Journal Your Christmas 2009 begins.

Not completely happy with these, but in the spirit of not getting hung up on perfection, I worked on them for a bit, and then stuck 'em in the album!

Day 1 -- why we're doing this crazy thing at this crazy time.

the first page is a scrap I used to try out inking a Tim Holtz mask, along with the inked doily used to create the second page.

second page is using the doily as a mask and then layered on top of that is the advent number paper, some masking tape to make the journaling spot, some felt trim and a bit of bling. Rhinestones make everything better!

(the purple and teal letter stickers are odd, but are an attempt to use up stash)

 

 

and so it begins...

Gathering stuff for my december daily scrapbook ... have a gander at the pretty...

Layers of LOVE

So in a rush to crank out a couple Christmas presents for a luncheon tomorrow... I took the stuff we've been learning in Julie's Ink and Paint Class, a couple of 5x7 canvases, gesso, ink, and water soluable crayons, and I went nuts... and I LOVE THE RESULTS!!

Can I just spend every waking hour of the day doing this? ...




I'm off to upload a few more snaps, and some closeups, to my Flickr page (link to the left).

YAY!!

I'm so EASY!

Am loving taking Julie's TECHNIQUE-A-PALOOZA class so much, I signed up for another class... Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas.

As a single person, with not much family, and not many official holiday functions, I am always a bit puzzled to know how to document a Christmas that doesn't always feel all that Christmasy (save for the actual day, and the night before).

So hopefully I can figure out some journaling to add to my December Daily ... inspired by Allie Edward's projects ...

some links:
Allie's first twelve pages from her 2009 album
Allie's next pages, 13-25
The December Daily 2009 Flickr group for great eye candy...

I have a feeling it will be a well documented December. Someday I might even get pictures of my DD 2008 album taken and posted :D

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

also for december

Yesterday we practiced saturating lace with ink and using it to "stamp" on paper. I couldn't find any trim lace I liked for this... but I found a small doily from a thrift store grab bag and went to town.

Not unlike the stenciled red page in the post below, I am reusing scrapbook paper I don't like, but this time I just flipped it over to the white back. I do like that it's very sturdy cardstock, so there's no sense in letting it sit there being all useless.

Here's the doily after being soaked with ink:


And here are the papers I made with the doily, a brayer, and some Adirondak spray ink.




The last one I used the doily more as a mask for the spray ink ...



I'm trying to get used to this looser, spray-painty, watercolory look...

the beginnings of december

One of our Paint and Ink techniques was gesso stenciling. That led to these experiments:





The red and the aqua samples I love. The navy blue was an attempt to salvage a scrap stencil gone wrong. I don't love it, but I like it well enough. I'll find it's way onto a card or the like someday.

When I decided to throw a couple of my own papers into my December Daily album, I went back to this technique. As I am trying to recycle as much as I can, I painted over some patterned scrapbook paper I got in a pad which I will never use, in this case an 8x8 inch piece of striped guitar print paper (on the right):

I painted over the striped paper with some red acrylic and then set about stenciling it with gesso.
If you look closely, you can still sort of see the stripes beneath the red paint. Now, instead of paper I have no use for, it's become TEXTURE. :0) Love that...and this paper.

inky fingers

Playing with red and green ink tonight using today's Technique-a-palooza demo of stamping with inky lace. Making some pages destined for my December Daily album. Of course now I have red tipped fingers making me look very disreputable!

Hoping to take the class techniques and use some of them as I build my December album. A mix of handcrafted pages with purchased paper should be cool ... and I'm betting alot/most of my embellishments will come from stuff I learnt in class.