Catching Up

I went back to see what I had shown all of you and what I hadn't. Boy do I need to catch up! Some of this stuff goes back several weeks. I'm still doing ICADs, but I won't show any of those this time. The season is almost over and I'll be doing a post about the ones I like the most when it is over.

The Studio isn't quite set up yet. I've got more organizational stuff in, but I'm taking it all one day at a time. If I get to something that is an unholy mess, I deal with it, and then go back to playing. In the long run that will mean I remember where I put things, and it never becomes a miserable job on any one particular day.

For example, I got some new stencils in and it hit the "overwhelm" button, so last night I started using the page protectors I'd bought over a month ago and got the ones that didn't have a home settled into page protectors and the container I'd bought for them. I didn't go into the stencils that do have a home, but those will get moved into page protectors too, and possibly into a 3 ring binder at some point, but not quite right now. I know where everything is, and nothing is so jumbled up that stencils are getting torn.

On to art journaling!

 The first two layouts were ones where I knew I wasn't quite finished. They are both from my experiments journal. In both cases I knew I needed words to finish them.

I think the letters I used in this one were too small. I'm still learning how to use letters I buy and put down, and I've got these tiny ones, and the huge ones below, in black.

I know I need to buy something in between. I think larger letters would have made me happier.

The 2 inch letters were the right choice for this layout. It actually does take courage to create things. This background has collage, as does the other one, and paint and stamping, and who knows what else. It is literally a hot mess, but those bold black letters do seem to have pulled it all together.

It makes me happy.


There is only one spread left in the experiments journal. I think I know what is going into that last spread. And then I will have to work on the cover.

 In addition to the experiments journal, I've been working in this hand made journal (my first) for a class I'm taking at Gulfsprite's site. I've jointed Art Geeks there, but that won't actually start until August. There is a free class with 9 or 10 videos, and I've been taking the class and treating it as a real class with homework.

This was the first page. On this one I used various kinds of dimensional media to create texture on book text and crumpled up scrapbook paper. I'd seen loads of videos on doing this kind of thing but watching and doing are two different things.

Once the dimensional media had dried, I painted over it. Each of the different media took the paint differently, and you can actually see that in this background.

All of the spreads in this journal are now backgrounds, not completed pages.

The second class involved using a photo from a magazine, and scrapbook paper, and other papers that were painted, to fit with the colors in the photo. I also cut the paper, which also altered it from what it was originally. I lucked out because that week's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY had this great two page photo in it that worked extremely well in this background. Actually, except for journaling and a title, this page is a finished page.

This is the third page in the class. This time we were putting the paper on horizontally. The idea was to cut out petals and use both the petals and the cut out, and to use the papers both painted and unpainted along with some paint and some painted book pages.

Like the first page this is almost an exact replica of the one done in the class, and once again I like how it came out.

 More paint, more cut up scrapbook and other papers. I also got to use two flowers I had painted on a painted paper project I did months ago on this page and I love how all of it came out.

 This class was about using just black and white and multiple scrapbook paper (with a little music paper). I only had one washi tape that was black and white and it is in there too.

 Something simple and elegant. Some doodle flowers from scrapbook paper, a little paint that is just scrubbed on and some lnesdone with a marker.

 In this case I didn't have the materials to do the actual class project, so I used what I had. I cut out a vintage photo, probably of an actress from the 19th or early 20th Century. I stamped on tissue paper with brown ink and painted a gold patterned tissue paper and music paper with brown paint.

I would never have done a background this way before this class, so obviously I have learned a lot.

And finally the unfinished cover of this little handmade journal. There is one more class that I haven't done anything for. There was one class where I decided to do an ICAD instead of a spread, and it is one of my favorite ICADs. I knew I didn't have enough pages to do every class in the journal. But I can make the covers out of the project for the final class, and then, I'm going to put some beads on the strings I left long so I could decorate them.

This isn't just my first home made journal. It is also my first finished journal. The commercial ones have lots of pages to go, and that is fine. I like working in multiple journals. There is also a journal made out of gelli prints that has reached its half way point. I'll talk about that one in another post.

Take care all.