ICAD #4 and ICAD Backgrounds

Hello my friends. :) And Happy Labor Day! I'm back once again with some more of my artwork. I have some index cards to show you today; not any art journal pages though. Or altered book pages. Or single sheets. And I'll tell you why. Even though I worked on some of all of those things; those pages that I did are classified. :) Let's just say that they have something to do with my challenge with Dede. :) I've been doing so much for that one on one challenge, and it's going to be a lot of fun when it actually comes time for the reveal. I've been playing around with colors, layering, and lettering. Just to experiment. I might just have more than one layout by the time the date comes around. :D If it's worth doing, then it's worth overdoing, right?

Anyways, getting back to the ICAD card of the day; look above to see it. I've been working with this kind of style; the fun, technique backgrounds, with a single magazine clipped word on it as decoration. On this one I put down a strip of paper on the bottom (This was actually a color copy of a page that I'd done previously. I've been cutting them up to use as collage fodder.) and drew a dotted border with a sharpie. This was an overall easy background to make; I've gotten used to layering paints, and pulling up paint with different things, but I'm still amazed every time. :)

If you look at these index cards above, you can see some of the things that I'm talking about. You know how I sometimes talk about "lifting"? Well this is a fine example of that. I take a page that has wet paint on it and layer something on top of it; a piece of book paper, an index card, a sheet of regular paper, or even another, smaller journal. If you press fairly heavily, you can lift up some of the paint. It goes in the direction of that the brushstrokes go, so, depending upon what I want the finished card to look like, I generally brush in both directions. These are bases for ICAD, that I'll probably work on further in the future. This is just so the intimidating white background is gone, and is simply giving me a jumping off point from which to play. I love the way these three turned out, which is why I'm posting these, but I've got a bunch more sitting on my desk as well.

Something else that I'm considering doing is taking some of these before they get more added to them and simply color copying them. This is one of my new favorite ways to create collage fodder. I'd probably do some in black and white, some in color, some in representative scale and some enlarged to a full sheet or so. Now that I think about it, it might be a cool idea to start a SERIES on collecting collage fodder. What do you guys think of that? Let me know in the comments, and have a nice rest of Labor Day! :)

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!!

Paper Beads + Index Card #2

Hey guys! I'm here again with another post!! Today I worked on quite a few things, since I actually had a day off of school today. :) It is a Saturday. Actually, this is a three-day weekend; I'm off Saturday through Monday, and go back on Tuesday. So happy that I finally get a chance to relax after a long week. You know what I mean? Well, anyways, I was working on some paper beads today. I used to make these a lot when I was younger, but they never looked this good. I've been using just plain old magazine pages. It's pretty cool. You can just see the edges, which makes it an awesome effect. I don't really know if you can really see the details in this picture that I have. You could try enlarging the picture though. I started this afternoon and so far I've made about 75. In the picture above, I am showing you 2 strands of 35. There's another strand I started somewhere else. When I actually want to use some of these in a piece of jewelry, then I can just cut the strand a bit, and then just pull off whichever ones I like or want to use. I've seen quite a few professional looking pieces using homemade paper beads. I think I'll find some ways to play with that. :)

And here's my index card of the day. I was just playing around with some different paints and layers with this card. i love the colors of this, and the cool stamped pattern on the side is one that I carved myself. I love the way that one turned out. Plus I did this really cool distressed/crackle paint texture with the blue color. It sort of came out that way, even though I wasn't even trying to. It just turned out that way. The way I did it was that I took some glue (just plain regular roseart) and spread it all over the surface of the card. After a minute or so, I let it get a little tacky, and then put some paint into it. I spread it all out, and then put a piece of paper over it and then pulled it up. I got a cool background, and after the glue dried, it crackled, and turned out really cool. I'll probably add a title, but after that, it'll be done. And that's all I've got. :) See you guys later!

