Winter Snowy Art Journal Page

Hello Inky Friends, I have a winter snowy art journal post up on the Southern Ridge Trading Co. blog. It is starting to get colder in between the heat waves we keep having here in Virginia. Today it is going up to 80 degrees & I have plans to garden-crazy! It is my turn to start the challenge this month which is Christmas & winter. I did a winter page with a hint of Christmas for my first post of the month. Did you know you can win $20 worth of chipboard lusciousness every month on the SRTC blog? You can join in the challenge here.  

 

My page is in my ongoing spiral art journal for the100daysproject. You can see all my pages on Instagram @karenbearse link on the side, under #100daysofkarensart.  This was created on the backside of another page which was made using multiple phone book pages glued together with a glue stick. A coat of gesso helped tone down the phone book but let some of the pattern show through. Painting was done with Glimmer Glam & Glaze for both the background & the chipboard pieces.

Add in some snowy looking heat embossing powder & a charm dangling from wire.

Don't forget some splatter with white acrylic paint & some sequins but just a few. 

To add in that Christmasy feel let's add a wee reindeer, some ornaments & random stars.  These Art Stones look like snowball mounds! The colors for this page were inspired from the Words & Paintery Challenge Blog. My title was cut from denim jean material which was part of this months theme. Come join in their monthly challenge!

Have a lovely inky day!

Supplies:
Southern Ridge Chipboard- Cedar Trees, Snowflakes 713
Tattered Angels: Glimmer Mist & Glimmer Glam

- Rubber Moon & Stampotique Stamps

- Emerald Creeks Charm

- Sakura pens

- Prima: Art Stones

- Sizzix: Word Play & Carnival die,

 

Art Journal Challenge Using Ann Butler Designs.

Today I am playing with Colorbox Crafter's stamp pads & Unity stamps both by designer Ann Butler. Her ink pads are unique as they are designed to work with fabric, wood & more. I of course must try & play to see what else they can do. I wanted to use them on paper but was in a mood for watercolor. What if I used them completely differently then what they were designed for? I was in for a pleasant surprise.  First here is my art journal page.

 The journaling is about our lack of planting this year. We have had a small veggie garden for the last 4ish years but realized that we tend to take vacation during the main harvest days. This spring we were super busy & decided to take the year off. In the end we couldn't take vacation- brilliant planning! This did make me realize just how tasty our homegrown tomatoes are and I really missed the ability to just go pick what we wanted for dinner. I am entering this page in the Word's & Paintery challenge (info at end of post). My photo journaling has the colors & quote from the challenge in it.

 Quickie tutorial. I took the back page of an art journal piece that had a newspaper base. Glued down pieces of paper that came home from school with Korean writing on it. Selected Colorbox colors that were similar to the challenge. What was awesome is even though these colors were not quite right when I mixed the brights with Desert Sand color they were exactly like the ones in the challenge!

I swiped the ink pad on a piece of deli paper & misted some water to use the inks as a watercolor. The technique worked surprisingly well and created a total watercolor look that was BONUS... waterproof when dry! The great advantage to this for future consideration is being able to have a permanent water color base on a project -hummmmm. To darken the colors just dry & add another layer of color or add less water to start with. 

For my embellies I simply stamped a few of Ann's 1" Diamonds & Plaid stamps by Unity onto book paper & punched a circle out of them. These were adhered & edged with distress crayon. Add some random stamping & finish off the piece with faux stitching. I wanted to stitch but that would have ruined the art work on the back of the piece so I heat embossed another of Ann's stamps with black and voila stitching!

My colors & theme were inspired by the Words & Paintery September Challenge. If you want to play along click on the above link, you have until the 15th of October to join in. Happy crafting!!!

January Words & Paintery Challenge

I am here in blog land with an art journal page for the January Words & Paintery challenge. This is my first time playing along & I am excited to be here. Canvas Corp Brands is supplying the prize which is an added bonus. Here is my art journal page. I covered the previous art journal pages so you could see more clearly the cropped edge. You can see how the page looks in the journal at the end of this post. 

The challenge can be found here. The color scheme as you can see is blue red and brown with the journal prompt "what you do today can improve all your tomorrows". I started my page by cutting the edge with the cool Dylusions ruler that has a curved edge. I embossed some tags and glued them to my page. Next was pulling out some Glimmer Mist and Glam. This photo was taken before I decided to use this page for the challenge so the colors are a bit different. Just to give you an idea of what products were being used.

  I spritzed and painted my colors on my background, then added some Glimmer Mist through a stencil. I wish you could see more of the glitter- hard to photograph.

Next step was adding ephemera. My story was more in pictures than words. It is a reminder to me that what I do today will allow me more travel in the future. This in my opinion will improve my tomorrow.

I got my images from 7gypsies American Vintage line using both papers, from the 8x8 pad and pieces from the Mini Ephemera pack. After assembling them in groups with a bit of glue stick, machine stitching was added. These pieces were adhered to my background.
    

Using a hard foam piece let me add DecoArt Metallic Lustre in Copper specifically to the high points of the embossed area. This added a lot of texture. The final touches were to splash around some Glimmer Mist splatters and doodle around the edges of my art journal page. In the end I did add just a touch of paint to the Petaloo butterfly so it looks less stark on the spread. 

Here is a photo of my journal to this point. I learned the tip of cutting pages at different widths from Dyan Reveley. Adds another fun dimension to my project. Thanks to Words & Paintery for a fun challenge!