Altered Book Page + ICAD #10

Hey guys! Even though I finally managed to get on here after a full day of school and homework, today's post is going to be fairly short. I didn't have all that much time to be creative today, so the altered book page I'm showing you is from a few days ago, and the index card is actually the only thing from today. Sorry about that. Sometimes I get really caught up in work and stuff and today my teachers totally killed me with homework... so. Yeah. Anyways, let's get right to it shall we? If you look above at the first photo, you'll see an altered book spread that I've been working on. I love the way it's turning out actually, and I think it's a lot of fun to mess around with. The texture of the pages in the book I'm altering are actually quite heavy in comparison to the pages I generally work on, even though they are glossy. Sometimes the glossiness of them makes them difficult to work on, but I find it a unique challenge to work with. In my opinion, that's how I learn. If I have problems with something, just work more with it until you can figure it out. You know what I mean?

And my index card of the day. :) This is a bit of a continuation of the card I showed yesterday. That's sometimes how I work on my cards. I'll work a bit on a background, and then just layer over top of it. This card was basically composed of layers of stamping. I actually really like the way it turned out. I started out with the experimental, my own technique background, and then used a foam stamp and black paint to stamp swirls over the top. Then, over top of that I used a hand carved eraser stamp and some light teal paint. Then I collaged the word in the corner. You know the deal by now. This was pretty fun... now that I think about it, there might have been a class on 21 Secrets about layering stamping. Hmmm... I'll have to check it out. :)

Speaking of techniques though, I looked at the techniques that a couple of you guys posted for me yesterday. :) They sound so cool! I'm ready to try some experimenting now, and I'm waiting til I can find the time to do that. Also, I'm glad that I'm inspiring you all... comments make me feel that my blogging is actually worth the effort, and that there's actually a PURPOSE for me doing this. :) Now it's more than just a personal record. It's a personal record that I'm sharing with others. Also, if you're inspired by me, and you have a blog, I would LOVE it if you would post on your blog and leave a link in the comments. You don't even have to link to me. :) You just get a free linky in my comments, and I get to know that I'm giving people inspiration. :) Thanks for looking, and I'll see all of you tomorrow!

P.S. Check in tomorrow for the final reveal of my one on one challenge with the one and only DEDE! :) I'm working on putting the finishing touches on her page. :)

Altered Book Page and Index Card #3

Hello my friends! I've missed you all, but I'm back with you guys again with a few new things. I worked in my altered book today, just experimenting with a few techniques. I worked on a page that I'm doing for a one on one challenge (More on that later) and worked on the page you see above. The one thing I really like about this altered book is the size. It's not quite a full sized piece of paper, but it's not too small either. It's really cool The page above was really fun to experiment with, though I don't know if I could list all of the layers. I could try though. I started out by putting down a layer of purple craft paint. Then I put down some light pink student grade acrylics around the middle, and a little border of light blue around that. To blend it together, I put some watercolors over the top of it, and it put everything into place. Then I used a comb to add texture.

Here's a better close up of the texture. You can see where I scraped it in both directions with the comb. I love the way it looks.

And HERE is my index card of the day. I love the way this one turned out. Looks cool. There are quite a bit of layers on this, and I don't really remember them. I like the little work down in the corner. It looks cool in my opinion. Unique. And different. And totally my style. It seems that the more I work on my stuff, it just gets more like myself. :)

One last thing before I go; I am going to be doing a one - on - one challenge with Dede!!!! :) :) :) If you click on her name, then you should go directly to her blog. I love her work, and am so excited to be doing this with her!! We are doing a color combo challenge, but I'm not going to tell you what the actual colors are until I post the challenge. :) That's going to a week from Tuesday. On that same day, Dede will be posting her's as well. Be sure to go over to her blog and follow. :) I'm sure you'll like it over there. See you guys later!!

Creative Experiments #2

Hey all! I'm back again today with yet another post on art journaling. One of the things that I said I'd like to accomplish this month was to continue on the projects I had started last month. Today I'm going to go back to the creative experiments posts. I've been working with white acrylic paint, and so far I've only used it once, in order to lighten a page that was too dark using blending. That worked very well, but here's yet another page that uses another sort of "technique." Basically I just took a book that I've been working on altered book that is actually done using a technique called reverse collage. You paint around the photographs leaving some of them intact.

Normally you use black paint to do this, but in this one I used white. It took several coats to actually get it a good opaque color, but you can actually still see through it.

Here's what it looked like after I put the white paint on it. I basically just used it as a base layer so I could do all of my other layers on top of it. Now some of you might have been wondering why I didn't just use my base color as the layering portion instead of the white, since I normally use acrylics in my work as opposed to other mediums. Well, there are actually several answers to that question, the one of lesser importance being that I was trying to come up with ideas for using white acrylic paint. Of course that's a lame excuse. However, there is a better reason.

That being that I was wanting to use my water soluble pastels, and I've never heard of them working that well on black paper. Though now that I think about it, that may just be something to experiment with. :) So anyways, in the picture above you can see pretty well how I layered the white paint over the pages of the book, leaving the one really cute picture of the cat in the garden intact. And you can probably also see the beginnings of my pastel background; I got a little overzealous and started before I took a picture. Hehe.

And here, is the page when it's finished. I think I used this photo yesterday, but I gave you a sort of warning. Anyways, yeah this is it. I like it a lot, even though it's a little darker than I normally like. I did a lot of layering, including stamping with bubble wrap and a black wash. There's other layers in there, but those are the two that came to mind. And the pastels of course. :)

Actually, speaking of layers, I tend to use a lot of layers in my work. Currently I am working on a page that has TONS of layers in it, including experimenting with using mod podge as a texture item. I don't know if it's going to work yet, and if it does, I don't know if it'll show, since it is clear; but I figured I'd give it a shot. That's the plan anyways. So I hope you enjoyed today's post; I dunno if I'll be able to make it on tomorrow, but be sure to check incase I do!! See you guys later!