Art Journal Page + Dream Index Card

Hey guys! I'm back with a bit more of my work for today. I love working in my journal, and I managed to make a few things today. :) I'm participating in quite a few monthly/weekly/daily challenges. I'm kind of addicted to these, but they're so fun that I can't help it. :) If you look at the page above, you can see something that I've been working on. It's in my art journal for 21 secrets. I started out with an oil background. I loved the way it looked, but I just didn't know what to do from there. I stenciled some flourishes on it with black poster paint, and then I ended up painting over the entire thing with a burnt orange paint. I lifted some of it off with another piece of paper, creating a sort of distressed look. Then I went over the whole thing  with gesso, and painted stripes of the same burnt orange color. That's all I've got so far on THIS page. :)

And this last thing that I've got for you. A 3x5 altered index card. This is something new that I'm starting. Over at daisyyellow, in the month of September, she challenged us to make 25 altered index cards. Her and a bunch of other people did the same thing over the summer, and I started near the beginning, but it ended up just being an epic fail. This was a really easy card, and there were really only five or six layers to it. The first layer I just took my index card and sprayed it with some glimmer mist. After that I used a foam stamp and some black poster paint to put some flower on it. I smeared those around with my fingers a little, and then drew a frame around it with a marker. I sprayed one more layer of glimmer mist over the top, then added the letters. They were all different colors, so I painted them a bit, and lifted some of it off the top with a piece of book paper. And that's all she wrote. :P That's what I've got for you guys today, and I'll see you tomorrow. :)

Collage/Gesso Piece

Hey everybody!! I'm back once again with you guys and gals, and I managed to work on some stuff today. With school and everything, I don't work quite as often as I have in the past, but I do enjoy the minutes that I am able to squeeze in each and every day. It means a lot to me; creating does. It energizes me, and it drives me forward in life. I know that sounds kind of weird, but it's true. When I work in a journal, it makes me happy. It's a cool thing. It's almost like that's my energy. Of course I still have to eat. :P If you look at the page above, you can see a piece that I've been working on; it's on a single sheet of watercolor paper, and I'm making it as a cover for a writing journal that I'm going to be working on for 21 Secrets. As I get further into this whole course, I'm starting to think that it's impossible to get even HALF WAY through it before the finish date it. You know what I mean?

I did this by taking my sheet of watercolor paper and using white glue to collage a bunch of random images to the sheet. I put the glue all over the collage pieces and then added some gesso over the top. Then I took off some of the gesso afterwards.

Here's a page that I was working on too. It worked out pretty cool. I took a magazine page from a Victoria magazine and put white gesso over the whole thing. Then I put some black paint on a foam stamp and stamped it twice in a corner. Then I put the orange paint on top. I love it. I don't know what I'm gonna to with it, but it's cool. :) Okay. See you guys later!

Painted Dictionary Pages

Hey guys! I'm here once again. So Blogger updated their blog layout, and as I type this, I'm sort of confused as to how this whole thing works. So let's just hope that my layout stays basically the same. I kind of like the new look though. It's different, but fairly clean and organized. Pretty cool. Today I want to share with you some painted papers that I've been working on. I started out by finding some paper to work on; I ended up going with some smaller sheets that I tore out of an old dictionary. I then painted a bunch of random colors onto it. I like the way it's working. My favorite color combination is lime and blue, so that's what I ended up with. I added some white, and a bunch of periwinkle.

Loose papers are so my new thing. I love working with them, and it's a lot different than I am used to. I kind of like that. You know, seeing something different. A change is always good. Sometimes that's what you need. Something different to kick you forward, and help you decide what is best for your artistic/creative side. Sometimes you just need to figure out something new. Something improved. And something different. I challenge you to try something different. And tell me all about it in the comments. :) See you guys later.

Found Paper Pile

Hey guys! I'm here with you guys again with another single photo page. I didn't really know what to show you guys today, but I walked into my room, and found this pile of papers. My desk is such a mess ALL the time, but this little pile is about my favorite thing of all time. Seriously. It's about 5" tall, and has all kinds of AWESOME stuff in it. I have a ton of different papers in it, stamped papers, and all kinds of text papers and stuff. A bunch of random pieces of card, and I'm pretty sure there's some foam stamps stuck in there somewhere. It's an awesome pile that I dig though for all my collage fodder and other stuff.

It's been sitting there for a month; actually I started it a month ago. How crazy is that? When you're actually working on it, or are like me, and are just plain addicted to collecting collage fodder, the stuff really grows into a huge pile REALLY quickly. I say that everyone should try it. :) Anyways, if you start a pile or a file, make sure to send me a picture. :) See you guys later!