After watching some of Milliande’s seed journal videos and I took few photos last year of some seeds I found in my garden with the intention of creating my own seed journal. I finally got around to doing this double page. Although I absolutely love the blues and browns Milliande uses but I wanted to keep the reds and greens I saw in the plant, apart from that I don’t have many acrylic ink colours and I really wanted to have a go with them.
At first I was not at all pleased with these pages as they were just a bit too messy (more mess than grunge) but they are growing on me. They reflect how I was feeling at the time: invisible, ignored, angry, frustrated, people looking through or past me, not being heard, being dismissed…….and so on. I find the scribbles and scratches get over the angry frustrating feelings while the images of the grungy silhouettes signify me just blending into the background.
I feel like this a LOT!!
Inks/paint: various acrylic paints, Memento Tuxedo black, Stampin up Taken with teal, Speedball India ink
Card: plain journal, tissue paper (stamped with the grungy silhouettes)
Stamps: Dina Waklay Grungy silhouette D1007, Tim Holtz alphabet, Scrolls Work Stamps Netting, Paperbag studios Scrap journal (bubble wrap stamp)
Other: Crafty notions Rusting powder and vinegar, Oil pastels, white pen, Black Pitt pens, Glue n seal
This card was inspired by the Craftstamper mag. but it is an amalgamation of a few ideas all of which I have used in various art journal pages but not usually in my cards. I used acrylic paper as I wanted it to look a bit like canvas but I had to be careful with swiping it with baby wipes as the surface disintegrates. I maybe should have given it a thin wash of gesso first.
Only one Candle Carey 😉
Inks: Black India ink, inktense pencils to colour image, copic pen for skin (not good with the India ink though), Acrylic paints: Black, Lime, Moss, Turquoise and White
Card: acrylic card, white card, turquoise card
Stamps: Stampotique Karen, Cute companions Patchwork number set 2 (little cup cake), computer generated text
Other: black pen
I took a few snaps in spring of some oranges, yellows, purples and different shades of green to spark some inspiration for a journal page and this is what I came up with. I have a feeling that I might add more to it later.
I used acrylic paint, Tulip slick 3D paint, gel pastels, Sharpie poster paint pens, highlighter pen, black pen, a few stencils and some doodling in my Strathmore journal.
I made my Paisley art journal double page nice and bright using an idea from Sandy Steen’s Zentangle workout book along with the inspiration form all these papers and fabrics. I might add more journalling to it later.
A short while ago I took one of Traci Bautista’s workshops and one of the prompts was to do some big writing with a calligraphy brush and permanent India ink and to doodle over the black writing using a white pen. I re-visited these pages and added colour to them just to play with some of my sprays and muck around with colour.
I used: Dylusions spray ink Amber, Postbox red, Worn leather, Vanilla and Cyan, Glimmer mist Cherry limeade, Prisma pencils with Sansador, black pen, white pen, fluorescent marker pens, cut out circle from a cross stitch mesh
This is the final week of Traci’s workshop so here is my final page. I didn’t have the glaze or collage pauge that Traci used but I made do with watered down PVA glue and just added water to some acrylic paint as a glaze (over the face). I did more doodles on news print as the original ones I did would have been too big.
Week 3 of Traci’s workshop over at Strathmore has 2 parts and this background page and doodles are for part 1.
The writing that is partially covered up reads ‘ don’t think just do it NOW’. I am trying to be more spontaneous but I still over think a page and it ends up taking me ages to do.
The background page is a mixture of acrylics, a little watercolour and a little gel medium (I only have that one pot of medium but it is a bit thick) on Strathmore Visual Journal. I used permapaque pens for the writing. The doodles are waterproof India ink on newsprint.
Week 2 of Traci Bautista’s worshop at Strathmore is about creating watercolour backgrounds so here is a page I did for that. In real life it is even more vibrant as I used some neon watercolour sprays which turned out to be permanent (I guess they have some kind of binder in them), the orange on this photo appears dull.
Paint: Reaves watercolour tubes: Sap green Chinese white and Medium yellow, Derwent Auatone crayon Zinc yellow, Derwent Inktense pencil Apple green, Dylusions ink spray Vanilla custard, Zia’s neon watercolour sprays.
Card: Strathmore visual journal watercolour 140lb
Other: fabric flower, spray bottles
So here is my journal’s cover finally! It is made from a cotton cloth which I painted with gesso first then applied acrylic paints a few sprays and stamps. I found a very useful video on you tube that showed me how to stitch some pages into it then I tarted up the spine. A mixture of pink fluffy girly and a bit of grunge.
First I painted the cloth with gesso and make up the background in the same way as a journal page. Next I ironed on some material webbing then stitched this to some calico the same size using a patterned stitch and white thread. (I only added the webbing to make it a tiny bit easier to handle).
As the challenge had 52 weeks of challenges I needed 52 pages so I made 4 signatures; 13 sheets of A4 folded in half then cut down to size, 3 of them containing 3 sheets and 1 of them with 4 sheets. That gives 13 pages which equates to 52 sides.
Take a look at this video by ricefz that shows how to join them together.
I used some white linen thread that I had drawn through some bees wax.
To cover up the large stitches I just used a couple of lengths of pink fluffy feather stuff, small pieces of ribbon, flower trim and beads to tart it up. I added a tiny peacock, buttons and more flower trim for the front.
