Tag: Art Journal Sharing Thursday

So I’m a little late with my Art Journal Thursday Share today. And why is that Kim? I hear you ask…Well, I thought I would make a quick video of the technique I used for today’s art journal share, and I kind of thought about it right at the last minute of course. But once I had the thought I just could not let it go. Mmm, my obsessive tendencies might be showing!

Here is the page and it is another one from a recent Fiskars Fuse demo, got my last demo for the month in Croydon Hobbycraft this Saturday by the way.

I used two Fiskars Fuse dies for this one, the butterfly and a flower to use as my templates.

Then I finished with a bit of journal spilling with tiny writing in between the images. You can see that I’ve already scribbled and used this page before but I thought that all added to it so didn’t try to hide any of the stuff that was already on the page.

So here is the video that made me a bit late with my post today. It is speeded up, I mean I don’t really work that fast – I wish!

I used a gessoed page and I drew around the die cuts with the Stabilo All Surface Pencil. Then went back over the pencil marks with Kuretake ZIG BrusH2O Waterbrush, love the way the water deepens the marks.

Next up I add some colour with the waterbrush and some Derwent Inktense Pencils and work around the black lines. If a little bit of the black gets added into the colour that is fine too, all adds depth doesn’t it?

There you go my share today. Please feel free to share your journal makes and comments below.

Catch you later.

Kim

[The product links are affiliated, by the way, so if you click through and decide to buy them I get a percentage of the sale for referring you to my favourite products.]

I’m in an excitable mood today, for starters I’ve actually got quite a few art journal pages done other the last couple of weeks, which makes me happy – I know, it doesn’t take much! So I will share a couple with you today for my Art Journal Sharing Thursday, I can’t vouch for the quality but I quite like the ideas behind them!

But secondly I’m in an excitable mood because we have had some movement in the right direction with our house move and we are waiting now to see if we can get an exchange and completion date set. It has been a total roller coaster ride since we started and anything can still happen to throw some mammoth-sized spanners in the work. So I’m trying hard to temper excitement with pragmatism and working hard to get some articles done and meet my deadlines, but I am also making some blog changes too which you might spot over the next few weeks. I’m going to be talking about them some more in other posts, so watch this space. Nothing like throwing yourself into your work to keep your mind off of things you can’t control is there?

Ok so what about these journal pages? They are both a bit experimental in their own way, the first one is probably my favourite of the two.

The page is untreated but I did some spill journaling on it with a marker pen then wrote some letters on patterned paper and cut them out to ‘spill’ them onto the page.

I do love playing with letters, and I did have a great title for this page but I foolishly didn’t write it down and now I can’t remember it – D’oh! Lesson for today – write all your ideas down even if you are busy on something else!

The next page was also done on an untreated page from my A5 repurposed flier journal. For this one I had collaged a couple of strips of old map onto the page first then coloured the page with Derwent Inktense Pencils and the Kuretake ZIG BrusH2O Waterbrush, both of which are always in my pencil case and go everywhere with me.

 Then I used the scalloped edge Fiskars die again, but this time I didn’t load in a letterpress plate so you just get the cut shape. I then tore the die-cut shape and glued them to the page over the map strips and added a border with my other pencil case staple the Stabilo All Surface Pencil. Sure I’ve told you before how much I LOVE this pencil!

The final touch was a bit of stamping with the my favourite stock PaperArtsy stamp set the Hot Pick Xtra 01 – Backgrounds. This is such a useful set.

I added a bit of journaling around the cut shape to finish this one.

So which is your favourite out of the two? Have you got some pages or journaling favourite tools you would like to share? Please feel free to leave a comment below and thanks for popping in today.

Kim

 

[Just so that you know some of the links to products in this post are affiliated links meaning that if you decide to buy them I will get a percentage of the sale for referring you to the product. I just want you to know that I will only ever recommend things that I would use myself and that I think you guys would like too.]

Hey Journalators, how are your journals going this week? Managed to do a few pages? I wanted to ask you a question…What do you journal in? 

I think I have a bit of a problem. Ok confession time – Hi, my name is Kim and I’m a journal/notebook hoarder.

OMG what a relief to get that off of my shoulders!

But I’m guessing that a lot of you are in the same boat aren’t you? Actually it isn’t just me in my household that has a notebook fetish, David does as well, so our flat is a little full of journal/notebooks in various stages of usedness (is that a word?). 

I have lots of different types of books that I use for all sorts of different types of journaling. I pretty much use anything, and I even make my own books (as some of you know already). 

One of my favourite things to do is to hunt around places like Paperchase when they have a sale on. I do try and buy a lot of my journals at cut prices so I pick them up from sales or I go to my local charity shop and find old books. You can often find old spiral bound cookbooks which make great journals and if they have matte paper then you have yourself a gem!

But the best books of all are the free ones! I’ve already talked about the re-purposing of the free fliers you get through the door, in your local library or in your newspapers and magazines, Some of them have just the best paper for journaling and as it is already printed on you have ready made eye-candy texture to work on. 

