Art Journal: Summer Night Sky

In between everything that was happening last month, I made sure I spent some time in my art studio to help me lift the heavy stuff I was going through. This is an art journal page I created during that time and it definitely was a breath of fresh air and let me release some tension I was carrying.

I started off on a double spread in my art journal which already had some paint on and I glued on (with deco arts decoupage glue) a gelli print made on deli paper. It is made with a gorgeous star stencil from 101 stencils. After it was glued down I blended the edges in with finnabair blue metallic and highlighted it with spark paints.

Close up shot of the highlights.

Then I went to work on the main image, which is Hera from Carabelle Studio. I stamped her on tissue paper and adhered with Decoart Decoupage napkin glue. The glue also works as a sealant so I could work over the image with my paints. It was a labor of love using acrylics (I used distress paints) but with some help of technique tricks and tutorials on You Tube By Karen Cambell, I managed to get the color and sharing in the face and hair done. The bright yellow swirls in the hair is inspired by Van Gogh's Starry night. And I added more stars on the pages with the same stencil and a pale light blue paint for more contrast.

To finish off the page I added some white and gold paint splatters and the quote of Van Gogh :

"I dream my painting and then I paint my dream"

I absolutely loved making this page and was very cathartic to do.  And these past few days we have been having gorgeous summer like nights... may the be plentiful and hope you will enjoy them as well.

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

Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - Lets Doodle 

Had fun doodling the swirly hair!

MMMC #47 - complimentary color scheme

Try it on Tuesday - nature's beauty 

I absolutely love the sky, day or night, it is one of nature's exquisite beauty

Creative Artiste MixedMedia Challenge #37 - Anything MM goes

More Mixed Media World - Anything MM goes - optional Yellow

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

Art Journal: There is no place like home

Today I am sharing a journal page I have made a while back on the theme "what is home?"

I've moved from Amsterdam to Leiden now I think 12 years ago and it took me a while to call this city my home, but I do love it here now. I tried to convey my feelings for this city in this art journal spread. It is going to be a picture heavy post of details of this spread, so you'll see more after the cut.

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!

Shopping Highlight: Art Specially 2017

Well as I hinted last Friday, last weekend was spent at the wonderful Art Specially event in Nijkerk. My lovely husband came with me (both days) to share in the crazy fun and also to make sure I didn't spend too much. Well the latter spectacularly failed, haha! But we definitely had crazy fun!

There were a lot of workshops/make and takes were offered this year again but we only had time for a selection. Also there were lines for the very popular workshops, like the notebook decoration by Papillon Hobby. We sat in line for 1 1/2 hours for that one. It's good to have a buddy with you so you can take turns in waiting. It was well worth the wait and fun to use a new to me product; Cadence brands wax, stencils and media. We also had workshops with Dylusions paints (dress card), paper artsy and infusions powders on gelli plate (the Happy cards), Dina Wakley paints (the house tags), Distress ink layering (swirl tag) and dual emboss resist technique (the happy day card). 

On the left works I made and on the right the works my husband made. He got a lot of fun comments on being one of the few guys there attending the workshops :) I learned a lot these two days and I can't wait to implement some of these fun techniques in my own works. And I learned a great way to customize my Rhodia/Leuchtturm notebook!

The trends/pushed products on the event this year were: Distress Oxides, Cadence products (seriously almost every stand was pushing this new brand!), Pan Pastel, alcohol ink on yupo and gilding wax/faux metallic effects. I managed to resist buying a few of these pushed products, like the gilding wax, but also came home with a great deal of other things. 

Well... like I said, not spending too much has spectacularly failed this year! So happy this is just a yearly event! I had pre-ordered the Distress Oxides and saw Corrie Herriman live doing a demo with them at Hobby Compleet de Duif stand. I'm really excited to give them a whirl! I also pre-ordered the Lindy's magical shakers and am very happy to have found the Scribble Sticks. I'll to a comparison of both those products with similar products because I am curious on the differences between them. Will of course share my findings with you. All the paints and deco arts media were on sale and well since I love a good sale and wanted to have the dylusions paints for a while, so I went for it! A bit light on the stamps this year around, but that´s because I had my eye on different media to try out. You gotta make choices somewhere right? ;)

My husband also made some purchases and went for a set of ZIG's Clean color brush set

Got a set (and some extra) Zig Clean color real brushes at the Artspecially crafty market last weekend. To learn a bit more about blending, color and this whole, "coloring" business because they just seemed so accessible. My first real "attempt" at using them in the corner and little Meesha giving her (dis)aproval 😅.

