The Great Canadian Travelling Art Journal Challenge

I'm always full of ideas.  Rarely though, do I have enough time to follow them through. However, when I thought of this idea, I really wanted to carve out enough time to see it happen.  It just seemed like the thing to do!  I wanted to get a few of my fellow Canadian art journalers together to each do a page or two in a handmade travelling art journal.  I have been fortunate to meet some incredibly talented artists online, and a number of them are Canadian.  Lucky for me, they were as enthusiastic about this project as I was.  I will talk about the participants in this challenge in a subsequent post.

So, I started making a little art journal out of four Christmas cards received this year.  I wanted to keep the journal small (and the project too, for that matter) so that it was easily manageable.  With only four cards, each no larger than about 5" X 5" I started distressing, painting, and texturizing to make the base pages onto which others would journal or do mixed media or collage art or whatever.

I sanded the cards that had a glossy finish.  Experience in making art journals from greeting cards has taught me that it is hard to get paint to adhere to glossy cardstock.  Then, I slopped on (and I do mean slopped) a bunch of different types of paints  including spray dyes, liquid watercolors, acrylics and poster paints.  Below are photos of the four greeting cards(front and back) with their base coats of paints.  You'll note that one of the cards has cutouts in it.  I thought this would make for some interest in the journal.

You can still see the writing coming through the paint and various treatments on some of the cards.  You can also see where I used large scale punchinella and a crackle stamp to get create some extra interest on the pages. 

I then added some bits and pieces of scrap papers to make each page more interesting.  Scans of the fronts and backs of each card are shown here.

At this point, my plan was to position or fold the cards so that the blue/green pages alternated with the pink/orange/yellow pages throughout the journal.  The simplest way to put all the pages into one was to use my decorative duct tape, which was super easy, quick and looks like a million bucks!  I chose to stick with various types of black and white duct tape for continuity throughout the journal.

Below are photos of all the pages, just waiting for some artsy souls to embellish the heck out of 'em.  In an upcoming post, I will fill you in on who the other Canadian artists are who are participating in this project.  And by the way, there are still one or two pages available for any fellow Canuck journalers who want to take part.

Thanks!
Joanna

FRONT COVER OF JOURNAL

PAGES 1 AND 2

PAGES 3 AND 4

PAGES 5 AND 6

PAGES 7 AND 8 (CENTER OF JOURNAL)

PAGES 9 AND 10

PAGES 11 AND 12

PAGES 13 AND 14

BACK COVER OF JOURNAL

Facing Your Fears - Part 2

This one is just too ironic for words.  In my post of January 7th, I talked about my fear of creating faces and trying to "face" those fears.  You'll see the irony when you see the quote I used in this journal page. 

In Color Love 101, with Joanne Sharpe, many of us students took on teaching a bonus lesson.  I was particularly interested in one that focussed on how to fake faces (lesson by Nickalli Bascochea-Braaten).  Faking it seemed like a good thing to do.  I'll procrastinate at doing almost anything if the thought of it makes me uncomfortable enough! 

Anyway, following the instructions in this lesson, I took a vintage image I had printed:

And I glued her to a journal page I had made with various homemade dye and paint sprays:

Then came the hard part.  I gessoed lightly over her and then experimented with various acrylic paints, markers and pencil crayons until I ended up with this:

Now, I wouldn't say this piece is my finest work by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly shows some potential if I get off my lazy butt and do some more practice.

Oh, and I am sure the irony is not lost on you.  I used a line from the song "Gypsy" by Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac as the quote for this piece.  Without even realizing it at the time, I was acknowledging my fear of creating faces by the quote I chose.  Weird, huh?

Thanks, Nickalli, for a great lesson!

FREE Funky Images For Your Art Projects!

Recently I have been trying to get a handle on my massive amount of computer files of images of my artwork, in particular the scans I use when selling my art online.   Like my art supplies, they have gotten out of control!  So I am going to purge them but before I do, I wanted to share some with you in case you'd like to use these funky images as part of your own art journal pages or wherever else they take you.

For the next while, I  will post these simple JPG images here on my blog.  All you have to do is right-click on each image and save them to your own computer.  You are welcome to do whatever you like with them.  If you do end up using them in something you sell, I would appreciate acknowledgement of the credit for the use of them, but otherwise, have at 'er!!

As always, I would LOVE to see what you create if you use these images.  FYI, these and others I will post in the coming weeks are ALL from my original collage/mixed media art that I sold on Ebay and Etsy between about 2001 and 2009.

Enjoy!

Joanna

Facing Your Fears - Art Journalling With Confidence

I admit it.  I am not comfortable drawing, painting or creating faces in any way, shape or form.  There I said it.  Now maybe I can get on with the business of practicing faces so I will be confident creating them.

This journal page uses a stencil from the fabulous Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs.  She created several face stencils for those face-phobes like me who avoid 'em.  This was my first attempt at working with her stencils and I am pretty happy with the results.  The simple background was created with sprays (Adirondack Color Washes, as well as some home made recipes).  I used a pencil with the stencil and then a heavy Sharpie marker.  A finer marker did all the little words in her hairdo, as well as the drippy hearts (my favourite-est doodle).  Her eyelid, lips and earring are embellished with purple glitter.

This journal page is called, "She Is ..." and she is all the adjectives noted in her 'do.'

VINTAGE VALENTINE FREEBIES !!

About 12 years ago I began organizing my massive collection of vintage images so that they could be scanned and made into collections for collagists, mixed media people and scrapbookers to use in their art.  It was a huge job but when it was all done, the collections (sold in simple JPG format and put on CDs) were very popular and it was rewarding to be able to share these wonderful old Victorian/Edwardian images with others.

I thought you might enjoy having a few of these images on a regular basis to use in your art today.  So the plan is, at least once a month, I will post several images at a time for you to have.  All you'll need to do is right-click on each image with your mouse and save it to your own computer.  You can resize the images, crop them, alter them in Photoshop or another program or anything else you'd like to do with them.  They are public domain images so you can use them even for items you sell.

Please note that the images do look a bit grainy.  That is true to the original hardcopy they were scanned from.  It was either the look that was popular in its day or perhaps it was the limit of the quality of their reproduction capabilities. Who knows.  In any case, I love how they look and they truly do have an old style and feel to them.

I would love to see what you create with them, if you'd care to share. 

Enjoy!
Joanna

The Evolution of An Art Journal Page

"Turn Your Face To The Sun And The Shadows Fall Behind You" (the Maori).  The background for this journal page was done as a practice piece in Joanne Sharpe's "Color Love 101" class in the fall of 2012.  It sat for a long time like this:

Then I finally got around to doing some embellishing of it with a Sharpie marker and a white Gelly Roll pen and it looked like this:

And now, many months later, I have finally finished it once and for all!  I turned it on its side and decided on the quote I wanted to use, which is one of my very favourites.  The face images are color photocopies of handmade face cabochons I molded in metallic silver Fimo years ago and had used in an ATC/ACEO card several years back.   I am very pleased with the overall end result and am thinking of entering this journal page in a competition.

Altered Birthday Card Art Journal - Part 2

Recently (Dec. 23 or 24), I posted a few photos from this fun project where I took my birthday cards that were headed for the recycling bin and turned them in to (what has turned out to be) a funky little art journal.

Here are a few more pages from that journal.