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!

Thank you card with magic INK technique

A great scours of inspiration has been watching these great little (10 min max) video tutorials on various art techniques over at YouTube. I'm following this awesome illustrator Mary Doodles and she creates fantastic illustrations using india ink combined with water colors. Check this Wolf in INK video out, isn't it MAGIC? The thank you card I am sharing has been done with that technique. Super fun and easy to do! You just have to move quickly and accept serendipity!

If you can't really draw, or are stumped on idea's what to draw, you can also use stencils. I have taken a feather stencil (by Viva Decor) and placed it on top of watercolor paper (maruman zuan) and brushed water over the stencil onto the paper. Removed the stencil, got my brush loaded with india ink and tapped the water on various places to make the feather appear. SO FUN to watch! The outcome is not perfect or as sharp as the stencil is, but I love the airy "feathery" feel they have. Once dry the india ink is water proof. I wet my paper a little in various places and tapped a bit of fountain pen ink in Diamine Magenta and Havasu Turquoise on the water to spread and mix. I mopped up some excess water and spattered more inda ink and a bit of water to get some more texture. The Thank You sentiment is a stamp from Studio Light, a nice hand written font adds to the whimsy of the card. Matted onto black card stock and then onto a blue card. I chose a violet envelop for it to keep the color scheme going. 

Check out more of Mary's awesome How To tutorial video's HERE. Hope this inspired you to get out some india ink and various water color ink and play with them. Once you get going, you can make a whole stack, trust me!

Entering this card in the

  HLS February Watercolor challenge



And because of the layers of colors Rubber Dance Layers Challenge


And over at Stamplorations CAS card challenge for February

This card was sent to P.W. Akkerman in the Hague for organizing such a great welcome for the first ever fountain pen meet up which was this past weekend :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Inky Goodness: The life of an inkophile...

This is what my coffee table set up looks like on a random sunday evening:

On the couch next to me a tray of inks waiting to be swabbed on Maruman Mnemosyne wordcards. The tray included lot of older Sailor inks which are discontinued now. 

Swabbing away while binge watching "Being Human" episodes. Used a waterman 12 to write the make and color of the ink. Lots of pretty and saturated colors in this swab round! Such a shame those bright, happy Sailor Jentle colors are no longer regularly available!

The Q-tips after one swabbing session leaves a pretty "Q-typical abstract art" and it's such a fun sight to see!

I still have about 3 full trays to swab and 3 more seasons of Being Human to watch... and a few new inks are coming my way soon too... so much to look forward to! 

What are your ink swabbing habits? 

Thanks for stopping by!

namasté 

Pens and Ink: Waterman 52 with PR Naples Blue

As you may or may not know (it's hard to miss really!) I really like blue inks, esp. turquoise and teal blue. In a recent visit to Akkerman in the Hague I found this gorgeous blue ink color which I did not have yet. I corrected that mistake immediately!

It's Private Reserve Naples Blue (yes, yes I know I made a spelling boo-boo on my sample card, But to my defence that's how you spell Naples in Dutch ;) and by luck they had a large bottle of it and it was on sale! Double score!! The samples above are done with a Q-tip and on Maruman Mnymosyne wordscards cardstock and the wash out next to it on 80gsm Office Supply grid paper. The maruman card shows the deep saturation and man it has some gorgeous sheen to it! It's best seen in wet writers and flex pens like below.

This was for a flexnib friday post on Instagram and it's written with my Waterman 52 with Ideal nib #2 which has a really nice flexibility to it. The glare on the writing is wet ink, and it dried up with an amazing sheen!

Check out that red sheen! Nice deep saturated blue color with amazing sheen and and even some shading... Private Reserve really made a gorgeous color here!

What is your current fave pen and ink combination?

Thanks for stopping by!

namasté

Mailart Sunday: Having some fun with diamine shimmeritastic inks!

In my last post I showed you the writing examples with Diamine Shimmertastic ink samples, Mishka from Bureau Direct so graciously provided and today I wanted to show you some mail art I made with the remaining drops that were in the sample vials. No drop was wasted! [This post is going to be image heavy]

I started off with making my base back grounds first. I drizzled some drops with a pipette and tapped the inks strait from the vials on the page and sprayed water all over the pages with a mini mister, so that the colors would blend over. Then I dried the pages with my heat tool.

It's important that you use good absorbent yet sturdy (watercolor)paper for this. The paper I used is the Maruman Zuan B5 sketchbook which I got at my recent Pen Store haul. It's 126.5 grams of great quality water color paper and with the inks and water spillage I have doled out, it hold up pretty well! No bleed through on the other side as you can see above (the smudges on the right side is from excess water that pooled over) And warping of the page after drying is minimal.

