraid to touch the blue paint. Notice how we're getting purple now? The Dylusions paint isn't permanent until you heat set it, so the pink is blending with the blue. I love this subtle blending. Blend into the center, trying to not have hard edges. In some areas, I added more layers of pink paint, making some of the flowers more dominant, just like you'd see flowers in a garden. Think depth and focus.

Step 6: Take Crushed Grape Dylusions paint, and apply to modeling paste only. You don't want too much purple in the center areas, as that's where you will add yellow. Yellow and purple makes mud, and we don't want that. :)

Step 7: Squeezed Orange Dylusions paint in three small areas next. Blend out the orange a bit. At this point, looking back, I wish I'd done a little bit more blending, and then heat set the orange areas thoroughly. The next color is green, and if the orange isn't set, the two colors will blend and make brown. And we don't want brown.

Step 8 and 9: Cut Grass and Fresh Lime paint next. Blend together, so the two green mesh nicely. Dab with wipe instead of wiping near the other colors, avoiding making mud again. Sorry. I had to mention that again. teehee

Step 10: Vibrant Turquoise is next, blend into the "sky" to add extra dimension to the blue. Go very lightly. I did a bit too heavy. See how the flowers in above photo don't have that white gutter? Next time I'd go a bit lighter, and with less paint on my fingers. Did I forget to mention I was painting with my fingers, not a brush? I tried a sponge, but I liked that I had more control with my fingers. For you, it might be easier to use a brush or sponge or an applicator. Find out what works best for you.

Step 11: Add in Lemon Zest paint to the center. Blend right to the edges, being careful not to touch the purple too much. Touching the pink is good, as it will give you orange. Blend, blend with wipe and fingers. This is hard to explain, this blending, as you kind have to work intiutively here, feeling as you go. You might need to remove some color here and there. Be sure to not be stingy with the wipes. I think I used half a package on this page alone! Make sure that you don't use a wipe with a different color already on it, as that could give you messy results. Now at this stage, I'm feeling like my background isn't blendy enough. Too many hard edges, borders between colors, not a smooth transition from one color to the next. That problem will be solved in one of the last steps, so hold on to that thought right now. :)

Step 12: Now I looked at the overall page, and I felt the blue edge was too hard, so I sprayed London Blue Dylusions spray to that area, and dabbed with a clean wipe to blend.

Step 13: Take a clean wipe and wipe off some yellow in a circular shape. This will be the "sun".

Step 14: Take a brush and some yellow paint, preferably a warmer, slightly darker color than the yellow you used in center, and brush swirls in a circular motion to mimic the sun rays.

Step 15: Splatter white paint all over in drops by tapping a brush dipped in paint. I used Tulip fabric spray paint, but any fluid opaque paint would do. Acrylic ink would work as well. Dry.

Step 16: Choose your flower silhouette stamps. I hand carved a pair of these daisies, one smaller than the other. Stamp with black, waterproof ink, placing them randomly, trying not get one flower directly above another.

Step 17: Take black acrylic paint and brush on the stems and leaves and painting in the white areas where the stamp didn't make a strong image. I made this page in a fat, bulky and bumpy art journal, so the surface was not smooth. I tried to stamp in areas where there wasn't any texture paste. Let dry thoroughly.

Step 18: The lighting by now isn't as good, so the colors don't show up quite as accurately as I want them. I mentioned earlier that that colors weren't well blended together, so now we're fixing that. Brush gesso on all the areas with a round, soft paintbrush, diluting a bit with water, wiping as needed. Here you'll have to decide how much to wipe away and how much to leave. Brush a bit harder or add more than one coat of gesso/water combo in areas that you want the colors to transition softly. The white gesso softens these edges. Dry.

Step 19 and 20: Find a quote from a book or print your own and glue to page with matte medium, outlining the paper with a black Stabilo All pencil, wetting with a wet brush.

Step 21: Last step is to splatter more white paint over the page, adding more splatters to my quote, so as to add a bit more detail and interest to it.

I need to add that the jumpstart I used to create this page is by a talented art journaler. I saw her layout on Pinterest, and I wanted to make something similar. Check hers out HERE.

