Beginner Art Journaling Supplies

Hey everybody! Jordan here, with yet another post to share with all of you. I know that I've been doing pretty short posts lately, so I thought that I might make it up to you by giving you more of an extra long post today. It is Saturday after all, so I can deal with it. As you have probably seen from the title, today's post is about the basic supplies that you can use to art journal. I'll probably have a separate list some other time, about all of the advanced supplies, which I also like for art journaling. I'm not going to go in depth in each supply. But I promise you, I will do them separately as well and link back to here. So let's get started shall we?

Journal: One of the first things that you're going to want to have is, most definitely a journal. I love composition books, as you followers of my blog know. I think that it's the cheap aspect of them that really attracts me, but there are other reasons too. They are very highly customizable, and you don't feel BAD decorating them. Say you buy a really expensive moleskin. It will almost feel like you're defacing it to put stuff on the cover. Or even on the inside. That's another reason for me buying composition books. Since they are so cheap, you don't feel like you need to be perfect while playing around, and you won't be AS scared of the blank page, since there are already lines on there. Of course, you can easily get rid of those by painting over it. Plus, I just love that there are so many pages. 100 sheets, 200 pages. Of course, you CAN choose other types. It's your journal. Do as you wish.    

Paint: Next up on my list, we're going to go with paint. Now, not everyone uses paint in their journals. But I'm making this list to go with the supplies that I find myself using on almost, if not every, art journal page that I make. If you just go to the art supply store and look around, you will probably be intimidated by all of the kinds of paint that you will find there. But don't be overwhelmed. Paint is one of the most fun supplies to search for and buy. There are so many different colors and shades of those colors, that just simply browsing them makes my head go ablaze with ideas, and just makes me HAPPY. I don't know why. But I'll have another post on this for sure. I might have to do a post on each kind of paint. I know. It's sad that I'm so obsessed. But at least I won't run out of blog ideas... ANYWAYS. Back to the subject at hand. There are so many different kinds of paint; craft acrylic, tempera, fresco tempera, oil, watercolor pans, watercolor TUBES, acrylic tubes, student acrylics, ARTIST acrylics, artist watercolor tubes, poster paints, gouache, and so, SO much more! Paint is the ultimate craft supply.    

Pens and Markers: Next up, we have our pens and markers. Now this is a bit of an interesting aspect of the art journaling world. Obviously there are many, many, MANY different kinds of pens to use. And lots of different colors too. It's easy to get lost. But, when you are just starting, I recommend holding off on the colored pens. YES they can be fun to use. Most definitely. But so are black and white. And they have many more uses than the colored ones. In this picture here, I have Sharpie Paint Markers, Sharpies, a ZIG calligraphy marker, a Sakura glaze pen in white, and a black Sakura GellyRoll. These are the ones that I find myself coming to most often. Of course, feel free to explore the vast world of pens and markers. They're out there, that's for sure. 

Glue: Next up, we have glue. There are many different kinds of glue as well, but this topic is much more scarce than the others. I left a couple kinds out of this purpose on accident, but I'll mention them here. One, we have Mod Podge. This brand is very commonly known, and has many different uses. There is Allene's Tacky Glue. Most crafters have at least heard of it, if not bought a bottle or two. If you haven't, it isn't a big deal. This glue does come in handy quite often however. You also have HOMEMADE Mod Podge, school glue, glue sticks, and scrapbooking tape runners and glue dots. All of these have come in handy to me at one time or another.     

Spray Bottle Filled With Water: Ah yes. Even though many people do NOT consider this a necessity, I in fact, do. I love my spray bottle, and used my old one so much that I wore out the spraying tip so much that I broke it. We went through a lot together, so I held onto it, and put something else in it to spray, while I got a new, bigger spray bottle in the travel isle of Target for a buck. I'm sure I'll go through quite a bit with this one as well.

Scissors: Scissors, of course, are important to the creative process. No matter how much you love the raw edge of a torn piece of paper, you will always come to the point when you want a nice clean edge to a piece of paper, or a shape. For instance, a circle. It's not easy to tear a perfect circle. Not that it's easy to cut one either...     

