Superbowl 2013: Daily Art Journal Page

Hello everyone! What's going on? Hopefully you've all been doing what you enjoy over the weekend, whether that be art or something else. I personally have been working on a few art journaling pages, and have been watching a few of my favorite shows. I finally got Season 7 of Doctor Who (the first five episodes) from the library, and I watched the first two today. I love it so far. That is one amazing show. 

Anyways. I just got around to making a Superbowl page in my art journal, even though I've been considering doing it for quite some time. I'm not really sure what've been holding me back for this long, but I'm glad that I did. 

Basically, I just went with the colors of the Ravens, as they were the team that won. If the 49ers would have won, then I would have gone with their colors. Eventually I'm going to add some journaling to this page as well. The funny thing is that I didn't even watch the Superbowl game. I was too busy playing basketball and video games with my guy friends. Which made me think that it was comical that  I even decided to make a page for the event. However, as I felt it was a major event, and something that happened in my life, I needed to document it. If I would have been keeping a regular journal, I would have written it down in there. Why not in my art journal as well.

I will also say that I have another page/spread planned for doing on what I ACTUALLY did for the Superbowl. ;)

Here's just a bit more of a close up of the detail in the layers of this page. At first, I was having a lot of difficulty with the colors, as they kept getting muddled. As purple is made up of red and blue, when I added the yellow/gold color, I would get brown, since the 3 primary colors were getting mixed together. However, I eventually managed to pull it off, after much layering and patience. 

It's certainly not my favorite page in the world, but I can definitely cope. 

Thanks for visiting guys, and I'll talk at you later!

Color Challenge #2 Reveal: Barbara

Hey everybody! I'm here with my first post of the day. I may have another one for you guys coming up later tonight, with the rest of my art (My ICAD, 30-30-30 Challenge, and In The Sun post). But for right now, what I have for you guys is my color challenge REVEAL!! I've been working on this challenge pretty much every day since I announced it here, and have really enjoyed it. The colors were lime, light purple, red, pale yellow, and white. Barbara and I decided to do this in a bit of a larger scale than I did last time with Dede. With that challenge, we gave ourselves a week to create one art journal page. And that was cool. But for this challenge, we gave ourselves two weeks to complete five projects. It was a little more time consuming, but I love the results! So let's get on with it!

The first project is a page in my art journal. This is my big, fat art journal with the black cover and green spine. I don't know if I've ever put a picture on here of just the journal, not the pages inside of it. Maybe I should think about doing that. And perhaps a flip would be in order. That way you guys can see about how much I have left to do before the journal itself is done.

Anyways, focusing more in on the journal page itself, let's look at a close up of the page. You can probably see that in the very back of the page is a background that was composed solely up of dictionary paper that I tore up and then collaged down to the background in all different directions using Elmer's School Glue. It actually works just as well as Mod Podge from what I've done so far. Which I think is impressive. Though it could just be me. Anyways, with this page, I actually decided to blend the concept of this page with another challenge. A Year In the Life of An Art Journal. I really wanted to do all of the prompts for this part of the challenge, but I simply ran out of time in the month. That's okay though. There's always next month. :)

And here you can probably see the stamping a bit better. I used my circle stencil, along with 3 found stamps to create these circles. Something that I find popping up again and again in my work is circles. Whether it be deep inside of the layers of a page, the main focus of a page or accents ON a page, it seems that everything that I make these days has at least one circle on it. And if I don't want to use circles, it takes quite a bit to pull myself away from them. It's crazy. However, I have learned to accept it for what it is. Part of my art. And I'm not going to try and change that.

Here is the second project that I did for this challenge. I decided upon a spread for this portion of the challenge, and tried to do a portrait. I don't like it as much as some of the other portraits that I have done in the past, but I believe that to have something to do with my limited color pallet. I couldn't deviate too much from the colors Barbara and I had picked together, so I just went with what I knew would most likely work. However, this did inspire me to work more on my portraits, as this is certainly not my favorite. So I guess it was kind of a win-win situation anyways.

