Stenciling and Experimentation

Hey guys! I'm back here with all of you once again, and this time with yet another journal page that I worked on today. I did quite a bit of journaling today, even though I spent about four hours sorting through all of my stuff and tidying up my space. I spent a lot of time cleaning my stuff and messing around with techniques as I went along. That's normally how I clean. I'll be sorting through a lot of stuff, and all of a sudden I'll come across some random thing that I really like. And then I'll be forced by myself to play with it. I'll mess around with that for about 5 minutes, then get back to cleaning. Above is pretty much the only page I was working on today. Adding on layers. I started with a layer of journaling in Sharpie, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately, and then I put on a thin coat of gesso.

I followed that layer with some Portfolio watercolor crayons; I drew a bunch of swirls over the whole page, and then I wet it down with a brush and spread it over the whole page. I really was liking the way it was turning out, and so I decided to keep a few of swirls only partially saturated. So in some places you can see a bit of a swirl here and there. :) Over top of that I ended up taking some dark blue dye ink and stamping a whole layer of a handmade triangle stamp I made with an exacto knife and a cheap eraser.

Finally, I finished off the page with a bunch of cute little stenciled flowers in white. I made the stencil myself with my cricut. It's pretty small, but I just randomly stenciled them in, not really caring much about where they fell. Underneath the first layer that I described in this post, there were a bunch of other layers too. A base layer of paint, some washi tape, a couple layers of stamp and painting, a layer or two of tissue paper; all below the journaling. :) So you can see how many layers I use in a single page. It's defiantly not just a couple. That's my style. I've been developing my style more and more lately; trying out different techniques by different artists, and incorporating them into my PERSONAL style. As you have probably seen from the last couple of posts, I've been experimenting with stencils in my journal. I love using them and they're so fun! So the only way to learn is to experiment. :) See you guys tomorrow!!

Link Sharing!

Okay. Today I'm going to try something a little different than I normally do. I'm a normal, almost article writing type blogger. But today I'm going to try something that I've seen a couple other bloggers do, and I always appreciate it. I'm going to post a bunch of links that have caught my eye. A few of them are older, but for the most part they just came out of my Google Reader. They all inspire me, and I hope to inspire some of you! Whenever I see one of these on somebody else's blog I always find it fun to browse other sites that the author found inspiring. So here it goes!

I found this post very inspiring, and I LOVE the story behind it (though I'm sorry she lost her painting.

Here's a nice interview post. I always love these.

I love the quilt featured here, and a stash pic is always welcomed!

This is a post of a really cute quilt; freeform pieced birds!

This one is AMAZING... a bound book made from a coke can!

I've been working on a squidoo lens about inspiration, so this was spot on!

This is on a challenge site; using monochrome on an art journal page!

I love the journals this lady makes. They're so unique.

So I hope you enjoyed today's post, and I'll talk to you guys later! See you!

A Monochromatic Card....

Hey everybody!! Though I'm still playing a bit of catch up, this post may (or may not) be a little bit longer than the last post since I have very strong emotions attached to this page. This is, I think, the second time that I've actually emotionally connected to my pages. I had just gotten into a BIG fight with one of my brothers. It was horrible - a very bad experience, especially on my part.

But you see, in the end we made up and everything was good again. So I made this page as a representation of that. My favorite color is blue and his is red - when I scraped these colors together onto the page, it was a sort of literal representation of our differences being put aside; actually mixing even; into an entirely new color - purple!! I really like how it turned out, and I did a bunch of journaling on it. I'm still trying to think of the perfect title.

Here's another, more full, straight on view. I actually think that the colors are a bit more true in this photograph than the other, though they aren't THAT different. That's something else that I have trouble with; getting my colors true to life. I know it's never possible to get them perfect, but I'd like them to at least RESEMBLE the real colors. :P If anybody has any tips, that'd be cool...

And last but not least, a card for today's 365 Cards challenge. The challenge was to put color on your image in 5 different ways. I got my 5 colors on the first, upside down tear shaped bulb. From top to bottom, they are: gel pen, colored pencil, acrylic paint, markers, and glitter glue. The other bulb was simply colored in with gel pens and markers. I hope you like it, and have a good day!!