So I had a rough night Wednesday night, and a rough day all Thursday. I won't go into the details, but I will tell you that I did a lot of praying about the situation, and ultimately came down to the studio to document my sadness. I knew I was going to take my time doing this page because crafting always takes my mind away from other things, and I had a lot of things to try to get past. It was theraputic to spend time in my studio, playing with my tools, and experimenting with various techniques.
So I titled this Blue Day, since I was sad, and I used a ton of blue, and absolutely no orange, which is my happy color. (Except there is orange in the ribbon--I put that on the day after my sad day.)
Here is the photo of my final page, and after this, I will go into the process that got me here.
So to start out, I had to decide which aRt jouRnaL to use. I currently have 4 I am playing around in, and they don't really have any specific purpose. I just love them all.
For this project, I chose the hard bound book I am in the process of altering. I tore several page out from the book and glued 4 sheets together creating very thick pages. I knew i would really put a lot of mediums on these pages, so I made sure they were sturdy. So far, I am very pleased.
I found a great idea for how to decorate the front, spine, and back of this book. I hope to begin working on that right after I blog about this
aRt jouRnaL page.
I started the page by gessoing it. When I do my aRt jouRnaL entries, I have a bunch of things I could try, such as collaging with paper, painting with acrylic paints, or misting with inks. I prepare my pages with gesso ahead of time because it helps the paper accept the colors and textures of the acrylic paints much easier. So below is a picture of my gessoed paper. You will note that some of the writing is showing through. That is exactly how I wanted it. One of the funnest elements of
aRt jouRnaLing is layering. The more you layer, the more fun it is. It took a few minutes for the gesso to dry thoroughly, so I moved on to gesso some more pages in some of my other journals (not pictured here yet).
Then I had to select how I would add color to these pages. I chose to use Tattered Angel Glimmer Mists because they leave a sparkle when the mist dries.
I combined the Lily Pad (pale green) and the Jazz Blue mists and I also squirted a little of the Dylusions Lemon Zest ink just because I love the Dylusions inks. Once the page was misted, I moved the book around to make the smear marks you see below. I dried the pages and re-inked and dried and then re-inked and dried again until I was happy with the richness of blue and green and slight yellow colors.
Just for fun, I decided to put a border of faded jean Distress Stain all around the edges of the pages. It looks a lot cooler in person than in the picture. Again, this was just another layer of color on color. After applying the stain on the pages, I dried them so I could keep working.
This next step was real fun. I found a nice piece of scrap brown cardstock, embossed it in my Vagabond machine using a wood textured embossing folder from Darice, and cut out a tree using a Tim Holtz alterations tree die. The piece of tree that I cut was used on another page for a completely different and happy aRt JouRnaL entry. Hard to see below how cool the paper turned out. It looks like real wood grain to me.
After I cut out the tree and used it on the other page, I had the left over "negative" image, which I did not throw out. I decided to mix up some acrylic paint (black and hunter green) with modeling paste, and use the left over piece of the tree die cut as a stencil for this page.
I really packed the stencil nice and thick and when I pulled up the scrap paper, you can see the tree left behind on the page. It turned out so pretty and just thick enough and with a lot of texture. The left over stencil served it's purpose and was thrown out after making my tree.
Next it was time to play with more layers on the pages. I decided to add some rubon clouds--I used a pack of Studio Calico rub-ons--I just love their products.
I also used some of the left over embossed brown paper to cut out fence posts. That was done free style and arranged on either side of the tree.
I also began pulling out a bunch of background stamps and adding them all over the pages. That is one of my favorite techniques to add texture that Christy Tomlinson taught me. I used a Hero Arts wood mounted, french script stamp, and a Unity stamp designed by Christy Tomlinson called Brick Wall. I used Staz-on Timber Brown ink because it is water soluable and if I were to use my colored mists, the stamped images will not run. I also decided the tree needed something under it, like a path of some sort. So I pulled out a small jar of specialty sand that comes pre-glued, and pulled out enough sand to cover the area under the tree, between the fence post. I got this sand from a company called Muddpuddles.net about 2 years ago. I had not used it at all, and the glue had kink of dried up, so I added a little glossy accents liquid glue to the sand to make sure it adhered nicely to the paper.
At this point, with the modeling pasted tree still wet and the sand under it very tacky, I decided to leave the rest of the arting for the next day. Modeling paste takes a LONG time to dry. Over night is always a safe amount of time.
When I came down early the next morning to check on the page, it was dry and it was lovely. You can see below, that I made a journaling tag and added that to the page. I also added some more texture to the page using punchinella stencil and some coarse texture gel medium and some white acrylic paint. I made the cloud rub-ons a little bigger and added some more fleeting clouds to the top of the page.
I also added some clock stamps using red archival ink to signify the passing of time. My caption reads: 8/16/12 was a "BLUE" day. When I have days like that, I live for the Promise of a new day. Lamentations 3:23.
True to God's Word, Friday was a much better day for me and so has been today, Saturday.
What do you think of this entry? Care to try your hand at aRt JouRnaLing? Write me and let me know or send me some pics!
I had a lot of fun with this project. Hope it inspires you in some way, to Craft 2 Shine!!!
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