Also, just a question. Does this background look familiar to you guys at all? :) I slipped you guys a sneak peek a few days ago, I just didn't tell you. If you are still wondering where it is, you can click here to see. :)

One of the other projects that I decided upon was a series of ATC's. I decided to count this as a single project, instead of three. I suppose I could have done it either way, but I had some other ideas that I had floating around in my head, so I decided to go with those as well. So I created these three ATCs, simultaneously, as part of a series. They are not identical, but they go together. I would LOVE to trade these! One of my goals for my DayZero Project is to trade 101 ATCS. I am currently at 0. Even though this is only three, it'd be cool to have a few at least.

Here's a bit of a close up of the first ATC. It is titled "TAKE ME TO THE LAND OF JAZZ." As you can see.

Here is the second ATC.

And here is the third. They are composed of many layers of media on top of one another.

Here is the fourth project I came up with for this challenge. I decided to do a mini collage; it measures 6" on each side. I made most of the papers that this collage was composed of as well. The only one that I didn't make was the red grid with the lime circles showing through it. I painted the papers specifically for this challenge, and I still have a whole bunch left over. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with them, but it could be one of many things. Something that I love about this collage though, is all of the little details.

For example, this layered circle that was composed up of multiple layers of paper and paint on top of one another. I love the way it turned out, and is was so much fun to work on. Plus, I love the way the stamped title looks when it was layered with the circle.

Here's another part that I love. I laid down a stripe of lime green paint down onto the page, then punched circles out of the red graph paper. Then I glued it on top of the green. Then, of course, I added the red to the green, and the layer of red stamping along the side. And the lettering. Can't forget that.

Finally, we have the red circles that I added to very bottom to accent the pale yellow and purple background. I tried to go without putting something in every spot, but I just didn't like the way that it looked. So I filled it up. And I quite like the way that it turned out.

And then, for my fifth and final project for this challenge, I have a little mini "canvas". If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen this picture. I was giving you TWO sneak peeks. ;) I wanted to see if anyone would notice, and then put two and two together. Anyways. I was greatly inspired to create this "canvas" by this post. And, the reason that canvas is in quotes, is because it's not actually a canvas. It's a box. A little cardboard box.

You can see that a little bit better here. It has a bit more depth to it than normal canvas. But I really like the way that this one turned out for me. I used pink words on this, instead of one of the colors, but only because I couldn't find any that matched. And this just looked good.

And THAT my friends; that was my color challenge reveal! I hope that you guys enjoyed it! Make sure to check back later for another post. :)

"Luggage" and ICAD #6: Dragonfly

I've got some more art to share with all of you! I really love the way that this feels; blogging and creating art every day; I think that this is my tenth day in a row, and I feel right now like I'm invincible; like I could go on forever. We'll see how it goes though. Today I decided to do an art journal SPREAD in my journal, instead of a single page. I've been doing these sporadically throughout this journal. I think that I've done a total of 15 prompts in this journal, and with only two of those prompts have given me a full two page spread. I don't know what it is about a prompt, but when I see it, I generally realize what it is that I'm going to do page wise. I think it has a lot to do with how much I want to write about the subject in the base layer of journaling. I think I'll do a post on that later on.

So today's prompt was #15 on the 5,000 Question Survey. At this rate, it's going to take me a while to complete the survey, but I don't really mind. I love the continuous feel of it, and it seems to work a lot better for me personally to work through it in an art journal format than it would to simply write about it in a journal. It's more artistic this way. More creative. For me at least. The prompt today seemed a little bit silly in comparison to some of the deeper thought processes that I've had to put into the other pages. Today's question was as follows. Which is worse, loosing your luggage or having to sort through tangled Christmas lights?