Paper and Fabrics: Next come papers and fabrics. Or any sort of collage material to tell you the absolute truth. I left out a lot of my collage papers and fabrics in this photo; I just wanted you to sort of see what some of the pieces that I use look like. I'll save leftover papers from projects, wrapping paper, greeting cards, pages from books, pictures from magazines, fabrics from clothing I've outgrown, receipts; any piece of paper or fabric that I find in my everyday life. There are many more kinds than this obviously; there are so many different kinds that it would literally be impossible to list all of the different kinds out there. I'll definitely have to do a separate post for all of you guys about papers and collage materials; that would be really fun!

Paintbrushes and Painting Tools: The next thing then would be paintbrushes and other painting tools. When you first hear the phrase "painting tools", I am almost positive that the first thing that comes to your mind would be paintbrushes. And while those are, in fact, one of the most COMMON painting tools, that doesn't necessarily meant that they are the only ones. But let me focus on them first anyways. I use approximately six different brushes; seven if you include the foam brush. But I have a 1" flat brush, a 5/8" flat brush, two 1/2" shaders/angular brushes, a 1/2" flat brush, and a glue brush that doesn't have a size; it came with a kid's paint set. There are also pallet knives, which you can buy fairly cheaply at Michaels, and an old toothbrush can also be used to spread paint. The last thing that I'm going to share in this subject is an old credit card. These have practically endless uses, and I have used mine so much that it's literally about to break in half from so much use.

Stamps: Last, but certainly not least, we have stamps. I know that a lot of people would argue with me about stamps being a necessity, but I'm going to stick with my facts that I've found, and that would be that they most definitely are. There are many different kinds of stamps to use, of course, and a lot of mine are either homemade or found. But I do buy some too. The ones that I buy are normally one of two kinds. The $1.00 stamp sets that you can find at Michaels. Or the cheap foam stamps. I can't make those, so that's why I buy them. But there are other, cheaper alternatives as well. Or rather, about the same price. But they're more custom. I make eraser stamps using cheap erasers and an exacto knife, and  cheap, sticky-back foam that I adhere to cardboard from cereal boxes. Of course, you can also use bubble wrap and other pieces as stamps as well.

Yeah. That was a pretty long post today, and I thought that I had lost the whole thing really close to the end. But luckily, I found it pasted into the search bar of my computer (it does that when text is highlighted). So yeah. Anyways, that's all for today, and I'll see all of you guys tomorrow! See ya!

New Materials and a Canvas

Hey guys! So I'm back with all you guys once again today, and I've got a couple of things to share with you. I went to Michaels today, and got a whole bunch of stuff, plus started painting my first canvas!! The first part of my blog post today is going to be about the canvas, and the second part is going to be about the stuff I bought today. Okay. So let's just get started here, with the canvas. I did this canvas pretty much the same way that I do the rest of my art; lots of layers, bright colors, and distressed effects.  I've been experimenting with a new technique, and that is sort of shown on this piece, but I still need to perfect it a bit before I tell you what it is. For now, you're just going to have to deal with the look of this piece as to see how it works out. :) Now I'll go through a few of the layers I did on here.

I started out with a layer of lime green paint as the base. I love the way this color looks. Then I took a piece of plastic canvas that I had bought and stenciled a circle through it. I added a little bit of text stamping, and, after letting those layers dry I sprayed some glimmer mist over top of it. I made a wash, then added the two layers of drips. And that's where I ended the layers. I know that more layers will be added in the very near future; I was already prepping some more stencils to use on this before I took the picture. Now let's continue on to the stuff that I bought at Michaels.

This is the first set of stuff. I got quite a bit of stuff, so I had to separate it all into three separate piles to photograph so that you could see all of it. In this stack I have a piece of plastic canvas, 2 Sharpie paint pens (a white and a black), a drawing set, a 36 pan watercolor set, a dollar set of clear stamps, a set of 12 tube watercolors, a set of 12 acrylic paints, and a 16 pack of Cray-Pas. Some of this stuff I've never worked with before in my life, so there will be quite a bit of experimentation that you are going to be seeing on this blog in the very near future. I love, love, LOVE experimenting, especially when I get to play with new supplies. So I'll probably be doing that quite a bit.

