Grow A Little Each Day

 Art journaling has been pushed to the very back of the plate 

as we work on books.

And, 

I miss it.

So this week I decided to check out one of the

weekly art journal groups I am in

and do a prompt.

Jane posted the weekly prompt about gardens and what they mean to us. This pastel-ish piece of art is one I have long admired on pinterest. You can check out the original post by the artist that created it here.  I wanted to recreate the feel of this art without copying the original artist. Cause that isn't cool.

 I started with this watercolored background in 

my art journal. I made it with a simple kids'

watercolor pan set from the school row

at Wal-Mart.

 I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stains and a 

couple stencils to start my framework.

The stains were a little more soupy than I

recalled and didn't play great with the

stencil, but that's alright.

It adds to the rustic feel. 

Right?

Hahahaha!

 When I started outlining for definition,

I was greatly disappointed to find that my

microns and other fine liners would not

work over the distress stains.

So much so that I ruined three pens before I decided

to throw in the towel and resort to gel pens.

 What you see here is the result of about

5-6 different types of gel pens and markers.

Not real happy that it was so hard to draw on top

of these stains.

I finished everything off by 'sacrificing if necessary' a graphic 3 micron.  Thankfully I was able to fill in those borders without killing another pen.
Grow. A great prompt from Jane. And I learned and will 'grow' from doing the project. Hahahahaha! It was still fun anyway!

Splashin' Some Color

I've been trying to revamp my blog the past couple days. It's like expecting a car to be able to sing and dance. Or like thinking you can teach a cat to quote Shakespeare on a motorboat on the Nile. Not good. I got so frustrated, and wasted so many tiles, I decided to stop and play. You can see above what I made in about 5-10 minutes.

I made two tiles before I thought to photograph them. Before I started painting, I put my craft sheet on my desktop. I got mine at Michael's for about $3.00 on sale. An Inksentials Craft Sheet. That's the brown tweed looking sheet you see above. It's plastic and wipes clean (pretty much) with a baby wipe afterwards.

For the tiles above, and the ones in this set, I used Adirondack Color Wash that Tim Holtz uses. I started by washing a good layer of clear, clean water on the tile. Then I used butterscotch color wash - spritzing it on the right hand side of the tile. Then I spritzed some sunset orange on the left. I learned that I need to test this out before I blast a heavy shot on my tile - like you see above. All that came from one push of the button. 

I blotted some of the color away with a paper towel, then added some purple twilight and wild plum on top of what was left behind. Because of the amount of water still on the tile, the colors will run and bleed together giving you the pretty colors you see above.

Definitely more color than I need since I want to tangle some designs on these tiles. So I should have remembered what I wanted to use the tiles for before I got trigger-happy with my color wash :), but never fear - this tile will go great on an art journal page!

For this tile, I used the color wash sprays in a different way. I left the tile dry, and spritzed some color wash all around the tile. I used at least four colors and a light hand. Then I took my wet paint brush and dropped some splotches of water on various parts of the tile, allowing the paint to run.

I had a little bit too much water here . . . 

. . . so I wicked away the big blotches by lightly touching them with the paper towel. (Just so you know, I get my nails done at Davi Nails at Wal-Mart.)

And this is what I ended up with. Probably another art journal entry :).

For this tile, I dropped bits of water here and there on the tile, then sprayed on some cherry blossom walnut ink spray by Tsukinek, as well as some lilac. I thought it was entirely too dark, so I . . . 

. . . blotted it with yet another paper towel. This time I placed the paper towel right down on top of the entire tile - which picks up excess color, but also leaves a cool textured design in the remaining color.

Those of you who know me, know that I am all about the color. At times (like now) I actually have this shade of pink mixed in with my brown and blonde hair. To get this color on the tile, I sprayed some raspberry Inkadinkado spray ink right on top of the tile you see above it. 


(An aside note here - I do not like the Inkadinkado spray inks! It is next to impossible to control the amount of ink that comes out, and when you press the spray button - ink shoots out onto your fingers. This has happened with every bottle of Inkadinkado spray ink that I have tried. I was hoping this one time it wouldn't happen. Oh well. )

I dripped a little water on top of the color and pushed the color around a bit with my heat gun. Works pretty well for pushing, and you get some nice colors as it dries.

I wanted it to have some contrasting color, so I took a few swipes across the tile with a broken china Tim Holtz distress stain.

I just noticed I have the wrong bottle of color showing with this tile. Oops!

Speaking of Tim Holtz distress stain - new tile! You can see that I just splashed some drops of water onto the paper. I didn't want full coverage. I wanted to see what would happen with just a few drops. Then I used the dried marigold stain and just tapped it onto the tile in a couple places. I was surprised by how much color came out and by the intensity. I like it!

So I added some more colors - spun sugar (my favorite), dusty concord, and broken china (the blue) - staying with the tapping.

There was too much water, so I blotted the whole thing with a paper towel. Then it was too light.

But my paper towel looked awesome!

The only thing I did was to tap back on a little orange (dried marigold) and I was done with this tile.

So there you have it. The 5-minute-Alice-Hendon-teaches-a-cat to quote Shakespeare on a motorboat on the Nile technique. I hope you enjoyed it! You just learned how to do it right along with me, cause there's a first time for everything :).

Beauty - Art Journaling

Do you remember these pages I posted at the end of April? You can review the post here if you wish. Derwent inktense pencils, a brush, a paper towel, and a little water made this project simple.

With a few embellishments - I made this. Some of the little tags were leftover from my scrapbooking days. The three pieces with words printed came from a sale at Joann's. I got a package with about 20 of this type of printed ephemera for 50 cents. It was a good investment.    

I stamped a couple flowers here and there, then colored them with my derwent intense pencils and a water brush. Inked a couple edges with chalk pads. Did a little outlinking with a black micron.

On the round tag, I brushed on a little Tim Holtz distress stain and attached a flower beaded decal (leftover from my Miley Cyrus paper-bag book making days.) Super simple pages! I'm not sure if I'm finished with them. That's one nice thing about art journaling - you can always come back and add more detailing! Why don't you try an art journal page today? And, have a wonderful afternoon!