Catch Up Art Journal Post

Hey guys!! This is a bit of a catch up post for me right now; just telling you what I've been up to the last couple of days. Sorry that I've been a bit of an irregular poster lately, but at least I have a good excuse. :P You wanna hear it? I started a private school! I've been home schooled all of my life until now; so it's a pretty big change. Today was actually my first day! It was kind of fun. I haven't really done all that much yet; we only had a half day, and there were just a bunch of introductory courses. It was pretty cool though. I hope that I'm still going to have time to keep up with this blog; it really is fun for me, and I've already had more than 60 posts, and we're coming up on the 70 mark pretty quick. :) If you look above at this watercolor picture, you'll see one of my experiments. I was playing with some kid's watercolors, trying to find out some new techniques.

I was actually playing with some Diana Trout techniques; just search her name on YouTube, and you'll probably find her channel. She has a book called Journal Spilling, and even though I've never read it, I've heard that it's pretty good. I've heard that it's mostly for people that enjoy working with watercolors, but I think that a lot of her techniques would be worth working in watered down acrylics. Now that I think about it, that actually would make a cool post. :) Maybe I'll try that out sometime. I worked on gessoed pages this time, even though I didn't very much in the past. I just recently got some gesso, so I've been experimenting with the differences between gessoed and non gessoed pages.

Here's another page that I've sort of been working on recently. I don't really know all that much about the basis around my thought process when I was working on this page, though I do know that there was a layer of journaling. You can sort of see it in the background of the page. It shows kind of a cool effect to it. Kind of a ghostly feeling. Cool huh? Now that I'm looking at it, my mind is already kind of working out ways I could use it. Both ways use black. My first way is to use bubble wrap to stamp black paint all over the background. That could look really cool. The second way that I'm considering is using masking tape to cover some areas, and then put black stripes horizontally over the entire page. Now that I think about it, it might look nice vertically as well.

The last thing I have here is a page in one of my magazine pages that I was working on. I started out with a layer of gesso as the background (you always have to coat magazine pages somehow) and then put down a layer of kids watercolor paint. I added some watercolor crayons over the surface and wet them down. Then I scraped into the background some swirls with the back of my brush. The final layer that I've done SO FAR was a layer of a background script stamp that I put down with gesso. It looks so cool! So that's all I've got for you today, and I'm sure tomorrow will be just as cool.

Link Collection #3

So I'm back with all you guys once again. Sorry about the pic repeat; I did post this picture a month or so ago. But It's early in the morning, and I don't feel like finding another one. So today is going to be my third link sharing post. I really enjoy posting these things, and they're easy enough to put together. Plus it's a Monday. I was thinking about having a linky Monday, I just think it would work well. Tomorrow though, I'm planning on putting together a post on my progress working through the book "Collage Unleashed". I'm having a lot of fun playing around with a different style, and am learning to appreciate how hard it is to imitate/grab inspiration from someone else's style. :) Well, anyways. Before we get started, I would like to say that there ARE more links today than there have been in the past. :) Well, without further ado, forward march! Linky Monday.

A pretty blue and copper page that was created during a power outage! It's beautiful.

This is pretty! A weird/attractive merge of scrapbooking and art journaling. :)

Somebody just got a new craft room! Check it out.

Changing a scrapbook layout to card, and vice versa. So cool!

An amazingly EPIC erosion bundle. If you haven't seen these, defiantly check it out!

Even though it's not really journaling, just paper made to look it, I was instantly attracted to this page! I think it's because of the colors!

This is a bit of an older post. But I couldn't help it. Steampunk dominos!!

Some really sweet looking ATC's. Sooo inspiring!

This is a bit of an older post too, but it's too beautiful to pass up. A wonderful woven picture!

Success is personal. That's all I need to say.

This is a glorious piece of artwork that was actually made out of erosion bundle pieces!

A tutorial on the beading "herringbone stitch". Beadweaving. Awesome.

Cult of stuff. A post that pretty much hits my feelings right on the nose.

Creating handmade books. From fabric and paper.

Scrap Vomit quilt block. I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself.

This is soo cool. A portrait made entirely out of.... dice!

Index-Card-A-Day Summer over on daisyyellow! Doodling on an index card. Genius!

