Fresh Approaches to Collage - 'Amazon' Silhouette Collage

I really enjoy having a go at lots of different techniques and media, but collage is my first love! This is an idea I had in the middle of the night. It's a watercolour background with a black collage on top.

I hand-cut the snake and the lizard. The rest are die-cuts. I'm pretty pleased with it because it turned out exactly how I pictured it in my head.

Hand Lettering - Journal Page

I've been computer-printing a lot of my wording recently, and had lost confidence in my hand lettering skills. This troubled me, because I feel that hand lettering is a hugely important element of art journaling (because it is so personal, and unique to the writer).  Always best to tackle a problem head-on, so I thought I'd go for it, and do a page with a major focus on hand lettering. 

I'm quite pleased with the lettering, so hopefully if I keep at it my confidence will return.  (And yes, the love affair with orange continues!)  The white highlights are Posca paint pen, which is an absolute joy to use and has ended my quest to find the best white pen on the market.

Thinking about Personal Imagery/Style/Keywords

Inspired by Corey Moortgat's book 'Personal Imagery' I've been trying to identify lists of themes, images, colours etc which I'm drawn to, or which mean something to me in my art work. 

The page is just a watercolour background with collaged words and my trademark black/white stripes. I finished by drawing the peacock feathers basically to fill the empty space. 

Another Hand-Made Stencil

I'm pretty pleased with this page, particularly with the stencil, which I made from scratch from a photo.  It's a bit more complicated than that last one (more positive/negative shapes).   I used black acrylic paint with the stencil, but all the wording is computer-printed because I wanted a really crisp, graphic effect.

Here's the original photo which I started with:

More Orange! Back to Collage.

I haven't done a purely collaged background for ages, so I went for 'colour/mood collage' here, and then added paint, stamping, distress ink and coloured pencil.

Music is My Drug - Using the Stencil I made

I've been wanting to make a journal page about the big effect music has on me (especially when I'm doing something creative). I had that in mind when I chose the design for my DIY stencil the other day.

I usually only use small pieces of patterned paper (cut up and collaged), but I thought this ethereal pink one would work perfectly as a background with the stencil. I put a simple page together quite quickly, using the stencil (with acrylic paint), a scroll design rubber stamp, and some ink spatter to finish.

Art Journal Covers

I made some covers to keep my art journal pages in, using my new favourite colour...orange! (Notice the blog's zingy new look as well!)

Another Technique: DIY Stencil

I have decided that my art-related goal for 2012 is to be more adventurous with techniques.

I tried the basic monotype print technique in my last post and this time I'm making my own stencil from acetate. The original picture which I traced the shape from is actually a design for surfboard artwork, by Stina Persson. I thought it would work perfectly for a stencil, so I traced it onto a sheet of acetate and cut out the negative shapes using a very sharp blade. Voila - a unique and very cheap stencil.

Blue Sky Thinking...journal page

We went for a walk on the beach today. It was cold, but the sun was shining and the sky was so incredibly blue that I couldn't help feeling wonderfully cheerful and positive.  I wanted to make a journal page which captured the blueness of that sky, and the uplifting feeling it gave me. 

I found the perfect colour and painted a background onto Yupo.  Yupo isn't absorbent, so you can use a damp paintbrush to 'lift out' areas of paint, like this:

Then I drew in some cheerful floral-type doodles which I'd sketched a while ago.  I didn't add any other colours to distract from the blue.

I could have just added the journalling in black but decided to make the blue 'pop' even more by matting onto a black background and journalling in white.  Quick and easy, but I was pleased because it really does capture my feeling about that blue sky.

Return to Art Journalling

After months of cardmaking and photography projects (plus the Sketchbook Project), I have finally got back into art journalling.  It was great to crank up the music (African Guitar Legends - great background music) and get the paints out again after so long.

The compass is a Tim Holtz mask (which I failed to stick on straight!) and I used a lovely huge skeleton leaf on the other page, which adds a nice bit of texture.

Last Sketchbook Project Pages

A couple more pages from my Sketchbook Project, which I managed to finish and which is now winging its way over to Brooklyn NY.  I was trying out my new Rotring ink cartridge pen here, plus watersoluble crayons.

3D Wedding Cards

I'm really enjoying my cardmaking at the moment and have been having fun making boxed wedding and anniversary cards. I've been giving the Cuttlebug a workout, using embossing folders and Spellbinders dies.