Journal Box

 I was working on my project life & made what I think is a super cool journal box and it was so easy! I had taken a picture of the victory page of my son's epic computer game. I  asked him about the game & wrote it out and printed it from my computer. Using a stencil and 2 of the spring distress inks decided to sponge the color on with a blending tool. The cool, cool thing about these 2 colors is they blend together to make a really pretty green color so where the colors meet I have this 3rd color. Love it!

Here is a picture of the quote on my project life page. Yay I have 6 weeks of my entire life down!!!! All forward movement counts!

Playing with Pens

After watching a Dyan Reavely video on the Ranger Blog I decided I would immediately play with the technique. It is called shadow stamping, see it here. You can vaguely see my shadow leaves but I was already distracted by this point. I ended up making it more about which color would show up the best on top of the archival ink. I used sakura souffle & glaze pens, they work the best of the gel pens I have tried. I discovered the souffle pen works great on the archival ink, glaze doesn't show up so much. However if you let the souffle dry & then put glaze on top it shows up great & almost creates a shiny embossed look. You can see in the photo below-the orange glaze looks really prominent.

This is a fun page & allows me at a glance to see which souffle color I may want to choose. White definitely shows up the best but sometimes I may want some color. Your art journal is the perfect place to play with product!

Quote...

Procrastinators Unite-tomorrow....

From Stress to Bliss!

I was very stressed this morning & decided to just jump in & do Donna Downey's Mega Moleskin video. You can find it here.

OH MY GOSH! I could feel the stress melting away the more covered in paint I got. I was skeptical about using my fingers-not because I don't like getting inky, just thought a brush would do the job. Wow-fingers are the best! My end result was a little different than hers, mainly because I started branching off towards the end. Love when that big artistic light bulb goes off.

 The funny thing is I never understood the quote by Leonardo da Vinci until this moment. "Art is never finished, only abandoned". I had to force myself to stop. There was always a spot that needed more work or smoothing or a different color. Problem is I don't have 10 days to work on this piece, a couple of hours was already pushing it.

Anyway such a fun time, ready to go get more work done but feeling light hearted & almost giddy! So go get some finger painting on!

Working, working, working

Note to self-don't work a lot in June the last month of school. This is for obvious reasons-end of spring sports, end of school parties, start of summer swim team. Busy busy month. I know this. I understand this. Yet still I end up booking 4 teaching gigs in the first 3 weeks. What was I thinking????????? Of course I am also the coache's wife who makes the team mom's present, a scrapbook page with a photo of their child. The room Mom who volunteers to design the covers of the teachers gift & help organize the party. All the while designing & teaching & driving kids to & fro. Nutssssssss!!!!!! I know I am no where near as busy as other folks I know but I figure my lack of focus makes us even. Throw in a family visit & we are at def con 10. The good news is the light at the end of the tunnel-Saturday night I will be done with this latest string of frantic activity. Summer will have officially begun. There will be beach time & margaritas in my not as distant future. So here's to summer! This is an art journal page I did last summer. Each of my kids did one too, a to do list of fun. It has become a family tradition-yay, love those!

 The page was done with glimmer mists, stencils, masks & distress ink. I love using masks with distress, it makes the image nice & crisp. To get you more in the "summer is fun" mode...

 

This layout is from our trip to Belize in January. My husband took the boys scuba diving with my sister-in-law & others. They  had a fabulous time. I got super inky on this one-layers of glimmer mist with stencils. Lots of stamping. Embellishments by k&co. Let summer begin!!!!