So that's all I have for you wonderful folks today, but look for tomorrow's post hopefully showcasing my collage work from the past couple of weeks. At least what I did through the book! See you guys later!

TOTALLY PIC HEAVY POST!!

Hey all you people!! I managed to make it back here today with yet another post. Sorry that there wasn't one yesterday, but this one's really long and pic heavy to make up for that. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm on a forum, or even a blog, I LOVE to see tons of pictures. There are a lot of people who apologize for that, but I just love to see all different angles and pictures. :P It could just be me though.

The first thing I wanted to share with you guys a bunch of envelopes I've been saving - rescuing from the mail in fact. I know that probably sounds kind of weird to you, and maybe even a bit hoarder type thing to do. But trust me, it's not. I have a specific project that I'm saving these for... I'll be able to share it with you soon hopefully. It's going to be a journal type album THING. Yeah. That's about the best description that I've got. But I'm gonna need a LOT more envelopes. These are used ones that I got in the mail. I was just lucky enough to get some colored ones. If any of you guys have any you'd like to donate to the cause... that'd be cool. :P

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing lately is a Dear Jane quilt. I started one a while back, but the different things didn't quite fit, and the size was waaaay off. So I'm just going to start over. :D I know it's sort of a bad idea, and kind of wasteful, but I think it's just worth starting over, in order to make it look nicer. Sometimes there's no other choice. Do you agree?

This is a little piece of folded, knit fabric that I managed to salvage from a tee shirt that was too small for me. You know, the ones that you don't want to throw away since the fabric is soooo cool, but you don't know what you'd want to do about it? I take them apart using a seam ripper, and most of the time manage to get really large chunks of knit fabric. You can actually also use cotton shirts for cheap quilting fabric.

Here are the scraps that I have leftover from taking apart the shirt. It was a care bears shirt, that was rimmed around the sleeves and neckline with the pink fabric shown above. Yeah. And I got all of that fabric from just one shirt. It makes you think though, doesn't it?

It's been a little while since I posted a picture of my cross stitch progress. So here's one for you. I've got quite a bit further, and I've got about three full cars done, one half done, and one not even started yet. :) I just love working on cross stitch though, since the more hours that you put into it, the more the shading develops and the better it starts to look. But this definitely isn't a one day project. Six months perhaps. But definitely not a day. Or a week. Or probably not even a month. I just like working on it cause it's so calming to play with the colored threads. But it's not too difficult.

Here's another calming endeavor that I love to do, even though I just dug this out of my many boxes this morning. It's a quilt that I'm making. I'm actually working on the quilting part currently, stitching the three layers (top, batting, and backing) together with tiny little stitches. BY HAND!! Of course, I guess I could use my machine, but I decided that I'd rather practice my stitching by hand, since I kind of stink at it. I'm getting better with practice though, I think.

Here's a closer up view so you can sort of see how the pattern goes. It's taking a LOT more work than I originally anticipated, but it's relaxing to try it every now and again...

And... I FINISHED MY GLOVES!! I don't know if you can see the cable pattern too well in these, but they really turned out well. On one of the gloves (the right one I think) the seam I did made the thumb hole a little too high, so I'm going to need to rip it out and do it over. It doesn't look bad, it's just a little bit uncomfortable to wear. So I think I'll do it over. But it doesn't look bad at all. At least I don't think so. But of course, I'm totally biased. XD

One last picture before I go; another quilt that I just laid out - the diamonds are blocks, but there are only twelve of them. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to make it bigger. Right about now it's pretty darn small, but I sort of like the size of it. I think I'll just have to wait and see.

Another thing that I'd like to share with you guys is that you probably won't be seeing me for somewhere around a week, starting Monday. My mom is cutting us off from screens for a week, and that includes blogs and stuff. But luckily, she's still going to let me find my patterns and stuff online. Thank heavens. Without that stuff, I'd probably be lost. :D

One last thing that I'd like to leave you mulling on - I'm starting another project sometime soon. I know, I know. I just started another project the other day. But I can't help it. I found an amazing tutorial HERE, and I about DIED looking at it. It's crazy. And it's totally me. Anyways, I'll probably see you guys tomorrow, but if not, then next week!!