And we're done!! I have no idea if anyone will actually follow my steps and make their own, but this blog post was fun to make, and will help me teach it to my students. If you do make your own, I would love to see it! See my profile for email address. Would love to hear from you! :)

Have a great night. :)

♥♥♥ Anna ♥♥

Inspiration Wednesday 2016 Week One

Super-stoked with Lesson One of Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday 2016! I want to try this technique again, but with slightly different methods, to get the background whiter, and not as much raw umber showing. Loved Donna's whiter version.

I would have loved to use that brushes stencil by Donna Downey, but you can't have everything you want, right? :) This doily-type stencil is by Memory Box, and I use it a lot. With this type of medium, it looks vintage, but I have used it in a way that looks funky. Love it when stencils are that versatile! 

Looks quite different with color drippings, and I love it! It's not something I would have done myself, so I love this little creative push to do things I might not ordinarily do! Golden Fluids, you are beautiful!

Little peak of the edge of my handmade journal. Yum yum. Binder clip, you look pretty good too!

Rough, fraying edges, I like you a lot too. Neon chartreuse-colored elastics, why not? Mawaaa!

The numbers are made with a stencil set from Staples. Who says ordinary, utilitarian stencils can't look good? Add the flourescent pink...can't get away from pink, nope! 

And...my favourite part, I think...a Morse code-ish looking stencil by Stencil Girl's designer Julie Snidle for the September 2015 Club. See the bottom edge of the layout and at the top part of the inclusion tag? Just for a little extra. Not something that will scream at you, ya know. :) 

And me likes how the yellow is pooling on the edge....

Never mind the fingerprints embedded in the design of my page...my fingers get impatient with drying times...

I wrote up a blog post of my handmade IW journal. See it HERE, or just go to the older post.

Well, there you have it. I've done the first challenge of this year-long project. Next Wednesday, the next video is out, and I am eagerly waiting for it! 

Have a great day! 

♥♥♥ Anna ♥♥♥

Inspiration Wednesday Handmade Journal

Inspiration Wednesday: for years the course has intriqued me. This year, I've decided to jump in. 

I want to share the journal I made for it. I made my own. Why? 'Cause it's fun. And my own. Did I say it's fun yet? It is fun to make your own. 

Of course I can't keep it simple. I have to make my own journal. My previous post was of my Artsydoris, and I still I'm not over that. So, with a slightly different take on the whole thing, I will use my skills learned from the Artsydori workshop, and make a larger one for INSPIRATION WEDNESDAY 2016, hosted by Donna Downey. I've been intrigued with that workshop for many years, but you can only do so much, right? This year I'm jumping in with both feet. So, making my own journal for it.

Here are some details:

-  9"x12" Watercolor paper pad by Canson

- 26 sheets folded in half, which gives me a spread to work on once every two weeks, just like the project is set up.

- 5 signatures in total, 4 signatures have 5 sheets = 20 sheets, 1 signature has 6 sheets = 26 sheets 

Punched holes one inch apart with a dentist tool. (I lost my paper piecer, and for some crazy reason, I found an old dentist tool in my tool stash. Life with boys, I tell you. They like to save anything they find!This time it came in handy for me! ; )

- next step is to sew the signatures together. I added a Ranger tag between each each sheet, Inspiration Journal by Donna Downey style. Pink thread of course. ;)

The signatures, left to their own devices, lol, splay open like this. They will be harnessed soon with mixed media goodies in them! Can't wait to make a big mess of them. I folded them, and slip them into the elastics of my Dori. So easy.

Next, I fashioned my Artsy Dori. See the workshop here: Junque Art Sudio.

So, with this set-up, I can take out one signature at a time to work on my projects, and once dry, I can slip it, easy peasy back in - Traveler's Notebook-style. 

Here are some of my process pictures:

Underpaper on canvas, sprayed with Tulip fabric paint and a handmade mask, some gesso smudges, and some Gelli printing scraps...

Didn't like the blue middle...

Changed it to purple.

Added white markings and deep purple. Perfect.

Here's the back! Changed the dark colors to more muted tones, to match the front. I'm happy.

Next, is the project!! Here is my Week One project page in progress. Loving the look. Adding bright colors next. 

I'm very eager to learn new art journaling and mixed media techniques! Here goes nothing! :)

 Hopefully you'll see more Inspiration Wednesday posts. I love starting new projects, but find it hard to complete anything! Craft ADD, I tell you!

Have a great day, everyone, and thanks for visiting!

♥♥♥ Anna ♥♥♥