Een bericht gedeeld door Blaze8t88 (@cornelius.grayl) op 5 Apr 2017 om 2:23 PDT

and I love that he is trying out this new to him medium :)

I am looking forward to use my goodies this weekend.
Have a great one you all and thanks for stopping by :)

MailArt Monday: Pigtales Grew Wings

When I was cleaning my art room over my Christmas break, I found a stack of white standard C6 envelopes and I thought it would be fun to show you some more arted up envelopes in my weekly MailART Monday posts.

I created the envie above with some of my fave Stampotique stamps and a new stencil by Brett Weldele. A colorful burst in cold winter times :) The whole thing is one layer and done with masking the main image and a part for the address off with some sticker paper.

You can see most of the materials I used here. The Dylusions mixed media palette has such lovely bright colors! I chose some according distress inks to layer over the stencil, which is "scribbles" from Brett Weldele. When I took the stencil away I stamped some texture on it with the fun Textures cube from Kate Crane. And added more color first with distress inks and blender tool.

Before I took the mask away I also sprayed some shimmer, Perfect pearl kiwi to be exact. Then I colored little miss Pigtales and the lovely wings design by Daniel Torrente in with alcohol makers. I was contemplating leaving the wings like that, but I wanted brighter colors, so I went over it again with promarkers and copics (alcohol based markers) to brighten things up.

She definitely looks a lot brighter here and to make her pop out even more I used a white gel pen (from pentel) for some accents. 

It's the second week of the Anything Goes challenge at Stampotique, which I am entering this envelope in. You can play along until Wednesday when the new challenge theme is announced :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Art Journal: A bright burst of thoughts

When I was walking about in the Hague I entered the Flying Tiger and saw they had a couple of spiral bound journals for sale with black sturdy pages in them. "Oh no," I thought, " this could be the beginning of new art journals!" And yeah I took them home with me to test. It's a smaller journal (A7 sized) a bit bigger than ATC size which appealed to me. I also wanted to work directly onto the paper, instead of adhering a made page into my journals like I have done before. Also I have no spiral journal. Yes, yes I'm reciting all the excuses I had in my head before buying the journal, haha!

To start off I added a layer of crafter's workshop golden gesso as a primer. Then took their Burst stencil and applied some light and fluffy modeling paste to it. I placed the burst center on the right side so the rays spread out on the left. Let that dry and added dabs distress paints onto the paper from top to bottom: Fired Brick, Ripe Persimmon, Mustard Seed and Fossilized Amber. I spritzed water over it and let the colors blend and mix until the stenciled image was covered in paint. After I heat dried it I took a script stencil and applied some more fluffy paste over it.  I dabbed some evergreen bough and blue print sketch on the craft sheet and spritzed some water over it. This time took a brush to color the script in blue tones and parts around the rays as well. After that all dried I spritzed some mica sprays in buttercup and corn flower over it. The half face stamp is Franco Face from Lost Coast Designs, which I love using in my other art journals. I made several of those faces to be used in other projects. I adhered the face to the right and then lightened the aria around it with a mix of mustard seed and picket fence distress strains and applied it with a brush. To give color back to the script I used the blue Wink of Stella brush pen over the script. 

I do love how the the first page I made in the journal turned out! 

Entering this journal page in the MMMC #32 put a stencil on it.

And the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity Challenge #32 Anything goes. 

You might be wondering what I did with the other half of the face, right? Well I used that for an ATC which you can see below:

It was made for a Fantasy themed swap at Art chicks Studio FB group.

I also used the skyline stamp ATC size from Lost Coast Designs. Used clear embossing on the card then rubbed pearl metallic rubs over the raised edges. then some black distress crayon for the shadows. Written words with a white gel pen and the outline as well. Here the words are still in the girl's head, but on my art journal page she managed to get them out :)

Thank you for stopping by and wishing you a creative and wonderful weekend!