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.

R is for Relatives

Just had a chance to upload the scrapbook layout I did last night. It sort of fell together w/o too much agonizing from me, which is always good.

Click here to see a layout I did of my Dad's Mom's family sometime around the nineteen teens.

adding to the scrapbook...

The surprise snowfall we got the other day demanded a scrapbook layout. I usually wait until I get my photos professionally developed... but this time I didn't bother and printed this picture at home. I love this grey paper that I picked up on vacation in Vermont. *cries that this is last piece* I gessoed the floral stencil and then played around with layering things. The brown circle bit is actually packaging from some jello cups. The brown grid paper was salvaged from the recyling bin at work! The titling came from an attempt at a tag in photoshop. Given that I don't know what I'm doing ... I screwed it up ... but still made it work for me!! HAH.

...are you ready for your closeup...?? In the closeup you can see better my little glitter glue dots on top of the floral stencil (click for a closer peek)...

gettin' messy

been binging on other people's blogs... and so finally had time to get down and dirty with my own long ignored art journal this weekend. I can't say I 100% love any of the pages I did... but I sure had fun playing. I've been away from it so long I don't feel like these are authentically me. But I'm rediscovering what I like and what I don't, so that's a positive step.

So for whatever it's worth... here they are...

day by day

Oh, also posted my 10 latest daily collages over at my Flickr site.

There is JOY in a cup of coffee and a movie

Came back from seeing "Julia and Julia" and felt like playing around a bit. Gessoed and painted and inked a cereal box cut to 8 1/2 x 11 inches for the background. Then layered on a piece of lime green tissue with some acrylic medium, a still from the movie, my ticket stub, my coffee sleeve, and some "typed" text and a couple of Thickers letters.

I really like the weathered effect on the background chipboard which was an accident as I was trying to smooth out some of the paint and ended up wiping away more than I intended. But it ends up adding an extra bit of texture that I really like. And it doesn't show up in the photo, but the ink from the cereal box packaging shows through just a bit here and there and adds even more texture...

Just smooshing gesso and color around to make the background is totally addicting!