This next picture is really quite simple, but I really wanted you to see it. I got a 2 pack of 8"x10" canvas' for $5.99. Plus, they were buy 1, get 1 free, so I pretty much got each one for $1.50, which I consider pretty good for canvas'.

This is the last picture of the stuff that I bought today. This is more the paint materials. I got a big thing of white tempera paint because my white paint was gone. Then, I got six different paints for 59 cents each. I really wanted to get one of each color; a pink, a red, an orange, yellow, green, purple, brown, black, and a gray. I had picked out one of each anyways. But what ended up happening was that I had to put some back because I wanted to have some money left on my gift card. And I did. I have about thirteen dollars left on a fifty dollar gift card. So I got all of that stuff, including one last thing of black glitter glue, which is also shown in the picture above for a grand total of $36.18. I would say that I got a lot for my buck. What do you think?

Well, that's about all that I've got for you guys tonight, and I'll see you tomorrow! Bye!!

An EXTRA-LONG Post...

Hey guys! I'm back with you guys today, and sorry I didn't post yesterday, but I had a total volleyball MARATHON yesterday!! I did create a little yesterday though, so I'll just do an extra long post today. Oh yeah. And I did join a volleyball team a few days ago. My first game is Thursday! Wish me luck, we're gonna need it. :) So anyways, now that I've got you up to date on pretty much everything else that's going on in my life (which obviously isn't much) let's get to the crafty/art version. It's like my life is in two different stories. One for art and one for the rest of everything. Anyways, let's get started.

If you look above at the page I was working on today, you'll see that I just finished a page in my art journal. :) I kind of love it, and I think it's really pretty. I'm also starting on a sort of online art journal course (yes another. :P) and I'm probably gonna make a journal for that. This is actually a page in my 21 Secrets journal, and I love the way it turned out. I journaled, and put the title down in the corner. I actually used this same word on one of my index cards that you've already seen, but this just seemed to fit the page perfectly. Normally with art journaling I end up putting the title down first and then journaling what comes to mind when I think about the title. You might do it in some other way, but that's how I work, so that's what I'm doing. :)

Here's just a bit of a close up of the title and a bit of the journaling. Most of the journaling was really light; the gray circles were really textured since I used gesso to lay them down, plus did some lifting which added even more texture. Then, when I went to write on them, the ink in my pen just didn't flow as well. But, for emphasis, I did the last few words with a Sharpie. They go over anything.

Here are my index cards from yesterday and today. I love the one from yesterday; excellent texture, and I am really loving the textures. But seriously. The second one is kind of annoying to me for some strange reason. Don't even ask me why. I feel like it's just overly simple or something. I was considering just trashing this one altogether, never showing it on the blog, and simply counting this as one of the five "free days" we get for ICAD. But when I really started to think about it, I finally decided against it, since this is really about creating, and just having fun. And I did have fun. So that's what I'm doing, and I'm keeping it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Also, today, I worked on making some of my own stamps. I've been having a whole lot of fun making these recently, and I just love the way these two turned out. To make them, I simply cut some pieces out of cardboard (it was actually just a cereal box) and then did some punching on some craft foam. The one on the left was REALLY easy to make, and really quick. The one on the right took a bit longer, but I really love the effect I get with it so it was totally worth it. I love the variety I can get with making my own stamps. I love that I can literally make anything that I want, and it can be as epic as I want it to be. It's really cool. So far I normally just use black paint to stamp, but I've occasionally used other colors. I also used one of these (I'm not going to mention which) on my page for mine and Dede's challenge. I know that I'm torturing you here, but that's all the more reason to check in here on Tuesday, right?

One last thing before I go. This is a single, loose page that I've been working on for a bit of collage fodder. I love the way this turned out, even though it was just made by picking up paint from other pages (you can see the lifting from the circles of the page I showed at the top of this post :P) and a bunch of other colors I've just been messing around with. I love them so much. :) So that's pretty much all I've got for you today, but be sure to check in tomorrow. Okay? Okay. 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!