I don’t know about you but I’ve learnt a lot about paper in recent years from all this work I do with it and I have a total fascination for the stuff.  I’ve even had a chance to make my own thanks to the lovely folks at the Papermill. I’m telling you that if I had the space I would definitely make my own on a more regular basis. 

So my ideal paper for a journal is a heavy weight matte paper, it doesn’t have to be plan and I love using paper with lines and squares for art journaling, but if I’m sketching I do prefer plain with a tint of colour. But not all books are created equally and in my hunt for ones to re-purpose into journals I’ve used glossy papered books or books with really thin paper and there always ways to bend them to your whim. 

If you have a glossy page treat it to some gesso layers, sand it first if it is really shiny or use the glossy books for your collage journals. Thin papers can be stuck together to make thicker working surfaces and don’t ever be afraid to tear pages out to use elsewhere and to add space to a book for chunky journaling.

So spill, what journals do you use? Where do you get them from? What is your favourite art journaling work surfaces and what tips do you have for art journaling books?

I would love to hear, so do share.

Catch you later Journalators.

Kim

For my share this Art Journaling Sharing Thursday I’ve got a couple of call backs to some earlier blog posts. Cast your mind all the way back to yesterday’s flowery make, oh so long ago! Well I’ve kept with the flowers theme for today’s share but these flowers were actually started back in March in a cafe with some out and about art Journaling. I’ve already showed you one of my al fresco pages and now, two or so month’s later, here is the other piece I worked on that day. 

I finished it off yesterday but to be honest I think I actually started the pages in January with a layer of PanPastel and you guessed it the same mask I used in my Art Journal Sharing Thursday last week, (told you I had a few blog post call backs!). 

The outlines of the flowers came along in the Cafe back in March using a black Stabilo All Marking Pencil, well until I wore the pencil tip down to the wood and of course I didn’t have a pencil sharpener with me did I? D’oh! Knew I had forgotten something!

Then yesterday I added the colour to the leaves and petals using the ZIG BrusH2O waterbrush and some Derwent Inktense pencils. I picked the colour off the tip of the Inktense pencils with the waterbrush and adding it to the page to get that lovely variation in tone, I often prefer doing that than scribbling with the pencil on the page and adding water afterwards. 

So how many layers is that? Well, if you count the gesso over the A5 flier pages to start with then that makes five layers in this simple little art journal double page, but I love the way they are all translucent and you can see the layers underneath coming through. 

Another thing I’m totally in love with at the moment is the black Stabilo All Marking Pencil. Add a touch of water to it and you get a lovely velvety black line that you can diffuse out to a gorgeous grey shadow, which is what you can see around the flowers by the way.

I really wish I had taken pictures of each layer now, oh well maybe next time!

Thanks for popping in and do feel free to share any links to your art journaling this week in the comments below.

Kim

I have a painty Art Journal double page today for my Art Journal Sharing Thursday, but I’m not 100% sure that it is finished. You can see it as it is but I might add to it at a later date, we shall see. If I let it sit for a bit then perhaps something will talk to me.

Anyway have a peek and see what you think, I’ve called it ‘Waiting For News’

I’m working in my A5 Flier re-purposed journal and I started with some gesso for this one. The page already had some ink from a couple of Archival ink pads on it from an earlier experiment and I added some texture with Gesso through a mask to give the peacock feather in the centre of the double page.

I added some magenta acrylic paint then a glaze of blue followed by some gold paint in places for a bit of shine and contrast. Final touches from a coffee Archival ink pad and some brown paint.

The old photo is one from my collection of old photos and postcards and I just love her wistful look to the camera, the white dress gives a haunted look don’t you think? She does look as if she is waiting for news, well that is how I feel today as I am also waiting for some moving house news which might be why the title jumped out at me!

So that is my share today, feel free to put some links to your art journals makes this week in the comments and I will pop on over.

Thanks for dropping in.

Catch you later Journalators.

Kim

Do you find that you have a strange relationship with time? I know that I have, really weird. Take this week for instance, it just vanished, one minute it was Monday then I blinked and suddenly I’m here at my Art Journal Sharing Thursday post. 

I wasn’t sure what I was going to post today, I haven’t done any art journaling this week, I’ve been finishing articles instead. I have lots and lots of unfinished art journal pages that are waiting for some inspiration but I wanted a complete page for my share today.

So this morning I made this page in my 12 x 12 Kraft journal.

I do love kraft with white and lettering! The page already had some gesso splodges and some tiny ink splatters too. I added the doily scrap and journaling card.

There is a stream of continuous writing of whatever was in my head at the time and I stuck the journaling card over the top. The card is actually one of the Becky Higgins Project Life Ledger cards, I *love* these cards, been using them in loads of things! So useful!

There was some other texture already on this page from a previous project. I had pressed a gesso-covered fly swot into the page at some point but it works so well with the journaling card don’t you think?

The final adds where the sentiment ‘taking time’ written on the journaling card and the flower cut from canvas and decorated with some stencilling that I must have done a while back for something as it has been hanging around my untidy desk for ages. 

Time waits for no woman and I have some writing to do before starting on some more projects.

Thanks for popping by and do feel free to share you art journaling makes with a link in the comments box, I would love to see what you have been up to this week.

Have fun journalators.

Kim