Creative Jump Start 2016 – Day 1

This post is for those who have the artistic bug.  A few years ago I found Creative Jump Start by Nathalie Kalbach and each January she does a 30 day lesson on jumpstarting your creativity.  This year the inspiration is master artists and the first week is focused on Henri Matisse. Now I am no nothing about art history, but I do like to play around with paint.  Especially as a form of relaxation and creative play.

Here is my Day 1 Art Journal Page inspired by Rae Missingman who taught this lesson on adding multiple layers of paint using Matisse’s color inspirations.  The paints are by Dina Wakley.  I also used Molotow Acrylic Paint Markers and Liquitex Fluid Inks.

 

Try Stampin’ on Tuesday Challenge: Spooky & Scary

It’s Tuesday and time for a Try Stampin’ on Tuesday Challenge.  This week is a little different over at the blog and instead of a card, we’d love for you to create a project.  It can be anything, except a card. Think out of the box and create something fun.  For example, you can make a treat bag, a costume, home decor, a canvas, a journal page, how about baking a cake or cookies?  Use the theme to really use your creativity and make us something fun.

For inspiration I’ve chosen to make a journal page for you.  I started by painting the page with gesso, then applied a combination of Dina Wakley Blackberry Violet and Magenta.  I then cut out the ghosts with a bigz Sizzix die and the bat from Paper Smooches.  The digital image is from Tiddly Inks and colored with copic markers.  I hand painted the tree with a few shades of browns and black then I spritzed the entire page with Tim Holtz Distress marker in Black Soot, WHICH WAS MY MISTAKE.  This is water based and when I went to collage the page, it smeared from heck to high water. You can see where there are black smears I couldn’t get it all off, but I don’t think it’s horrible.  I sure wish I remembered not to use collage medium over water markers. GRRR.  For future reference, I saw Tim use a sharpie to make black splats on a journal page when wet medium was going to be applied afterwards.   The only other issue I had was the moon.  I should have laid it down before I made the tree, but didn’t.  I also couldn’t find my masking fluid, so I painted over the tree and then filled the tree back in with brown, allowing for the moon to recess into the background.

 

 

 

Entered in Simon Says Stamp: ATG Challenge

Tiddly Inks: Non-Traditional Colors

Exploring Art Journaling Pages 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21

Wow – this is a lot of pages!  I’ve had a great weekend catching up on my 30 day Art Journaling Challenge using Christine Urias’ “Exploring Art Journaling 4” class at Scraptime.ca.  

Day 17’s page uses Tim Holtz’s Distress Paint Daubers to make flowers.  I topped all of them with a TON of stickles because I have lots of them and can’t really use them on my Operation Write Home cards.  I got that idea from Joggles U-tube channel.

 

Day 17 Dauber Flowers with Stickles over watercolor base

Day 18 uses a lettering technique to make large statement words.  The pages starts on a base of Gelatos and I used Sharpie Paint markers for the colored letters.  I have a LONG way to go and A LOT to learn when it comes to hand lettering, but I have to say it really interests me and found a great book on Amazon called “The Art of Whimsical Lettering” by JoAnne Sharpe.

Hand Lettering w/Sharpie

 

Day 19 is a fun page I really like and uses some watercolor paint and salt to make some fun background texture.

Watercolor & Salt

Day 20 uses die cuts collaged on the page and then using the new Dina Wakely Acrylic Paint over them.  If you haven’t tried her paints I would highly suggest it.  They are FABULOUS.  I have a ton of paints and I tell you the vibrancy and texture of this is like using butter.  It’s fabulous.  Hobby Lobby is now carrying the line so I’ll be there to pick up the other colors very soon.

This page felt chaotic to me, so I came up with the theme “lost ?”, because as humans, we all feel that way and I’m sure most everyone can relate. It’s life and that’s what Art Journaling is meant for, expression.

Die Cut Collage

Last, Day 21 is a favorite so far.  The technique is stamping into transparent molding paste for texture.  To do this you apply a fairly even, thin layer of translucent molding paste, then simply stamp into it, letting it dry and painting over it with distress paints in shaded lilac and picked raspberry.  I cut out some of the newsprint collage sheets for flowers and the butterfly and used some old stamps from my stash.  I like that the little girl in the top right corner almost looks like me when I was a little girl.  I hated that pixie, but that’s what I was given. I did some hand patterning around the edges that I learned from the Sakura website.  They have some great video’s, so I’d check them out.

Stamping in Translucent Gel