Calendar Journal- February

Here's my February calendar page. A bit late, but there's been a bit of a crisis over here, so I am actually thrilled to have gotten this done. I photocopied a piece I had been working on for the main image in different sizes and used the rest of the photocopy for the border. The 'February' kind of faded into the background, but I remembered reading what Marjie Kemper did here and cut out a second set with plain black cardstock to back them up and create a shadow effect. Take a look at everyone's pages over at the Kathryn Wheel   for some awesome inspiration!

Quote and Journal Page- Three Muses

Hello! Here's my newest journal page- I love quotes and its been far too long since I participated in a challenge. As you can see, I have a checkerboard thing going on again!. Don't know why but I'm loving it. Check out everyone's work over at The Three Muses.

Pushing an Image- or Collaging a Painting

Hi there. I am posting today something I finished last week. I have been going back and forth about posting because it is, for me, one of my favorite pieces I have ever made. Not that I have a huge body of work, but it is a special piece to me.  sooooooo...... the insecurity started to set in, 'what if nobody likes it?' It's hard to put yourself out there. (I got some perspective when I realized that I don't exactly have thousands of people looking at my blog, and those that do are unwaveringly supportive in their comments)
Anyway- here's my piece. I photocopied my portrait painting that I posted earlier (that was in response to a challenge issued by Art Journal Cafe), and I also photocopied a portion of my November calendar page. I remembered watching Teesha Moore's video, which is what really got me interested in art journaling, and started with cutting up the photocopy to make the border, just as she does in her video with magazine papers. The rest just developed from there.

Here are the original pieces...

Re-using Journal Pages

Here's something that I've been playing with lately. I got the idea from Traci Bautista, when I took her class (wow, over 2 1/2 years ago now!). She said to make photocopies of original pieces, and then cut them up to make new collages. I remember when I pulled out an original, detailed drawing to use (the class called for bringing various collage papers, images, etc....so I thought to myself  'oh, goody- I have a drawing I can use'.) The look on her face when I pulled it out was priceless. She looked at me like I was bonkers (they do say artists tend to be intuitive) and told me to make a copy before using it. Anyway, here's my original page.

 

And here's the page I made from the copied and cut up original. I made a double page spread, held vertically.

I even got all fancy and stitched on the pages. I think I will add some black around the white lettering, but if I wait to do all that, I may never post.

January Calendar Page

Hello there- I am absolutely determined to complete this years Calendar Journal challenge over at the Kathryn Wheel. So here's my page for January.

I went a little nutso on this page- the background has layers of  decorative papers, Neocolor 11's, acrylic paint, gesso, stamps, tissue paper (for extra texture)  and finally some spray ink. I knew I wouldn't be able to write on all that texture with a small pen, so for the journaling spots, I broke out some background papers I had made a couple of months ago and then promptly forgot all about. Here's how I made the squares.

First, using a dropper and a willing helper (frog pajamas are a plus), I dripped random drips of ink right out of the bottle onto the paper. (I used Higgins drawing ink onto Bristol paper)

Then, using the same kind of ink, only watered down in a bottle, we sprayed over the first color. We did this a couple of times, spreading it with a foam brush when the mood struck. I think at this point we ran out of time and I put them away, forgotten, until I needed them the other day.

At this point, I cut out the most interesting portions, cut them up into little squares, and edged them with ink. I added random stamping to some of them- here's a close up....

Tada!
 If you have read this far- thank you! I'm looking forward to visiting and seeing what everybody else has been up to. If you have a chance, stop by Kate's blog- her year in review post is wonderful!

December Calendar Journal Page

Hey there- I never posted my December page because- A. I didn't start it until the middle of the month and B. I just finished it.I almost just gave up- I have a bit of a perfectionist, black and white, ocd type thing going on in my head here that I'm trying to beat. so- rather that not doing it because it wouldn't be 'complete' (that's the ocd) or perfect (that's the other monster) - I decided to just start wherever and muddle through the best I can.  So here it is- my December calendar page. Thank you again Kate Crane for this awesome challenge and for all of your inspiration. (if you haven't heard of this challenge, check out The Kathryn Wheel and everybody's work there- so much fun)

Since I decided to rejoin this challenge again only in November, here is my November page. I am hoping next year to do all TWELVE months teehee.

Art Journal Cafe- Handcarved Stamp Challenge

France Papillon and Carol Lechatquitousse have issued a challenge over at the Art Journal Cafe  to carve your own stamps. There is a video tutorial as well! I'm fortunate enough to have a small stamp block started- I took a workshop at Diana Trout's studio a while ago, and she gave us a little block that we carved- we used it during the workshop and I brought it home, where it promptly got buried under other stuff. Well, I finally found it, and carved up the rest of the block. Here's a picture of it, along with some of the images it creates.

 

And here are all six of my new stamps. I am challenging myself to use all of the images on my page...

I worked on my `portrait a little more, so here's where that is now...

And then I made a few toner copies of it so I could play with the image, without ruining the original. After adding my stamping with pigment and solvent inks, I added more color with paint, Portfolio pastels and some Neocolors for her face. I got a little carried away on painting the face, and ended up making a hole in the paper right on her chin! So I just got that part off. Et voila- here she is. Its not intentional, but she definitely has a mad hatter look to her, don't you think?

 

Here's what my workspace looked like when I was done....

I think I'll make another page out of the scraps. :)

Calendar Journal Page- Masking Tutorial

I really did have so much fun making this calendar journal page. I played with masking fluid- i took a watercoloring class many years ago, and just loved  working with this stuff. (It's kind of pricey, and I used half the bottle doing this page, but I read that you can use plain ol' rubber cement instead- have to give it a try.

Ok, so I opened up the last page in my handmade journal and painted the whole thing with watered down acrylic paint. After I did that, I painted on random sized circles with the masking fluid. Here's the best I could do photo wise to try and capture the process- the shiny parts are where the masking fluid has been applied.







Now, I pulled out my handy-dandy gear stencil and started stenciling on a coordinating color paint, and then pulled out my homemade spray ink and continued spray randomly all over the page.

 So far I have this:

 Hmmm.... needs MORE! I stenciled through sequin waste with a contrasting color and added some stamping with purple Stazon ink.

And now its time to peel! , with my favorite lovely assistant, my little girl. Whee!

I did a little reverse masking, since I thought the inside of the circles needed some loving...

(It was hard to catch the action- again, the shiny parts are where the masking fluid is...)

 Of course, you already have seen the results if you read the original calendar journal post but here's a little close up :

I'm already eyeing up a canvas I did a few weeks ago and want to change. Rubber cement, here I come!

Forgotten Portrait

Today, I found a small pile of old drawings in my closet. Among them was this portrait. I don't remember when I drew this- its reminiscent of a charcoal I did in 1987 that got destroyed when my high school caught on fire (arson). There were a lot of combustibles in the art storage area, of course, so everything that I had done so far that year was destroyed. Maybe I started another to replace it? Either way, I am off to the copy store tomorrow so I can use it in a journal page.

Art-is-You Hurricane Sandy Relief

The wonderful ladies at Art-is-You have put their heads together and came up with a plan to provide some much needed relief to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. If you go to their website, there is a button to donate- any amount is acceptable and will help. You can donate food cards or gas cards as well. There are many artists donating their artwork to this cause, and if you would like to donate, you will be entered into a raffle to win beautiful one of a kind artwork. One, in particular, Kecia, has created a beautiful painting by candlelight, since she still doesn't have electric. Another, Jenny of Everyday is a Holiday, has blogged about her experience here.