In the Sun Class Pages

Hello all of my artsy friends! Hope you guys all had a fun, art filled day. I know I did. Today I would like to share with you guys some pages from my In the Sun art journal class. I've been having a lot of fun with these pages, though I have been falling a bit behind lately. Today I just took some time to catch up. I'm not completely caught up yet, but that's okay. I've also been skipping around with them lately. Doing the pages that I'm inspired to do right then and there. And it's really been turning out nicely. Today I have three pages to share with you guys. And I'll probably work some more on this journal tomorrow.

The first page though, that I would like to share with you guys is a page about my favorite snack for the summer. Now this, for me, is almost impossible to decided upon, since I do have such a passionate love for food. It's ridiculous. But I have a tie between watermelon and ice cream. Since I was sure that a lot of people would say ice cream (not that it matters; if it's my favorite, it's my favorite), I decided to go with the watermelon. Plus, I just wanted to play around with the colors and see what became of it.

The next page that I would like to share with you guys is this fireworks page. This is an extremely simple page, in comparison to some of the pages that I have done in this journal in the past. I took the painted paper background, which in and of itself was fairly simple (just white crayon and watercolors), and then added splatters of paint in two colors. That was the prompt. To make splatters of paint to represent fireworks. Then I added the title.

And, of course, added a border around the page with a marker. And that was that. It was finished. I love the way this page turned out though. I think, as simple as it is, it really represents me. Although it might be in a different way than I would normally expect.

The third and final page that I would like to share with you guys today is this one; the prompt was to  create a journal page about your greatest weakness. This was difficult for me, as I do not generally like to put my fears or weaknesses on paper where I can see them. I like to confront them in private, and work through them. But I don't generally like to talk about them.

Also, the background was part of the prompt. I drew the diamonds with a sharpie onto the background, and filled in the spaces with paint. I REALLY like the way that this page turned out. As simple as it is. It is one of my favorite pages in this whole journal. The more I look at it, the more I like it. I just think that the colors really work well together, and that was nice to see, since I really just picked random colors of paint off of my desk. 

I would like to say one more thing however. I had a thought last night, as I was trying to get to sleep. I know that the Olympics are coming extremely quickly (they start on July 27th; I'm SO excited!), and was wondering if any of you guys would be interested in an Olympics oriented challenge. I know that is extremely confined in the overall idea, but if there is interest, I will start to develop the idea. There would probably be a prompt a day, as well as some art journal pages that were inspired by it. And maybe something where you can link up your pages. I would totally love to do something like that. Let me know! Yes or no? It would be greatly appreciated.

Well. That's what I have for you guys today. Tomorrow I think that I would like to share with you guys a 31 Hearts post, even though I'm not quite so sure about that yet. Anyways. I'll talk to you guys then. And I hope you guys have a good rest of the day, and a good day tomorrow!

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!

30-30-30 Challenge: COMPLETED

Hey guys! I'm here with you guys again today, with the completion of my 30-30-30 project! I actually finished this project a few days ago (the 9th). But I decided to hold it off for a few days, so that I would have some time to prep the blog post for today. The first page that I want to show you guys today is a page that I was working with some specific colors. I wanted to work with circles again as well, and I really enjoy the way that this page turned out.

Here's a bit of a close up of the texture that I was able to achieve with this particular page. I scraped a bunch of color over the page, then added some stenciled circles. Then I painted around the edges of the circles with purple paint. 

And here is the final page for this challenge. These two pages still need to have journaling added to them, but that will probably be completed sometime in the next few days, since I didn't use anywhere near the amount of time that I had set aside for either of them. Which, of course, was 30 minutes. I probably used about 20 on each of them. Which leaves me plenty of space/time to write all over these pages. My biggest problem, I think, is going to be figuring out how to bind the single pages. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. I would be eternally grateful.

Now I'm going to do a bit of a showing of all of the pages that I have completed throughout this challenge. The photos are going to be in groups of four, except for the final two, because that's simply the way the numbers turn out when you organize in this way, and only have 30 pages. 32 and I would have 4 in every photo. Though you guys probably could have figured that out. This is the first four pages that I completed for this challenge. The first two are when I was really trying to start to get into the flow of the challenge, and really wasn't sure where I was going with it. The second two I enjoy very much, as this was when I was starting to develop a style for this journal.

With these pages, I like all of them, with the exception of the brown one in the lower left corner. I just think that I went a little overboard with the journaling. I should have stopped when my muse told me to stop. I shouldn't have continued. My favorite would be in the UPPER left hand corner. This is very easily my favorite page of the ENTIRE CHALLENGE.

I love all of these pages with a passion. My favorite though, if I have to pick one, is the one in the upper right hand corner. With that page, I fixed a "mistake" and turned it into something that I loved 100 times more than the original. Plus, I think the tab coordinates beautifully with the overall feel of the page. I also really enjoy the upper left hand page, with the Dr. Seuss quote. I just love it.