For me, the answer was almost instantaneous. Loosing your luggage is way, way, WAY worse than untangling Christmas lights. I'm pretty much a pro at untangling things anyways. I actually had a story to share in the base journaling about loosing my luggage;  I actually went on a missions trip just over a month ago, and we pretty much lost our luggage. It wasn't our fault though. We had to stay the night at the airport because our flight was canceled. And they didn't tell us where they were putting our luggage. We searched that place for a while before we finally found it.

Something that I really enjoyed about this page in general was the little piece of cream polka dotted paper in the upper right hand corner. There's a story behind that too. I was just looking at my page, trying to figure out what to do. I had finished the background; hadn't added a title or journaling yet, and not a single type of paper embellishment had touched the page. I wasn't really sure what it was that I wanted to do with the page yet, and was trying hard to think through it. I stared at the page for a few minutes, then looked up, just a little bit annoyed with it. And the answer was staring me right in the face.

You see, I have a corkboard on the wall facing me when I'm creating art. I got a bunch of little, round, colorful pins to inspire me when I create. And then I just pin tons of little things to the board. I'll have to post about the corkboard sometime too. Anyways, when I looked up, that little piece of paper was the first thing that I saw. I don't even remember how long it had been up on the board. I think it was probably one of the first things that I put up. Well, I took it off, and tried it out on the page, and I loved it! I let a little hang off the edge of the page to create a tab, then added the title and the journaling. The journaling was done on my typewriter. The paper was a piece of dictionary paper that I coated with paint and let dry. It was surprisingly nice to work with.

Now that we've covered that, let's move on, shall we? Though I'm fairly certain that most of you can guess what prompt I used for this ICAD, just in case, for those of you who haven't checked out the ICAD prompts yet, the prompt was "dragonfly". Like I said, it's pretty self explanatory. However, as simple as this card it, I really enjoyed the way that it turned out. I used a few different techniques to achieve the background effect, including spray inks and lifting some of the excess paint off of the card.

My first idea for the card was simply to use the colors blue and green, which are my favorite colors to see dragonflies in. They are just extremely cool, with their metallic colors and such. But almost as soon as I started, I got stuck as to where to go next. Then I saw the border strip lying on my desk, and I tried it on there. And I loved the way it looked. From there, I simply went online and found a picture of a blue dragonfly. And collaged it on. I still got to use the colors that I originally wanted to, just in a different way than I had thought. And that's okay.

"Time" and ICAD #4: Doodle Your Name

Hey everybody! I'm back with another art journal page for you guys today. :) Today I was working from yet ANOTHER prompt (I love the way these have been working for me - tons of inspiration) from the 5,000 Question Survey. Today's prompt was "Does time really heal all wounds?"

After the base layer of writing on this art journal page, I came to the conclusion that I don't think that this is so. Sure, I think that time can heal SOME wounds; some physical wounds and smaller emotion wounds, but I think that the biggest problem does come from the larger emotional scars that we develop throughout our lives.

Something that I have really enjoyed about using these prompts is the way that I've almost turned it into a process. When I start out a page, I start out with the base layer of journaling, then add the art on top. From there, I look for a key word that I used in the journaling. For this page, I realized that it was "time". It just seemed to be a good title. And then, I take that word and use that as a prompt for my journaling.

Single word prompts seem to inspire me a bit more than questions, and I really enjoy the way that my journaling turns out. It gives me a good base to work off of, and gives me some different ideas to work with.

As you can see, I tried another way of doing the title today; I was going to use the cut out letters, but I decided to use stamps instead. A foam stamp set. I love the way that these look, and it always seems to work out with any style of art page.

I decided to use some warmer colors for this page instead of the cool colors that I normally use, and I love. Seriously. I do. Even though my favorite colors are blue and green, I do like to use some other colors on occasion. And I normally am pretty pleased with the outcome.

I also love the way that the photo that I collaged onto this page near the beginning really blended into the background. I just like the effect that it gave. I just did a bunch of layers, one after another on the page, and that was the result that I got. Pretty interesting in my opinion. But, of course, I'm biased.

