Thursday, June 30, 2011

Wax Resist

I've been wondering around Youtube lately, searching for new ideas for my journal. I came across a great channel, One Minute Muse. I found this video that inspired me to make my recent journal page:
I forgot how fun and simple this was!
One Minute Muse has a lot of neat videos that are simple and inspiring. The Woodcut Mimic video and "Basso Profundo" (click here to see!) by deviant-artist camartin inspired me to do my space page!
I had serious hand cramps after drawing all those circles!
So I first painted on a layer of Gesso and drew tons of circles with a Sharpie marker. My hand felt like it was going to fall off not even half way through drawing them! Luckily I survived to make it to the next step...
Coloring!!
I thought choosing bright colors and coloring the circles would be fun and easy, but no. It took forever. I have no idea why I chose to make such small circles, but oh well, the image turned out great. I used Crayola crayons, because they work the best. Cheap crayons don't stick to the paper and are easily scratched off, defeating the purpose of the crayons.
Just keep coloring, coloring, coloring...
Voila! The white circles are colored with white crayon.
After I was finally done coloring I painted over the entire page with black acrylic paint.
 Skipped the picture of the black page and went straight to the fun! 
Once the paint dried, I grabbed some scissors and started carefully scraping it away. I mostly used scissors to carefully get off as much paint as I could, but I also used a quarter. The scissors unevenly scratched off the crayon, too, which I liked because it made the circles look like planets. 
 5 zillion hand cramps later...
Woohoo! I'm really happy with this page. It was painful easy to make and I love the contrast between the bright colors and the black. The last step I did was to apply some Mod-Podge to protect it.


Tuesday, June 28, 2011

New Journal Page

I've been wanting to do a journal page about love, but couldn't think of what to do. After remembering everything I create turns out better when I don't think about it, I started with a basic background and went from there.
Of course I forgot to photograph the steps that I did to get this background...
First I applied a thin layer of Gesso to both pages. After that dried I applied white acrylic paint. I speed up the drying process by using a blow-dryer on high, warm air. It works great, minus blowing paper scraps all over my room. Once that dried I lathered on Mod-Podge and while it was still wet placed white tissue paper over it, bunching it up and flattening it in places to create the "veiny" design. When the Mod-Podge dried underneath the paper, I painted on a wash of pink paint.
No such thing as too many flowers!
I began cutting flowers (and a few bows and wedding rings I didn't use) from a bridal magazine. I cut out tons to fill the borders of the pages.
The paper under the journal pages is just to protect the pages underneath the ones I'm working on.
I arranged the flowers on the pages and Mod-Podged them down. While they were drying I worked on the foreground pieces... some skeletons!
I work on my bedroom floor, despite having a useful art desk...
I found a scrap piece of paper and applied Gesso to strengthen it. Once that dried I painted over it using white acrylic paint, tinted with brown watercolors for a less intense white.
No one rocks a fedora quite like this guy.
I drew a skeleton in the pose I wanted with a Sharpie ultra-fine tip pen on the paper I prepared above. I cut along the outside with scissors and used a swivel knife for the smaller sections. Next, I prepared another sheet of paper for a second skeleton. Again, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but it was basically the same as the first skeleton I made.
Skeletons need to be fashionable, too!
Once I had my skeletons ready to go, I glued them down using Mod-Podge. Since the skeleton on the left was on the crease of the page, I cut where I needed to and glued the separate pieces on either side of the crease, matched up.
Time to include some lovey-dovey words.
The other week I was looking for some free vintage stock and came across a cute postcard (I can't remeber the site I got it from, but I will post it as soon as I come across it again.) with a poem that read "Now tell me darling if you'll be/ Forever faithful, fond, and true,/ And think of love I bear for thee,/ The promises I've made to you". I loved the poem and wanted to incorporate it into my journal. I didn't know what I could do with it, but then I thought it would go perfectly with the theme of this page. I found an old brown marker and wrote the poem in the negative space. Some of the letters overlapped the skeleton which bothered me a little, but oh well!
I need to work on my writing lol


Next time I'm testing whatever ink and sealer I'm using before I use it in my journal.
I decided instead of using Mod-Podge as a sealer over the pages, I would use some polyurethane I have had for a while. Not a good idea. As soon as the polyurethane touched the marker ink it smeared. I don't know if the ink wasn't dry or what, but I immediately wiped of the excess, which also took off the ink from the skeleton. After the polyurethane dried on the rest of the pages I went over the places that needed redone. I then covered the entire image with a layer of Mod-Podge with no trouble.
Fin!








Thursday, June 23, 2011

New Journal... First Post!

So I had a humongous art journal I bought a year ago and never wanted to work in it (the massive blank pages were pretty intimidating), so I bought a smaller journal and viola! I already have two pages complete. It doesn't sound like much, but I'm a perfectionist so I take forever to finish projects, even journal pages.
This is the cover of my new journal!
I used an old map I rediscovered in my hellhole of a closet. I remember I rescued it from being thrown away by one of my parents. I've always been one to hold on to anything and everything, whether it's something little with personal value or I think I can use it for a project. Luckily I found the map, because I love how it turned out! 
I then Mod-Podged on the tree and paper crane images, glued down the felt circles, snowflakes, and title piece, and finally Mod-Podged the entire cover. Mod-Podge is an awesome glue/sealant!
"Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali."
I absolutely love Salvador Dali. I never really knew about him until I visited the Dali Museum in St. Pete, Florida, not far from where I live. I instantly fell in love with his work, my favorite being The Hallucinogenic Toreador. I read this quote and thought it was humorous, like Dali was full of himself; but then I thought, I take supreme pleasure in being myself, too. I have an awesome family, a nice home, a decent head on my shoulders, and I'm creative. I can't imagine life without creativity.
"Have no fear of perfection- you'll never reach it."
Again, another lovely Salvador Dali quote. My biggest flaw is beating myself up about every minute thing. I know from experience that letting go, telling myself 'screw it' and just doing whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish gets better results than obsessing over every detail, but it's not easy all the time. So I made this page, a reminder to let go. To not worry. To let things work themselves out...
...and I did obsess about this page, but only a little!