Taking Another Creative Jumpstart

I had a couple of minutes last night, so I took another look at one of Nat's Creative Jumpstart ideas.  She used gloss gel medium as a resist by using a stencil and then when the gloss medium was dry she sprayed it with some spray inks.

Although my stencil was giving me trouble (very flimsy plastic, not best suited for this), I quite like the end result.  Because the medium had leaked under the stencil, I used my Uniball Vision waterproof pen to outline the features of the stencil as well as the entire medium marks.  That's the only pen I found worked really well on the gloss medium.

With greater care and a better stencil, I think this technique is fabulous for some lovely texture and shine!

June Art Journal Calendar Spread

It's been a while since I did any art journalling, so last night I got out the paints, some stencils and other 'tools' and had a little fun.  This first image shows what I have done so far, with the little Post-It note squares (I cut them down to about 1.7") that I used as masks.  The word June and the numbers are Tim Holtz masks.

We have this wonderful recycling place called Waste Wise in town.  It's a huge warehouse full of wonderful 'junk' where you can pick up all kinds of interesting things for pennies.  I found this plastic 'thingy'.  My husband and I have no idea what it is intended to be used for*, but it makes a great paint stamp.  I often keep little lids to dip in acrylic paint and stamp, so when I saw this I though it would be fun to be able to stamp entire grids of circles!  If you look closely, you'll see the little black circles on my pages.  I love that they aren't perfect circles...randomness perfected ;o)

*I just couldn't let it go...enquiring minds...so I did some research and finally found out that these things are inserts for ammo cases.  I'm so glad I found a better use for it! 

The stencil I used is one by the Crafters Workshop.  I stamped over it using a make-up sponge (thanks to Creative Jumpstart for that idea...love it) and acrylic paint.  My final colour addition came from some spray inks that I layered over top before removing the masks.

I still plan to do some black pen work to the page, although I'm not entirely sure what I'll do... I certainly have to add numbers to the journalling squares and I might outline the letters and numbers...I'll post again when it's finished.

Artful Random Act of Kindness Tags

The other day I, after watching one of the Creative Jump Start videos, I pulled out some tags, spray inks and stencils and played around a bit.  

Then I wondered what I would do with these little pieces of art and after thinking about it for a bit I decided to use them to make little RAK tags.  I continued to decorate them by adding some acrylic paint and when I liked how they looked I printed up some labels to stick to the back and added tassels.

 
Over the next few days, my plan is to give them out as I do some RAKs for people around town, and hopefully they will continue to make the rounds.


Wouldn't it be amazing if one found it's way back to me eventually?

The Beautiful Towel

This week for Photo Art Friday,  Bonnie has challenged us to create a piece of photo art showcasing our guiding word for 2013.  

I've already shared my word in a previous post in which I was creating a journal page, and before that, in a photo post in which I explain my reasons behind it.  But this afternoon, as I was starting to do some backgrounds on a few tags using spray inks and stencils, my wipe up paper towel became so beautifully colourful that it inspired me to photograph it and play around with it in Photoshop.  After doing some minor adjustments I added my word, put a bevelled edge on the outside and here it is:

This paper towel may find itself in some other project too.  I see some stitching in it's future...

A Thank You Art Tag

I made a little Thank You tag using some of my spray inks and stencils, a bird stamp and some embossing powder.  I forget how much fun embossing powder is to play with!

These small tags are a great way to do a bit of art when you only have a little time to spend but you just have to have an art fix. :o)

May Art Calendar Journal

My May art calendar journal spread is ready for the journalling.  I started by using various spray inks to give the page a gently mottled look.  I then added a variety of old silk flowers and a few paper flowers to create masks for each of the days of the month and I sprayed over them with green.  I removed the flowers...getting my fingers all inky :o)...and let that layer dry.  When that was totally dry, I came in with my Micron pen and did the lettering and a bit of soft sketching around the flower shapes.  After stamping the leaf shapes and the birds, butterflies and dragonflies, I used my Micron again to draw in stems and swirls to connect the leaves.  Finally, I did a bit of colouring with my Peerless watercolour pigments...and you have May flowers to follow the April showers.