When the sheets were properly dry, I added some more shimmery ink drops on them by using a syringe to create random spatter patterns. I also diluted the ink a little bit in the ink vial to get more 'mileage' out of the last few drops. This way you also create some color variation, a light ombre in the color scheme. When I was satisfied with the amount of droplets, I dried the pages with my heat tool again. This time, when dried completely as shown in the picture above, the added drops are much brighter and the shimmer is more pronounced. Now to turn these pieces into mail art!

I took 2 of the background pieces I liked most and stamped Joy Crafts Old Letter Rose 2 and Old Letter Butterfly (by Noor design) on them. By this time I had run out of Shimmering inks but a good friend of mine gave me a full set of these in sample bottles so I could play with them more.  I colored some accents in the rubber stamp image, like the rose, butterfly, postage stamp etc. by using a pentel color water brush to make the image pop out more.

I used blue lightning to accentuate pieces in the rubber stamp, wings of the butterfly, postcard header, cancellation stamps and the postage stamp.

With the rose I used red luster to accentuate the petals of the rose a edges of the leafs and corners of the 'post card' header. I also diluted the Magic Forest color in the leafs to accentuate that part more.

I also used the water color brush to create depth in the Rose petals. Make sure you use a water proof rubber stamp ink, I used memento rich cacao and tuxedo black, because your image can wash away if you don't. You can stamp over the dried image again to give the image its crispness back.

A couple of close ups of the pieces so you can see the shimmering accent better.

The last step was to glue the pages to card stock and I rounded off the corners with a punch.

And there you have it! I hope this inspired you to mess around with shimmery inks and rubber stamped images too :) And in the end your fingers will probably look like this

And you will find glitter EVERYWHERE! But that is part of the fun ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

Namaste

Paper Goods: Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards

Last week I got ill with a really unpleasant flue type thing and was stuck at home for a good while. So I thought I'd spend my time doing what I like to do best, organizing and cataloging stuff. Yeah it was almost like being at work ;) I wanted to make a better and more comprehensive chart of all the inks I have in samples and bottles. The color chart wheels I made with Le Typographe ticket books are fun, but limited to the set of pages in those booklets. When I heard about the Mnemosyne Word Cards on the Goulet Q and A while back, I knew these would be perfect for what I had in mind.

This was my set up: In front of the telly, while watching some Graham Norton episodes on you tube... And then it was swabbing time! 

The cards hold up ink really well, great drying time, no bleed through and minimal feathering!

Q-tips are great for swabs, and I made sure I hit the edges of the cards and used a vintage semi flex pen, by Onoto de La Rue to dip and write the brand and ink name.

The booklet has 100 sheets with 156 grams of water color like paper. Because there is no bleed through, you can also opt to use the back of the cards. I will use it to write information on the type of ink on (ie if I have just tried a sample or a bottle) 
And three ink sample trays in, I already filled one of these booklets! I am currently busy with booklet number 2 and the sad news is that I heard these word cards are being discontinued, so I stacked up on them to make sure I can still use them for future swabs.

Hope this gave you some idea's on how to make your own ink swabs.

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Paper goodness!

A little while back Misc Store Amsterdam announced they had a sample sale and of course I had no chance of resisting, even though it was straight after the pen show and I was sort of cash depleted. I am glad I went because they had so many wonderful paper goodies for sale (and even some ink too!) So I came home with a stack of Midori notebooks and Le Typographe stationery to try!

From left to right: maruman eco spiral notebook, Midori MD notebooks regular and light, 2 types of le Typographe letterpads, notebook and envelopes, and yes those are alpaca's post it's on the top right :) 

The Maruman Mnemosyne goods I got at a different source, the pen store nl, and I read that it's close to midori and tomoe river paper. Also not pictured on the pile though, I bought the Mnemosyme word cards  as they are awesome for ink swabs and I just had to try that out.

Fist impressions on the Maruman paper is that it is definitely nice and smooth, holds fountain pen ink well, and is very pleasant to write on. Also quite affordable. The blue eco B5 7mm ruling note book for instance is 1,50€ for 30 sheets (on sale at this time). Also the small sketch book is awesome for mail art endeavors with fountain pen inks! This water color paper hold up ink quite well. I have been doing some ink-speriments on them and I can't wait to show you :)

I will post my findings on the paper goods when get the chance to I test them more and compare them to each other. 

I am curious though, Have you tried any of these brands?

What is your fave brand of paper to use?

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste