Summer of Color 2012: Week 5

Hey guys! How's it going for all of you guys out in blogland today? I hope it's been going pretty good. I managed to sit down today, and do a TON of art. It felt good too, to churn out so many different projects. However, I only have a couple of things that I really want to share with you guys today. First and foremost, we are going to have my Summer of Color papers. For this challenge I have been doing a small batch of painted papers for each week. This week was purple, blue, and green. I love the way that these papers turned out, and am looking forward to doing the final week. It'll be pretty cool. After that's done though, I'll be ready to start my next project, using these papers. And I think that it's going to be pretty cool.

For the papers today, I used mostly watercolors on a plain copy paper background. It was easy to do, and quite enjoyable, in my personal opinion. I just got to experiment with shapes, and the way that the different colors blended together.

Here's the second part of the challenge. Again with the watercolors. In the past, I've mixed up a batch of acrylic paints and whipped together some papers, and then mixed the acrylics with watercolors and washes. But this time I really wanted to go simple. And back to the basics of simple watercolor.

The other thing that I wanted to share with you guys today is this art journal that I recently started working in. I was considering using this journal for my In The Sun Class (which an update is coming for tomorrow), but I decided, after working on it a little, that I was wanting something a little bit bigger. This journal was handmade and bound by me. What I did was take some envelopes in multiple sizes, folded them in half, and then simply sewed them into signatures. Then I sewed the signatures together, and that was that. I actually made this a while ago, and was trying to figure out if I had mentioned this on the blog before or not.

However, the photo above shows what I did on the front cover of the journal. I used several layers of acrylic paint, some of which were already there. Then I added some stamping, and then the black border with a Portfolio oil pastel crayon that I bought at Staples. That's what I have so far on this page, but I still need to add a title. A title for the journal. To really show what I want to to with it. So this is really more of an unfinished sneak peek than a finished thing. Though I still wanted to share. Anyways. That's really all that I have for you guys today. And I'll see you guys later! Bye!

Collage Art Journal

Hey guys and gals!! I'm back once again with all of you! I love posting here, though I'm sorry that this post is so late coming today! I got home from school, then had to do some homework. But I'm glad that I'm finally getting to this! It's probably going to be a bit of a shorter post today, because I have to do this quick. Either that or I'm just going to focus and just GET IT DONE. :) If you look at the picture above, you can see a page that; though I haven't worked on it for a while; I might think about working on this one soon. I was looking through some of my older journals for something for the blog, and this just naturally drew my eye towards it. I think it's the colors. I really do. Whenever I see lime and blue together, it just feels RIGHT. Those are my two favorite colors, and when they're together it is such a bright and colorful situation. If you have any suggestions for how to continue the layers on this that would be amazing! Comments make me happy. :)

Here's something else I want to show you; I barely ever work with collage, and when I do, it never really turns out that well. This is my absolutely favorite collage page I've done. I don't really know how I did it, though it just turned out perfectly. I love how the images work together, even though they are from completely different places. Some are from magazines, some from catalogues. Some are from the newspaper, and still others were simply printed out in a collage sheet. That's how collage works. You take tons of pieces from completely different locations and create one whole. It's really a cool process. I actually did this in my homemade magazine journal. As you can see from the many different things that I've done in this, the possibilities for this type of journal is endless! Once again, suggestions are always appreciated. Actually, I think I'll start a new paragraph for this.

Suggestions. That's where I left off. I love suggestions, and comments simply make me happy. If you ever have anything that you're looking for; a certain type of journal, or perhaps a tutorial. I think that's something that I need help with. I need to know what you; the people want to see. I know what I want to see in a blog, but that's not always what my readers want. :) So please, please, PLEASE comment with your suggestions. Please. :) I don't want to seem like I'm begging for comments or anything, and you don't even have to compliment my work. :) I just want ideas for the blog. Okay. I'll see you guys later! Bye!!

Art Journal Page and Homemade Stamps

Hey guys! First of all for today I just want to start off by apologizing for not posting yesterday. I was just otherwise distracted, and wasn't really feeling the art mood. So yeah. Sorry. But I'm posting now. :) I'm gonna start off with this page that I just was working on today; the blue strips that are on there are actually strips that I cut from a copy of a previous art journal page and glued onto it. I added white acrylic paint over the tops, and then alternating Portfolio oil pastels to each stripe. I finished it off with a layer of stamping of a foam flower stamp.

Here is one of the pages that I sort of have been making as extra collage material. I've been messing around with laying the book paper down on top of non dried paint, and then pulling it up. It creates excellent texture on both pieces. This one has been used on multiple pages and it almost ready for collage work. Probably what I'll do is make color copies in several sizes and use the photocopies instead of the original. And then maybe eventually I'll use the originals when I'm ready, and have made new ones to use. :) You can sort of see the words from the book paper in the background. These pages are from an old dictionary, but you could use anything. You could even use newspapers or magazine pages.

The last thing I wanted to share with you tonight is this picture of some stamps I've made. I made the eraser ones by carving into cheap, dollar store erasers with an exacto knife to create the designs. The swirly one I made by gluing string onto a piece of cardboard. And the other one I made by gluing a foam shape onto another piece of cardboard. :) That's all I've got for you today, so I guess I'll see you guys later! Bye!

Homemade Journals

Hey guys! So today, my post is probably going to be a little bit shorter that they normally are. Sorry about that, but all that I did today really isn't worth showing. I have come up with a plan. Basically, I have this website (that I've previously linked to on this blog) where I'm selling stuff for all types of art forms. I started out mostly with embellishments, but I'm pretty much ready to expand already. If you don't know what my personality is like, you'll probably find out soon. I'm kind of impatient. I came up with the idea to make tons of different kinds of journals and also sell them on my site. The first one that I managed to come up with is a journal made entirely of magazine/catalogue pages. It's hand bound with 5 signatures of 30 pages each (front and back) So, if you used all the pages, front and back, then you would have 150 pages to work on. That's including the front and back covers.

I'm considering offering these in 2 ways; gessoed and ungessoed. What do you guys think? I also had the idea to do a mixed paper journal, and a plain paper journal. Any other ideas? What do you guys think? See you guys later!