Micro Art Journal: Tiny Collages

A collage of my collages I made in september in my micro art journal inside my tiny KeyPer from Jot. The collages are made with bits and pieces left over from projects. 

It's been quiet on the blog, but definitely not quiet art wise. I've been sharing art daily on my instagram and facebook, if you want to see what I have been up to lately. 

Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by!

Art Journal: Diary of events

The days are getting shorter and the weather colder - what comforts me in these times besides hot drinks and snuggling on the couch with Meesha, are big bright bold colors! While cleaning up bits of my art room recently, I found a few boxes of oil pastels and decided to use them in my art journal pages. This one is another collage with vintage and modern magazine clippings and gelli prints backgrounds.

I've oil pastels marks in the same colors as the back ground and just made big bold marks with them around the collage images. I've then stamped a script stamp (Paper Artsy), row of numbers (VLVS!) and a fence stamp (Stampotique Originals) for texture.

The sentiment "diary of events" is from Tim Holtz sticker books. The juxtaposition between the black and white & grey against the bold colored background really pleases me. It reminds me that even though the day to day can be B/W & Grey - there are bold colors inside me and I can let them out any time I choose, bursting through the fences we often place ourselves behind. 

"I no longer want to fit in, I choose to be me, with bold and beautiful colors."

Hope this inspires you to play along with this month's Craft Stamper TIMI challenge. You can win a lovely prize and you'll have the chance to have your work featured in a magazine! See the full terms on the site & hope to see your entries there. 

I also would love to share this art journal page over at Art Journal Journey with the theme of Creature Comfort this month. What a great theme again and I love seeing everyone's creations!

Thank you for stopping by and hope you'll have a fantastic weekend!

Art Journal: Yes my darling, write your hopeful, beautiful and sentimental chronicles, always

Today I am sharing some inspiration for the September Take it Make it, challenge over at Craft Stamper. I've made a piece with my vintage ladies and pens clippings and started a new size journal, in my traveler's notebook. It says

"Yes my darling, write your hopeful, beautiful and sentimental chronicles, always."

and it has such a beautiful, fun whimsical feel to it. I made this page during my 30 days mini journaling project to fulfill my need for collaging. And it was good to have a bit of a break and do some journaling on a larger scale too :) Below you'll see a a few steps on how I created this spread.

Started off with collaging neutral and "old style vintage" colored papers of which I have plenty of.

Then added gesso to knock back some color, adhered my focal images with gel medium and created shadows with faber castell pitt marker in grey.

I added some darker accents with distress crayons & created a border.

Some stamping for texture. Used a few of my favorites by Viva Las VegaStamps! and Staz-On inks.

And before I added the sentiment I added some splatters to bring it all together. 

Hope this inspired you to play along with the CS TIMI challenge for this month :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome weekend!

WIP: Left Over Art Collage clean up session

Today I wanted to share a little bit what happens behind the scenes at my creative station. Usually when I create something the left over scraps bits, trims and pieces gets piled up to the left hand side. And when it gets a little out of control (like migrating to the middle of the desk) I take my Junk Mail Art Journal and have what I like to call a "Left-Over Art Collage clean up session" and take my jar of Modge Podge, a brush and use my scraps to create some fun collage style journal pages. And yes, mostly they are supervised by my kitty Meesha :)

Usually I just continue to fill pages until I feel like the left over pile is manageable again, like so. And when I'm done with a session like this, I'm always glad that I just didn't chuck all the scraps into the bin like I am always tempted to do when that mess just gets out of control. It's a peaceful and meditative process and oh yeah, I totally get distracted by looking at the utter adorableness sleeping in that basket :) 

Close up of a spread from this session. Just randomly slapped together pages, but I do try to look for composition and color. Not sure if they are "done" I might just come back to a page, gesso all over it and completely transform the look of it. I have dome that with a few which I will share at a later time. 

What do you do with your left over scraps? Bin them right away or are you also hoarding them to use later? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. 

Sharing this post with the fellow deskers at Julia's WOYWW454 - glad to be playing along again, hope you all are doing well and will say hi to you all shortly :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

The magic of writing (+ Process Video)

Hey everyone, I've got a fun mixed media art journal tip in page to share with you. This Mixed Media piece shows my love for art journaling and writing. It's INCOWRIMO (international Correspondence Month) and it absolutely fits with that theme.  

I love how colorful and textured this piece turned out!