The last thing that I have to share with you guys today is my daily index card for ICAD2. I love the way these prompts are as well, and I seem to be doing good in keeping up with this project. Let's just hope that I keep it up. Today's prompt was "Doodle Your Name". And so that's just what I did. I used a bunch of different Crayola markers and just wrote my name over and over again on the lined side of this index card. I just have to say, after you've written your name this many times, it does start to look kind of weird.

Hopefully I'll be back with you guys tomorrow; today was the first day of a sports camp that I went to, plus I went to Starbucks with one of my good friends. So I had kind of a busy day. And yet, I was still able to make it on here. So I think it'll probably be safe to say I'll be back tomorrow! See you then!

"Obsession" and ICAD #2: Yellow

Hey everyone! I'm here with the same kind of stuff I had for you yesterday. An art journal page made from a prompt from the 5,000 Question Survey, and an index card for ICAD. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Let's start out with the art journal page first.

Today's prompt was "Have you ever taken martial arts?" Oh. My. Goodness. They needn't have asked that question. The whole martial arts thing set me off on this big spew about my life story with martial arts. Liking TMNT and corny ninja movies as a child, and evolving into a person who still loves martial arts and ninjas with all of her soul. Seriously. See all of that journaling? Nobody writes that much about martial arts. Not unless they really like it. Like me. And in case you guys were wondering/didn't know... yes I did take martial arts. And I was rather good at it too, if I do say so myself. My master told me that when I got to be a black belt, he believed that I could be the first person from his school to win a national black belt tournament. Unfortunately, we had to move. It was extremely disappointing, and the cost of living is much higher down here in Florida than it was in Ohio.

But, on a higher note, let's talk about the page itself, shall we? I started out with the page being orange. I wanted to play with opposites, as the Creative Every Day prompt for this month asked of us, so I tried some blue on top of that.

And from there, I tried to work with a Traci Bautista inspired style. But you can see what happened from there. It changed. From that, into my style. Although you can still see some of the creative paint doodles showing through. I did like the way that the page looked, I really did, but the problem wasn't that I didn't like the doodles. It was that I didn't like how it wasn't my style. It didn't match the rest of my journal, so it didn't really work out...

So, from there I added a thick layer of white paint over top of the whole thing. I was thinking about letting it dry that way, and just starting over, but I didn't really like the idea of all of my precious paint doodles going to waste over the surface. So, in any of the places that I had doodled with paint the various circles and flowers, I picked up the white paint with a paper towel. Just blotted it up. Then I let it dry that way.

Then, after that, I went over the entire thing with yellow paint. And that's where I got my final layer. I loved the way it turned out, and I really think that this page is a whole lot more me than the other one was.

Here's one last close up of one of my flower doodles. It's not quite the same as it was when it was more Traci Bautista inspired, but it's a lot more distressed and cracked. Totally my style. I love.

And here is my ICAD of the day. I used the prompt 'yellow' for this card; I painted the back of an index card with bright yellow paint. Then I took a deep yellow color and used a pallet knife to spread it all over the background. Then I used a rust colored porfolio oil pastel to draw the doodles on the edges. The photo is from a magazine and the word is from a printed out collage sheet I got off the internet. 

And, quite honestly, that's all I have for you guys today. I'll be back with all of you guys tomorrow! See you!

Art Journal Prompt Page

Hey guys! I'm back here with you guys today with a page that I was working on today. I started another journal (I know, again. I need to stop that. But I'm out of blank journals now, so that should help) a few days ago, and I'm filling it using the questions from the 5,000 question survey as prompts. I think that it's really cool, and I'm really enjoying the process. This is something I just started today, and I love the way it looks. I'm not sure if it's done yet or not. I think I'll add a title and some journaling yet. This is the fourth page in the journal. I worked on this for about an hour today, and already I'm this far. :) I think it's pretty cool.

I kind of like the color combination, even though I didn't have any type of idea for the page when I started it. It just sort of evolved on it's own. It's cool. I don't really have all that much to tell you today, but I just wanted to share this one page with you. And I'll see you tomorrow. :)

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.