Art Journal Sharing - On Your Bike!

I didn't think I was going to have a page to share with you today for my Art Journal Sharing post. My mojo has been so concentrated on articles and house moving that there seems to be no more room in my head for anything else.

Well that was what I thought until around 6pm last night when I had a sudden urge to throw some paint on a page in my A5 repurposed art journal and around 30 minutes later I had this double page spread done.

It is a bit random and mostly lead by the fact I wanted to use this acid green and some fluorescent pink paint.

As the pages progressed the picture of the old bicycles just caught my eye from other pages in this re-purposed flier so a 'Transport' and 'Cycling in London' theme grew.

I used to cycle in London, but not on a Penny Farthing oddly enough - I know, go figure! But there are people who do cycle around London on Penny Farthings. There is the Penny Farthing Club for a start and then I think you can spot a couple of Penny Farthings on the Tweed Run as well. 

I think that little double seater in the bottom right corner is more my style!

Thanks for popping round for my share this week.

Catch you later Journalators.

Kim

Art Journal Sharing - Wednesday?

I knew that as soon as I started calling my weekly art journaling post 'Art Journal Sharing Thursday' that I would live to regret the name! I'm so not good at this blog titling thang. *SIGH* But now that I've finished my DT work with Creative Expressions I thought I would spread my blog posts out more regularly and move my weekly Journaling post from Thursday to Wednesday.

I had my last Fiskars demo for a while at the weekend and once again, in between making tags and cards, I did a bit of journaling too.

I started on a gesso-ed page in my A5 repurposed flier, there aren't many pages left, soon I will have to think about what to put on the cover! The gesso is textured and I used masking techniques and watercolour to make the page.

This week I packed the Winsor and Newton Cotman Watercolour Sketchers Pocket Box Set which I got because of its tiny size and weight. It fits into my bag so easily, even when I am travelling light. The best thing about it is that you can replace student quality pans with artist quality ones if you want. But waste not want not, I'm going to finish off the pans that are in there first, before I replace them.

Obviously I had some Fiskars dies, for the Fuse that I was demoing, with me and my pencil case staples a marker pen, in this case a Staedtler Pigment Liner Pens, and the Kuretake ZIG BrusH2O Waterbrush.

I masked off the tag shape with the negative piece left over when die-cutting a tag and arranged a die-cut butterfly over the top then added the watercolour wash, holding them in place with my hands. I then used the tag and the butterfly negative cut outs to help guide where to place the pen border and added the lettering to finish.

So now that my demos are over when will I fit in my art journaling? When do you tend to do your art journaling? Have you a set time, or do you manage to do something everyday? 

I would love to know, please do leave me a comment below telling me how you manage to fit your journaling into your week.

Thanks for popping by.

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.]

Art Journal Sharing Thursday - Butterflies And Movies

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.]

Art Journal Sharing Thursday - House Moves And Experiments

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.]

Art Journal Sharing Thursday - Letterpress with Fiskars Fuse

As some of you might already know I have been doing some demos this month at Hobbycraft for Fiskars showing the Fiskars Fuse. Last Saturday I was in Crawley and I decided I would do something a little different, so as well as making the usual cards and tags to show how the Fiskars Fuse works I thought I would have a bit of art journal fun too.

It is kind of like a challenge, making an art journal page with the limited supplies you have to hand, I mean there is only so much you can carry to a demo isn't there? 

Of course I had a couple to the Fiskars dies and some patterned paper, scissors, glue and my pencil case. Now in my pencil case I usually carry some watercolour pencils, such as the Derwent Inktense pencils, my Kuretake ZIG BrusH2O waterbrushes, I never leave home without them, and my favouritest pencil ever - the Stabilo All Aquarellable pencil. Sorted!

I started by glueing torn patterned paper pieces to a page in my A5 Repurposed Flier Journal, then I gave each panel an extra colour boost with a wash of the Derwent Inktense using the waterbrush and let the page dry before going over the torn edges with the Stabilo All pencil and a touch of the waterbrush again.

To make the focal point image I used the Fiskars Thick Material Scalloped circle die, that comes in the Fuse starter kit, loaded with the Thank You bird letterpress plate, inked up with Ranger Archival Jet black and run through the Fuse with a piece of canvas paper.

I then trimmed off the scalloped edge with scissors and stuck the letterpressed canvas disk to the page.

You can see that I ran the letterpress through the Fuse again with patterned paper and cut out the bird. The sentiment is also cut form the patterned paper. The final touch was a Stabilo All pencil border and there you have it - a Fiskars Fuse Art Journal Page Demo.

Mmm...I wonder what I can do next week at my demo in Maidstone? 

Thanks for popping in today and please do share any of your art journal pages you might be working on this week. Have you done any out and about journaling recently? 

Kim

Art Journal Sharing Thursday - Art Journal Selfies

So back to a finished journal page for my Art Journal Sharing Thursday this week, but before I show and tell I just wanted to say how much I loved all your comments last week about your Art Journal resources, thank you! Sharing is the best therapy and I'm so glad to know that I am not the only one with a Journal/Notebook habit! 

So journalators of all types, my share this week is a self portrait. Back in July 2012 I started a scrapbooking project that was all about me, well the idea behind it was to curate pictures of myself taken over the years. I'm usually the one behind the camera so I thought I would collect together the photos I could find that were just of me. Mmm, I haven't really progressed very far with the project if I'm honest, but I thought I might add to it today with this art journal page. 

I have fiddled with the photo in Adobe Photoshop to get a stylised black and white photo and I've slotted it in next to a page I did at the beginning of the year in my A5 repurposed flier journal.

I've textured a layer of Gesso by pressing a piece of kitchen towel into it and then got nice and messy with some acrylic paint splatters. Can you see the lime green hand print? Yep, I got nice and messy!

The date records the date the photo was taken, the weird thing is I can't remember why I took this selfie, I'm sure it was for some project but I found it again as I was going through my photo library and thought it would be interesting to turn it into a journal page.

Her (my) eyes just follow you everywhere you go don't they? Oh yeah, I'm watching you! Ok, now I'm freaking myself out.

Thanks for popping in today and feel free to share any links in the comments to your journaling this week, specially if it is a self portrait, I would love to see them.

Catch you later Journalators.

Kim

Art Journaling Thursday - What Do You Journal In?

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

Art Journal Sharing Thursday - Time For Some Flowers

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