I've also filmed the process so you can see exactly how I made the texture and added color in the background here:

A few close up shots:

Materials Used:

Stamps from Stampotique Originals Miss Snottie and Texture Cube; PaperArtsy Script Stamp, Share that spark quote stamp from Magenta, Distress paints, DecoArt Media interference and gold paint, Liquitex flexible Modeling paste, Artplorations Stencil,  Derwent graphix black writer, Spray ink, distress crayons, Liquitex INK, PenWorld cut outs, Modge Podge shimmer gold sealer glue.

Hope you enjoyed the process video. Please let me know what you think and if you would like to stay updated on my YT tutorials, please subscribe to my channel HERE.

Entering this piece in the following challenges:
Creative Artiste Mixed Media #35 
More Mixed Media challenge February
Stamps and Stencils: Off to collage

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Art Journal: Silently Correcting Your Grammar

Have a fun and quirky art journal page to share with you today. Using one of my fave VLVS! quote stamps in combination with collage elements from vintage en fountain pen magazines.

The background was an experiment with various textures and Tim Holtz Distress paints. I've also used the a ledger and script stencil from The Crafter's workshop. I kept layering and removing pants with a baby wipe to get a distressed and aged paper look.

Created some shadows with distress crayons and added some text and postage stamping plus white and gold spatters before adhering the collage images on top.

Detail close up. I also love that the vintage magazine image also has some grainy texture to it.

Definitely love how this whole page came together!

I'd like to enter this art journal page in the following challenges: 

Stamplorations January MixedMedia challenge

Try it on Tuesday - My favorite things 

I love creating art journal pages and experimenting with back ground techniques.  

Art Journal Journey - New Year, New Adventures

Well in the theme of writing and doing something new I have started a new studies this year through Coursera online studies which is an adventure! I get to use my fountain pens even more regularly now :) 

Thank you for stopping by and have a great day!

Art Journal: Embrace your ridiculous awesomeness

Today I am sharing an art journal collage piece. I incorporated my love for mixed media, collage, random word poetry and fountain pens in one. And I am really happy how this art journal collage turned out.

The lady is a from a vintage fashion mag and she was holding her hands in a way that I wanted her to hold flowers. Perfect time to use the little prima flowers I have been hoarding. Also the larger flowers on the piece are also from Prima which I glued on flat and drew on.

I've used fountain pen images from PenWorld magazine, with the ledger and script rubber stamps I thought it would be a great match. The sentiment is a part from this stamp from VLVS! and it says 

"She chose to embrace her ridiculous awesomeness and shine like the freaking supernova she was meant to be"  

And this my dear friends I hope you all will do, for embracing your ridiculous awesome self is the best thing you can ever do!

I would like to enter this journal page in the following challenges: 

TIOT - try it on tuesday "my friend" challenge 

It's often the case we are our own worst enemy, but I wholeheartedly encourage you to befriend yourself in the most compassionate way. So embrace your ridiculous awesomeness :) 

Art Journal Journey - theme color in my world (this challenge site is so wonderful! I keep discovering new talented people all over the world!)

Happy Little Stampers Mixed Media Challenge - September 2017 Collage

MixedMedia World MMW#29 anything goes 

Craft Stamper Take it make it challenge september 2017 

Thanks so much for stopping by and have an ridiculously awesome weekend :)

Mail Art Monday: I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition

It's another beautiful Monday out and I'm sharing this postcard I made with a bunch of the new stamp releases from Stampotique Originals! I love using book pages in my postcards lately and the background is one I had in my stash a while, it's got left over paints from stencil wiped off it like the star you see on the top left. These new releases really do combine very will together!

Stamps from the new releases I have used in this card are:
Funky Town by Kate Crane
Hive Flower by Arwen McCullen
Little Whookie by Daniel Torrente
Short and Tall Tress by Jill Penny
Phrase Cube #3 from Teri Richradson
Other stamps used
Brick Road by France Papillion
Texture Cube 1 by Kate Crane

I would love to enter this work in the following challenges:
Sunday Postcard Art - Stargazing
Try it on Tuesday - Postcard

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Art Journal: Road trip to Paris

Summer is here and obviously summer vacation has been the topic of discussion. While do we don't have any definite plans to go somewhere this summer, I have been feeling nostalgic for Paris. We've been there several times over the years and my sister in law recently went with her family, it made me want to pack up the car and have a road trip to Paris and driving until sunset... Made a little art journal page reflecting those emotions. It's made with watercolors (ecoline) and masking technique and I have this great Eiffel tower mask I used for the negative space. Texture stamps from Studio Light (love the effect it has on the negative space in the tower), some clippings from scrap papers and the car is from a vintage magazine. The sentiment "One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things" is from Technique Tuesday.

