I decided to take the Tiny Museum Workshop from Daisy Yellow ! It’s a lot of fun, and I can recommend it to anyone who isn’t sure how to work with gouache and/or watercolor. You’ll get plenty of practice using either (or both!) in this series.
I decided to take it because it looked like fun, and I wanted to learn more about working with watercolors to create tiny, abstract art journaling pages.
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Stamping with Sponges
You will need:
gessoed or painted card craft paint a variety of sponges plastic craft mat Cellulose sponges, sea sponges, closed cell sponges, makeup sponges… There are all kinds of sponges, and each one is like a fingerprint: It will produce it’s own unique pattern when used to stamp paint. You could actually make an entire painting with just sponges!
The technique for this is simple. Add a drop of paint to the craft mat. Pick up a tiny bit of paint with the chosen sponge. Lightly tap the sponge in a clean spot on the mat to spread it out on the sponge. Then stamp the sponge on the card.
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Stamping with Household Objects
You will need:
gessoed or painted card craft paint various household objects brayer, paint brush plastic craft mat There are all kinds of household object that can be used to transfer paint onto your project and create texture. I keep a cupboard in my studio that is full of odd things, such as a sushi mat, a plastic doily, some pieces of shelf liner, corks, and other things that you might question being in an art studio.
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Stamping with Bubble Wrap
You will need:
gessoed or painted card craft paint bubble wrap brayer, paint brush plastic craft mat Using bubble wrap for mixed media art is not new. It’s pretty much considered a basic in the bag of artistic techniques.
You can get bubble wrap for free. It comes along with all kinds of other packing materials. If you don’t have any, you can probably find some in the trash behind almost any kind of mall or shopping center. (Note: I am not advocating dumpster diving… just sayin’.)
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Stamping with a Stencil
You will need:
gessoed or painted card craft paint stencil brayer, paint brush plastic craft mat For the first card, above, I put a couple of drops of paint on the craft mat and then used the brayer to pick it up and apply it to the stencil. Then I stamped the stencil on the card.
For this second card, I added some water to the remainder of the paint, picked it up with the brush and added it to the stencil. Then I stamped the stencil on the card.
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Subtractive Stamping
Instead of adding paint to the card with the stamp, this technique removes it with a stamp!
You will need:
gessoed card craft paint foam stamps brayer plastic craft mat I put a couple of drops of craft paint on the mat and used the brayer to apply paint to the card until it was covered.
I immediately stamped a clean, dry, foam stamp on the card and removed it.
Keyword: Stamping
Technique: Stamping with metallic paint
You will need:
gessoed card metallic craft paint foam stamps brayer plastic craft mat I used foam stamps again. I put a drop of paint on the craft mat and then used a brayer to apply craft paint to the stamps. Then I stamped on the card. These are the same techniques that I used with yesterday’s technique card.
I actually did this twice, once on black and once on a card that was painted with craft paint over the gesso.
The key-word for the first set of cards is “Stamping”. This first card illustrates stamping in it’s simplest form: stamping with paint on the card.
To create your own version of this card you would need:
gessoed card craft paint foam stamps brayer plastic craft mat I used foam stamps (as opposed to regular rubber or clear polymer.) I put a drop of paint on the craft mat and then used a brayer to apply craft paint to the stamps. Then I stamped on the card.
I’ve chosen my art project for the month of May! I will be making “technique cards”. These are cards that serve as a kind of reminder and dictionary of the various possible techniques that can be used in art journaling or image making.
To be truthful, I started this project a few years ago. I began by gathering up all the junk mail that comes in, random pieces of card stock and cardboard and anything else that could be used as a card base.
This beautiful tile was created by CZT Amanda Higbee. She is a member of Eni Oken's Art Club and this is the result of the Tangled Scrollwork lesson .
If you would like to take your tangling to the next level, check out The Art Club . You will amaze yourself!
I follow the Traveler’s Notebook Forum on Facebook. It’s one of those places I check every day just to see the eye candy.
This week, they’ve started their 5th Anniversary Celebration with lots of challenges and prizes.
The first challenge is to create a Vision Board insert for your Traveler’s Notebook. This seemed like a perfect thing to do for my classic-size, Webster’s Pages, soft pink TN.
I used scrapbook paper to create the folder initial folder. Then I used various images for the board that represented my current goals.
I get asked all the time: “How small IS your art journal.” Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words…
However, I’m still going to say a few! On the left is my Passport Traveler’s Notebook from Chris.W on Amazon.
On the right is the A8-sized Traveler’s notebook that I use as my art journal.
As you can see, the A8 is much smaller, and the inserts are even smaller than the cover.
I realized that I forgot to show you all the pages that I made for the Mermaid Book!
Right now, they don’t have anything much on them, but you can see the bases for the right-hand pages above.
And this is what the back side of each of them looks like!
I hope that over the next two weeks, I can finish at least some of them!
This layout, in my Tiny Traveler’s Notebook Art Journal, is all about taking risks.
It started with a page from a magazine that featured images of the spines of books, decorated in gold. I loved the rich, old-world, wealthy, royal look of them. They reminded me of a castle library somewhere in England.
So, I decide to use regal colors of purple, red and gold to paint on the page. I really didn’t like it after I did it because the purple was intense and transparent and just looked messy to me.
A spring layout in my Tiny (A8) Traveler’s Notebook!
I was putting this together over the weekend, and I kept thinking of Easter and Spring. It made me think of how pretty the gardens are this time of year.
I loved the pink and green combination that developed as I practiced making grass-like strokes with them. The base design ended up looking so pretty.
I deliberately looked for a stencil with a variety of flower shapes to add to the page.
Originally, the binder mechanisim of my Mermaid Book was held in place by brads, one in each end of the mechanism.
I started having problems getting it to stay in place after I added lots of pages.
Looking for a solution, I headed off to the local Tru-Value hardware store. I love to look through the hardware bins anyway, and the people are always very helpful.
The person at the store I went to helped me to find 1/4" screws and nuts to put on the shafts. I initially wanted a flatter head, but these worked fine.
I’m making pieces that can be added to my mermaid book!
In this case, I’ve stamped on multi-media paper and deli paper. I’ve used various colors of ink because I’m not sure exactly how I will be using all of these.
Next, I will use Inktense pencils to add some watercolor effects to some of them. I may also use some paint effects over that, such as high gloss or crackle.
I worked on the cover of my mermaid book yesterday. I have decided that the title is “Mermaid Tales”. I added a picture of mermaids to the front, along with some word art.
I was given the dimensional mermaid by a friend, and the crab may or may not stay. I’m thinking about it.
I want to add some more dimensional materials to the cover, but I have to let this all dry first, so I don’t disturb it.
On Monday, you saw the start of the mermaid book that I made during the class on Saturday. You saw one page in the book.
Yesterday, I made more pages. Specifically, I worked on shaped pages! They aren’t finished, but I thought you might like to see what I have so far.
The first one is a nautilus shell. I like the shape because it reminds me of Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (c. 1170 – c. 1250) – aka Leonardo of Pisa or sometimes just Fibonacci. Fibonacci laid the groundwork for our modern-day mathematical understanding of certain shapes in nature, including Nautilus shells. As you can see, this flip-shape has the same picture on both sides of the shape.
On Saturday I attended a class given by Regina Portscheller, in which we created ring binder art journals.
We made the binders from scratch, building them up from book board, collaging and painting the cover and attaching the ring mechanism.
I am making a book about Mermaids, so I chose to paint my cover a watery aqua color.
The inside of the cover is also collaged and painted just like the outside. In the image above, you can also see the ring mechanism.