I'm starting to get into a sort of rhythm here. I love all of these pages. Although my favorite here would be the one in the lower left hand corner. I just think that the colors and patterns that I decided to use go so well with the photograph. I love EVERYTHING about this page. Although, looking at the photo above, the one in the upper right hand corner feels extremely out of place to me. There's no title, no painting, no journaling; it's nothing like the other pages in the journal.

This, for me, is a delicious little group of pages. Seriously. With some of my pages, I'll simply look at them, and be surprised at what I see. I think that I've talked about that before on the blog. With this photo, I find it almost impossible to decide upon a favorite page. However, I could choose a least favorite. And I think that would be the one in the upper right hand corner. The colors just aren't me. But I like it anyways. Just not as much as the others. Both of the pages on the left really speak to me.

In this little bundle, my favorite, without a shadow of a doubt, would be the one in the lower left hand corner. It's just so neon; it pops in your face. I love everything about it, even though I do wish that it had some journaling on it. With some of these pages, I think I might go back and add journaling where there isn't any. I don't think any day did I go over, or right up to my time limit, so it should be okay. And if not, then that's okay too. This is my art journal, and I can do with it what I please.

This is where the journal gets a little bit tricky. I don't enjoy either of the pages on the bottom. The lower left is a bit better for the lower right. But they just stick out like a sore thumb. Plus, they are extremely similar, which I don't really enjoy. However, my favorite of this batch would be the one in the upper left hand corner. I think the colors go very well with the photo. Plus, I love the wonky circles. And the journaling lines.

And here we are, right where we started. With the last two pages of my journal.  If I had to pick between the two of these pages, I would pick the one on the right. I think that the bright, in your face colors are a bit more my style than the purple and green color combo. Although those two colors are my dad's favorite colors. They remind me of Barney though.

And then, the last couple of photos that I would like to share with you guys would be the finished stack of pages, arranged in the order that they are going to appear when they are finally bound. I will be so happy when that happens. Seriously. My first finished art journal. It's quite an accomplishment for me. I guess that's what comes of using composition notebooks that have a total of 200 pages when they are done. Here you can see all of the layers of tabs, showing the dates that I created them.

And here they are from the side. You can see what a thick, juicy stack that this has become. Full of collage, painting, doodling, journaling, and photographs, this journal has become a part of me; an expression of everything that I am. I explored many different topics in this journal, using the writing to express how I felt about each. And I thought that it was amazing. I might be doing something like this again sometime. But then again, maybe I won't. 

Thanks for visiting me guys! And again, if any of you have any idea at all of how to bind single pieces of paper, I'd be grateful for the advice! See you tomorrow!

ICAD Update

Hey guys. Sorry for the missing post yesterday; since I'm a bit OCD, I may go back and fill that gap in. But, some of you who follow me on twitter will know that I wasn't feeling all that good. I just wanted to go to bed. I did the art, just didn't feel like blogging about it. Today I would like to share with you guys a couple ICAD cards that I did. Tomorrow I will be back with you guys with my 30-30-30 challenge; the very final pages. And I'll probably do some collective photos as well.

These two ICADs I did are extremely similar to one another. This is the one that I did first; yesterday. The following card was inspired by it, since I became so fond of it. It was composed of several layers of patterned paper; the bottom, thicker scrap was sent to me in a RAK. The thinner strip layered on top of it is actually a photocopy of one of my art journal pages that I cut up to use in other art pieces. And other art pages as well. Then there's the photo that was printed off of a collage sheet on the internet. And a definition that I cut out of a dictionary page. And, of course, the background was stamped. I used a clear stamp with a dark red ink pad.

Like I said above, this ICAD was inspired by the one above. Even though I'm not quite as fond of it as I am that one, I do still enjoy the look of this one.

It was assembled in very much the same way as the first. Simple layers of paper and images printed off of the computer. I would have much rather used my own images, but I haven't yet gotten to the point where I have them readily available, just at my fingertips. That's what I'm planning on doing the next couple of days, in addition to my color challenge that I am working on, and my other challenges. Getting some nice drawings and things under my belt that I can resize to use again and again. We'll see. I want to do some black and white and some color. I don't know exactly where I want to go with it yet, either. However, I do know what else I need to work on. Summer of Color. I'll probably do that tomorrow too.

31 Hearts and ICAD

Hey guys. I have a bit of a shorter post for all of you guys today, as I'm trying out a new setup for the blog, and this is part of the transition. I did a bunch of other art stuff today as well, but I'm going to be sharing that stuff later this week. Let's just say that, with the new set up, I hope to have some days specifically for some of the projects that I have started in the past; such as my work through of the book Collage Unleashed, and my Creative Experiments posts. As well as some tutorials, hopefully. Also, I have a bunch of In The Sun class pages that I'm hoping to share with you guys later this week. However, for the time being, I would like to share just a couple things, starting us out with my 31 Hearts page.

As I've said before, I've really enjoyed these pages. And today, I decided to use the hearts around the edges of the page as a sort of border instead of the main focus of the page, which I have tried in the past. You guys have seen plenty of those. And I have plenty more of those ideas to come. I just thought that it would be a good idea to add some variety in. Everybody needs some of that, right? I think so. I do like the way that this page looks though. It's really starting to grow on me. I love the texture that was achieved, even though I'm not really sure how I got it.

