Heart Investigation 1.1: Cherish

Hello people. I'm back with you guys again today, with some more hearts on yet another art journal page. I have officially decided that I am going to continue working with this shape until I've thoroughly exhausted all of my options. I'm not going to freak out if I don't do hearts one day, but I do think it would be interesting to try to explore it in as many ways possible.

I had actually started this page a few days ago, when I was trying to work with the idea of an entirely blue page, for my 52 Sparks page. However, I got frustrated with it, and completely abandoned the idea. Today, I came back to it with a fresh mind and began where I left off. And I'm glad that I did.

I had to add a bunch of layers in order to be able to get myself to a point where I was happy with the result. Layer after layer after layer. Stamping, collage, and paint. I also used chalk pastels, oil pastels, and sharpies to doodle into the background. Something that I really enjoy doing is taking markers and just doodling a layer. 

It's not what the majority of my pages are made up of; not like some people. However, I do like the way it looks underneath layers of paint and collage. Just a bit unique and different. Something that I quite enjoy.

Here you can see some of the book text that I used on this page. Actually, I use book paper on most of my work. I have an old dictionary that I got from a thrift store, which I simply pull pages out of whenever I need them. They are awesome for collage, and also for monoprinting, when I do that. 

Something that I've really liked seeing in my work however, is the development of my own personal style. It's something that takes a lot of time to come up with, and I'm quite proud of what I've been able to accomplish on my own. I love it. I like to think, personally, that if someone was to see my work, they would be able to tell that it was mine.

Though I'm not quite sure that I'm exactly to that point yet, I look forward to the day when I am. That's one of the things that every artist dreams of, and being even remotely close to that is amazing. Anyways. Thanks for visiting guys! It's greatly appreciated, and I hope to see you guys tomorrow! Bye everyone.

Paper/Fabric Collage Fodder

Hey guys!!

What's going on with you guys today?

I haven't done much crafty stuff today, but I did take a few pictures for the blog.

I pulled a bunch of stuff out of my pile of supplies, and made a few piles. 

I've now officially decided to start a sort of series on collecting supplies for working in an art journal.

In other words, an series on collecting art journal fodder. 

For now, I think I'll just share with you guys what I've found so far.

Then I'll do other occasional posts about how to find and collect these things.

Are you guys ready for this?

Okay then.

Let's do it then.

Let's look up at the picture above at the first little collection I found.

I just pulled a few of the first things that came to my hand. 

I have a piece of magazine picture.

Some apple stickers.

Some printed black and white borders.

Some color scraped fabric.

Some watercolored book paper.

And a strip of colors.

There isn't as much in this picture, but I still like this selection.

I have a dyed paper towel.

A butterfly die cut.

Some pink polka dotted tissue paper.

A pulled photo paper.

And a homemade stamp that I made using craft foam and a toilet paper tube.

This was so much fun finding all of this stuff out of my stash;

So far I've just stacked it all up in a giant stack,

But I'm planning to start organizing soon.

I'm gonna try sorting by color in some type of horizontal paper storage.

But that's all I've got for you guys today.

And I'll see you guys tomorrow. :)

Found Paper Pile

Hey guys! I'm here with you guys again with another single photo page. I didn't really know what to show you guys today, but I walked into my room, and found this pile of papers. My desk is such a mess ALL the time, but this little pile is about my favorite thing of all time. Seriously. It's about 5" tall, and has all kinds of AWESOME stuff in it. I have a ton of different papers in it, stamped papers, and all kinds of text papers and stuff. A bunch of random pieces of card, and I'm pretty sure there's some foam stamps stuck in there somewhere. It's an awesome pile that I dig though for all my collage fodder and other stuff.

It's been sitting there for a month; actually I started it a month ago. How crazy is that? When you're actually working on it, or are like me, and are just plain addicted to collecting collage fodder, the stuff really grows into a huge pile REALLY quickly. I say that everyone should try it. :) Anyways, if you start a pile or a file, make sure to send me a picture. :) See you guys later!

An Art Journal Page, A Card, and A Dollar Store Find.

Hey everyone! I'm glad to be back once again with you all, and so far I've been doing okay with my post every day personal challenge to myself. This is day three, and also my third day of Art Journaling Daily challenge. I had a lot of fun playing today, and am glad that I had time to post this today. Sometimes my Sundays are especially busy, since currently in the afternoons I have been practicing with a group of others for our Easter play.

So anyways, this page was not only for the Art Journaling Daily; I like to have prompts to work with as they tend to get my creative juices flowing and give me plenty of ideas to work with. Today was another prompt from daisy yellow. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I love her work and her prompts. They are just so inspiring, and I always get ideas instantly. I enjoy working with them, and even though this page is outside of my usual comfort zone (bright colors), it sort of forced me to think outside the box a little.

So here's another view of the page, only this time a bit further away. I love giving you guys two views and distances of my work; I just think it works better. It was done from the No Frills Prompt 18. In these prompts, she gives you a photo, and your job is to work a page around the page. I used the colors from the photo which were deep golds and mustardy colors. And I don't normally use yellow, so this was a pretty big stretch from myself.

So I decided to also work with another 365 Cards sketch challenge - I sort of like to work with cards - it's a bit different than my usual work. So anyways, on every Sunday they post a sketch to work with. I always have used sketches, and loved them, since I thought they made my stuff look better and more structured. But the problem was that I always followed them to a "T". It got old. So when I worked this time, I made several MAJOR changes, even though you can still tell that it's directly from the sketch!

So here's my card that I made. I used pink and green, a combination that I like, but rarely use, since the colors together are a bit too girly for me personally. So anyways, my favorite parts of the card would probably be the lime pearls in the upper left hand corner, and the zebra ribbon down at the bottom. But as I said before, I'm not much of a card person. It's going to take some getting used to. That way I can get more back into the swing of things.

And on one last note, I picked up some glitter in lime, pink and blue while I was at the dollar store, so you should probably expect to see some experimentation with this, since I've never used loose glitter in my artwork before. Yeah. You read that right. I've never used loose glitter since I was probably four years old. So I think it might be interesting to play around with this and see what I can do with it. You know, that's out of the ordinary. Anyways, I'll see you all next time. Hopefully tomorrow.