What is your wander luster within you telling you to drive off to at this moment? 

I would like to share this journal page with the following challenge:

Moo Mania - Wheels

Art Journal Journey - Summer Time Love 

HLS july watercolor challenge

Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - Distress it 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you are having a wonderful day!

Mail Art Monday: Sewn with love and happiness

On today's Mail Art Monday I am sharing another piece from the Masterboard cut out series. I think I have only 4-5 pieces left to work on from that large cut on. This part of the collage had the sewing machine stickers on it and I have chosen to go with that theme. I used some great stitching lines from VLVS!; Sawtooth stitching lines and Stitching lines The squiggle heart suited this imagery well so I used that as well on random places and in the middle. I gave the center of the heart a pop of red color. I've used water soluble crayons over this piece and a fixative spray to water proof it a bit. 

I would like to enter this card in the following challenge;

Lost Coast Designs #38 anything goes 

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful day :)

Mail Art Monday - Celebrate!

Hi friends, hope you all had an amazing weekend and a wonderful fathers day yesterday. It's monday so I have another fun project to share for this week's Mail Art Monday. It's a postcard from my Scrap Collage master board series. So this piece is cut from that huge master board  which I showed you a while back. This is piece 5 I think... I have been working on many at the same time so I lost track of how many pieces I made already. Anyhow, this one I had not added much to except for some color and stars. I used some white gesso over the card leaving out the Lady (which is from Carmen's Veranda) and then added some color with Marubu watersoluble crayons. I then took a yellow sharpie and scribbled in some starry texture with a STAMPlorations stencil (which I won from last month's challenge, yay!), then added some star sticker, spatters with white gesso and a black border with a Krink Marker. Love how the image of the woman just pops out. 

I would like to enter this in the following challenges 

LCD challenge for this month of the theme Postcards (super fun challenge and very easy, so join in the fun :) 

Have an awesome Monday and thanks so much for stopping by!

Art Journal: Amazing Diva

It's such an amazingly fun challenge to create pieces using project left overs aka 'tovers only. This piece was intended to be a postcard but I loved it so much I decided to adhere it to my art journal as I couldn't part with is. I used all sorts of scraps and left over pieces here but what started it off was the top. It's a color coded row of double ink sample swatches! I keep ink samples in trays and have it organized by what I have done already but for some reason I made an oopsie and made swatches of one row twice. Well of course it's too pretty to just throw out and if you see my scrap boxes you will know I have trouble to throw out anything!  I then looked for trims in the same color family to adhere to the page. Instead of vertically like I did with this journal page, I went with horizontal lines to see how that would go. And I absolutely love the outcome here! The Frida image is a left over print from this journal page and is a stamp from Lost Coast Designs - so are the words I used. I felt like I needed a POP of color and in my scraps I found that colored in whimsical seed pod from Viva Las VegaStamps! which I had used from this journal page almost a year ago! So very cathartic to use up all these scraps and seeing how all these elements come together as one :) The "frame" is just ripped out magazine pages from FLOW magazines. Yes, I have had a TON of them due to my 3 year subscription and those are all "free game" now - ripping stuff out feel SO GOOD! LOL! 

I would like to enter this journal page in the following challenges: 

The WaterCooler Wednesday #121 - Anything goes challenge   

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything goes 

Time Out Challenge #84 - Inspired by Words 

'Flowers and Friends make life a garden' 

The green and seed pod reminds me of a garden... it could be Frida's garden :)

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #37 - A year of choices

Wow, has it been a year I have been participating? 

I really loved this past year's themes esp. what's your super power and put a stamp on it. 

I feel like this journal page combines the two :) 

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

MailART Monday: Persistence

Today I would like to show you this postcard I made for a swap on swapbot in which you were required to use one of your gelli printed pieces of paper. And last week I showed you my process of printing on Tomoe River paper. I took one of those printed papers and created the above postcard. I only added some background stamping with some lush VLVS!, the lady is a cut out from a vintage fashion magazine and the dots are made with distress paints daubers. The sentiment "nevertheless, she persisted" is from VLVS! as well and it's definitely among my fave of the new releases! This piece has such a wonderful retro feel to it with with yellow and orange tones :) I loved making one of my vintage magazine mail art pieces again! I recently got a bunch of old magazine from a friend and I am excited to go through them!

Even when it rains, my mail box drops are always ever persistent!

Have a great Monday everyone and thanks for stopping by!