And today, I'm also going to share my ICAD with you guys. You can see the zebra striped heart? That was a stamp that I made out of fun foam and cardboard from a cereal box.I love the way that these stamps turned out (I made two of them, with one being the reverse of the other), and thought that this card turned out pretty good. It was nice doing a bunch of painting, after so much doodling. At least I thought it was.

That's all I have for you guys today though, so I'll talk to you guys later!

31 Hearts: Day 7 + Color Challenge #3 Announcement

Hello my art friends! How are you guys doing this fine evening. Very well I hope. For I have some more art to share with you guys today. I might, before long, vary the way that I do these posts, as I do not want to bore you. On the contrary, I would like to excite you to create, and I don't know that posting the same thing over and over again is really helping that too much. But, for now, I'm going to remain the way that I am, until I can figure out how else to do it.

We're starting out with my 31 Hearts page. I decided to do a zebra inspired page today, and actually created a stencil to make this page. I've been doing a whole lot of that lately; making stencils, masks and stamps to fit the theme. For example, I also made two zebra heart stamps today as well. I love the way that they turned out, and I'll probably do something with them tomorrow. My head is already swarming with ideas; we just have to see where they go.

Also, I decided to throw in a picture of yesterday's page and today's page side by side. I don't know if I like them right next to each other like this; I don't know if I'll do it again; but I did think that it would be interesting so that you could see this. I thought that although it was kind of weird to see two hearts side by side in my journal, it was also kind of different and unique. So I just had to share it.

My 30-30-30 Challenge page (30 art journal pages in 30 days in 30 minutes each) today, is actually extremely similar to yesterday's page. I decided to do more doodling. And this is what I churned out.

Here is my ICAD. Doodled.

And a couple of ATCs. Also doodled.

And really, to be honest, that's all I have for you guys today. At least art wise. I also have something else for you guys today. You remember when I did the color challenge with Dede? And with Barbara? Well. The color challenge is back. And it's more advanced than ever. I am once again playing with Barbara. We both enjoyed the previous challenge so much that we decided to do another! But there are some differences. First, and foremost, we actually have another person joining us! Mavis Penney of Mavis Penney Studios! So it's not so much a one - on - one challenge as it is a personal/secret challenge. Also, we have another twist that we will be adding in. The reveal will be Monday the 16th, and we will be revealing a total of 3 pieces. That's three pieces in 10 days. I'm ready to get started! And I hope you guys like the results!

Anyways. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good rest of the night!

31 Hearts + Zentangling

Hey guys! How are all of you guys doing today? I am doing fine, and I hope that the same holds true for you. I would like to share with you today, some of my art that I was working on today. I worked on yet another 31 Hearts page, which I have been doing for the entire month of July. Those of you who have been followers of my blog will have seen the other pages, but, if you haven't, if you simply backtrack from here, you can see some of the others.

This isn't really my favorite page that I've done for this challenge, but I might add some more to it. I liked it a whole lot better before the black border around the heart became extremely dark and thick. I liked it better when it was dark and thin. It feels like it might be more my style. However, tomorrow, I may add some more words to this page. That might help a little bit with the style of the page. Adding some more near the bottom would be what I would normally do. I just ran out of time in the day. However, today, this is what I used on the page:

"These diamonds we collect are hardly the beginning to the power of all of the facts life has been without."

                                                 -Jordan Hill

Hope you guys like it. Sometimes the little phrases, sentences, and paragraphs I put together seem to have deeper meaning than I originally intend. That's pretty much what happened today.

Of course, today I would love to share with you guys my 30-30-30 Challenge. For those of you who are not aware of my challenge; I have been challenged by Bianca of Luctor Et Emergo to create 30 art journal pages in 30 days in 30 minutes each. Today I decided to do a Zentangle doodle. I still need to add the tab of course, but it seemed easy enough. Plus, I've been really into the doodling thing lately. It's fun, easy, quick, and looks amazing. Plus, I find it fun to experiment with all of the different marks that it is possible to make.

For example, with today's ICAD I did exactly the same thing. I made a zentangle. I love the zebra type pattern; it really seems to explore my style; I actually have an idea for my 31 Hearts pages that I'm looking to explore with some zebra patterns included in it. We'll see what becomes of that. I have about a million of ideas for that challenge after today. 

Here are some stamps that I actually made for this challenge. Or, rather, based around this challenge. I used self adhesive fun foam and cardboard from a cardboard box. I have probably 5 more ideas for some stamps that I would love to experiment with, as well as some more stencil ideas. I've really been having fun exploring using a new shape in my artwork, and am even considering trying a new shape after this challenge is up. I feel as if this is exploring a side of me that I never even knew existed; the hearts seem to be a part of my style that I didn't even know was there. It's weird. But true.

And finally, I would like to present you with my ATCs for the day. I started some more besides these, but these four were all I was able to finish. I've been working on top of color washed and watercolored papers for these pieces, so that the color will show through the black and white pieces. I love the effect that this gives, for sure.

Anyways, thanks for checking out my blog. And I'll see you guys later. Peace.