Sail My Ship {Art Journaling}

Getting to art journal with my local gals today :)

We're working on this 9x12 page :

You can watch the video, view the closeups & see the supplies below :

Metaphysical - Our Mixed Media Moods

It's time for March's Our Mixed Media Moods!

Our Mixed Media Moods is a monthly collaboration between myself & Mixed Media Jenn where we pump up our youtube channels with high quality mixed media videos. Then.. we invite YOU to join us and link up below so we can visit your amazing responses! 

My YouTube Channel | Jenn's YouTube Channel

Occasionally we'll have some giveaways, prizes and guest artists joining us.. so please join our facebook group to see all the happenings! AND sign up for our newsletter for emails delivered directly to your inbox!

I put together this fab little mood board :)

& I have a little poem for you:

metaphysical movement...
her recognized view...
ancient.
dangerous.
celebrated echo.

and a little mixed media painting :

Inspired yet? How about a little video :) Watch the how-to process then view some detailed shots, the product list & when you're UBER inspired we invite you to create a project based on our mood board and link up at the very bottom of this post!

Liquitex Acrylic Gesso Flat Wash, 1" Ranger Heat It Craft Tool We R Memory Keepers Crop-A-Dile II Big Bite Punch Plastic Water Cup 4" Hard Rubber Brayer Yellow Ochre Azo Yellow Deep Azo Yellow Medium Azo Yellow Light Carbon Black 5-Piece Plastic Palette Knife Set Black Stabilo Marks All Blick Studio Charcoal Warm Gray Titanium Buff Light Titanium Buff Titanium White 18 Gauge FineLine Airbrush Medium UHU Stic Glue Sticks

InLinkz.com

An InLinkz Link-up

Allure {Art Journal Spread}

Today I am sharing a double page spread in a traveling art journal. I participated in a journal swap a few months back and I sort of dropped the ball on a couple of spreads... well I'm playing catch up and trying to make it up to those lovely artists... so here is one spread I finished up and mailed out this AM. 

The shape of the journal was a neat change in my routine.. curvy delicious sort of butterfly shaped pages. Each journal was themed, and this one said Madame X on the front.. it had a really gorgeous sort of corset stitch closer and some heart dangle beads. Add that to the few who had worked in the journal before me which gave me this sort of pink stripe in the binding.. and I knew the direction I was headed.  I promise you there is A LOT of beauty in these pages.. and the closeups show you tons of texture, layering, and lots of really great techniques have been utilized to complete this spread. SO... Here they are! 

The Left Page

The Right Page

The background is made up of vintage ledger pieces and old book pages that I had previous diecut for other projects. Never throw out anything right? I love the ledger paper with the vintage #s in this photograph. It's such a beautiful piece.

Here is more of that delicious ledger paper... YUM! I also layered up some drywall tape which has quickly become an absolutely favorite of mine. I adore the little perforation it has and the circles it adds to the background. All the background pieces were put down with Golden's Fluid Acrylic. Then I used Blick gesso to swipe and highlight areas of the background. It also camouflaged some of the hard edges from my papers. A bit of glazing was done with some gray paint and glazing medium.

I drew the lines and circles with a fineliner, golden fluid acrylic in carbon black and airbrush medium. There are drops and some hand drawn doodles, circles, and dots with a Sakura of America Micron pen. I also did a bit of lovely hand stitching using some super thick hemp cord in this beautiful charcoal color. Picked this up at Hobby Lobby. SO glad I did! The pink is from Tim Holtz's Distress Stain in worn lipstick. LOVE the sweet pink against the neutral background.

The flair (or button) is from a newer set at UmWowStudio called Noel. The colors fit perfectly with a brand new christmas lined I designed for 7 Dots Studio --- BUT it can be used out of context just as well. I loved the stitching that was it and it was perfect to mimic on the page. I also did some stamping in Gray Flannel by Memento with the new Numbers Set I designed for Viva Las VegaStamps!.

I ended up tearing out my pages, cutting off the scraggly binding part and then doing a bit of machine stitching to add more texture. I sewed in white to keep the contrast low. And finally.. this little bit of goodness that finishes off the page.. I recently got a stack of beautiful vintage dictionary pages and found this one quite relevant to the theme of this journal! The tone of it was very.. alluring! haha. First I used matte medium to put down some muslin, and then the dictionary page.. and finally all the machine stitching.

IW 2015 - Weeks 4, 6, 10, 11 & 12

I need to do a bit of catch up on some of the work I've been doing... so here is HUGE blog post SLAM PACKED with photos from my Inspiration Journal that I'm filling with Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday for 2015. This has seriously been such a great way to release... to open back up to my fine arts background and to really just delve into things I want to do. Sometimes I catch myself STUCK in a paper based world... and this has really made me feel like it would be (and WILL BE!! hint hint) totally cool for me to get out the paint and other supplies WAAAAAAAAY more often.

Week 4:

I'm very gaga over the neutral of this spread with the pop of turquoise. I did a little bit different than Donna, one to make it my own but two to sort of try and use some of the things I have instead of running out to buy a ton of stuff, also.

This is my favorite photo from this spread. My heart soars when I see that Handwriting Stencil from UmWowStudio as delicious texture... the bits of book page peeking through... and the two different glazes all playing off each other. 

This stamp I designed for Viva Las VegaStamps! and I adore sliding it into all sorts of my journal pages... She Was A Dreamer.

This stamp is ALSO from VLVS! : Wildflowers Silhouette. I love using stamps so much.. I tend to stamp in Archival Ink by ranger because I'm fond of the color and am impressed by the quality.

More of that delicious stencil.. it spans across the inclusion -- I really love how the tape that secures the pages picks up glazing, too... I just. LOVE. :) 

And I showed this page... one because it shows the tag and tape and glazing.. deliciousness.  But also because it shows how the pages look as they start to stack on top of each other. A few poking out here.. a few there. and it's GOOD. 

Week 6: 

This spread is totally delicious. I love the dark gloomy gray top with the bright n bold bottom. The whimsical trees in the middle are really stark and great. Lots of golden, lots of gesso, lots of glaze.

 

The stencil I used to for the inclusion is a Handwriting Stencil I designed for UmWowStudio :) 

And the texture from the gesso and the gray glazing really is to die for. I've started incorporating lots of gray glazing into my recent works based on this spread. Thanks for the lesson Donna! :)

The texture that the strings create in the background is absolutely yum! 

Week 10:

This week (and god only knows how many times I will say this...) really struck my heart strings! I'm a huge fan of black and white / neutrals with punches of black. I used mostly cream and vintage colored ephemera with kraft embellishments like tags, cards and a paper stencil.

Here's that delicious paper stencil! Not sure why... but I seem to be drawn to 7s? You can see the layers of cream and kraft on the background. Then there was a bit o white painting... some mark making, doodling.. and more.

A couple of things I used in the background include tickets, dictionary pages, music note paper and more.

I love these marks that were made!

Week 11:

Mmmmm COLOR! >>> I don't know if I will add anything else... but I've been digging just playing with the color and black marks Donna shared with us.

Of course I did include by brown hole :) But those black watery stripes are truly delicious against the bold colors.

Week 12:

Delicious Rusty goodness from the Ver Day paint and patina set.

My numbers were made with some old glittery thickers and they really made my paint reveal some great texture. 

And yes, your fancy little not miss anything eyes probably saw the few weeks I'm missing in between ;) Some of them I'm waiting for inspiration to strike... and some for time to sit down and really concentrate on the process as they're a little new to me :) Are you doing Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday? I'd love to see what you've come up with!