Paradise comes to an end...

My last day in paradise to do some more playing in my journal.  It's sad that these last few days went by so quickly, there really is just never enough time.  I am hoping that I'll continue even once I'm back to the daily routines and stresses of work to find some time to sit down and do up a page every now and again.  I do miss expressing myself thru my art.  I just will have to make a conscious effort to do so.   So with that being said... here are my newest pages that I worked on today.   :)

I love this page.  I found myself the cutest napkins in the dollar store the other day and thought... yeh, I want to do a page with these images.  Dyan's quote just goes perfect with this page.  

Not totally sure that I am done this one yet, but for the time being it was time to pack it away and start loading up my product so I'm ready to go in the morning.  This page kind of suits me.  I can be a bit of a rebel sometimes.   I was having a hard time coming up with an idea for this page.  So I used my tie dyed leggings as my inspiration for the black and white background pattern.  LOL  Sometimes you just have to look in the strangest places for ideas.  LOL

Well, this has been fun.  Send me some love and let me know what you think.  :)  Hope to see you soon!  xo



 

A whole year???

Well,  A near whole year has gone by since I've taken the time to enjoy my art again.  I made myself a promise that I wouldn't let life and work get in the way of my creativity.  Hmmmm... need to work a little harder at that.   I'm currently at the cabin for my last chance get away this year before work gets into crazy mode.  One more day of bliss here, the silence and peacefulness of the trees, the lake, the wildlife.  I honestly could use another week up here but alas, that isn't to be this time.  Oh well... back to reality in a couple more days.  I at least had an opportunity to get creative for a few days.  Sadly, the person who was my reason for starting art journaling passed away a couple of days ago.  Totally rocked the world with the news of her passing.  Christy Riopel, was my teacher and inspiration.  Without her introducing me to this wonderful creative outlet called art journaling, I probably would never have stumbled onto trying it.  It has been my creative outlet and release for a few years now.   And I owe it to her.   Another art journaling acquaintance that I made over the past couple of years also passed away yesterday.  Such a sad few days as two beautiful souls are heaven bound.   So, a couple of these pages are dedicated to them.

I'm not going to blog my process this time or do the step by step instructions that I normally do, but I hope you that you will enjoy the pages non the less.   As you will notice from page to page, that I do not have a particular style.  I just create depending on my mood and inspiration at the time.  ;)

Getting myself back into the groove.  Not my best work, but wetting my feet again so to speak.  :)

This LIVE LOVE LAUGH is using Christy's designer stencil that I bought at one of her classes.  So this page is in dedication to her.

One of my faves using one of Christy's layering techniques that she taught us in one of her classes.

I love poppies, and Donna Downey poppies are some of my favorites ever.  I love this page.  It is colorful and inspirational and this page is dedicated to Gail, another art journaling soul that was taken up to God's land.

With all the sadness this week, I needed to find some humor in my art.  So, I did this page.  Dyan's quotes always make me giggle.  They are cheeky and fun.

I have to say... this cracks me up.  LOL  I love the color, the goofy cat and I can just envision this is what a cat on catnip is thinking.  LOL  Psychedelic fun.

I hope you enjoy these pages as much as I did making them.  Let's hope that it isn't another year before I create something new again.  ;)   All the best to all of you and be good to yourselves.  Life is too short to not be kind and generous to not just others but to ourselves as well.  xoxo


 

Mornings... ugh....

I don't mind getting up first thing in the morning and getting my day started.  It actually feels good to get moving and get things started so that you have more time at the end of the day for yourself.  However, I draw the line at 630am with the phone ringing and waking me out of a dead sleep.  We recently, were broken into at our cabin and stuff was stolen, so we decided best to install a security system.  Well, hubby was on days off and at the cabin, I had to work, and early in the morning the phone rings to tell me that an intrusion alert was set off at the place by the monitoring service.  My dear hubby, didn't disarm it from the stay setting when he went to bed the night before.  He woke up, left to go sit on the deck and have a smoke.  :/  So, his cell phone indoors and not turned on, I get the call!  Ugh.... disregard the alarm I say.... as I'm watching hubby on the cameras enjoying the fresh outdoors, in his robe, having a coffee and a smoke.  No worries I tell them... it's just my husband!  Ugh....

That same afternoon I had a friend come over to learn how to art journal and we made an afternoon of it.  As I was walking her thru some techniques I worked on my own page using the same techniques and my choice of stamps reflected how I felt that morning.  LOL   I can laugh now...

The page was very simple to do.  I used 3 different spray colors.  Gesso the page first!!!  A pink, a brown and a Dylusions white so that the colors would marble.   I used some Archival brown thru a stencil to get some texture.  Some washi tape with clocks on it for the time factor.  The Tim Holtz coffee stamps and a Dylusions sentiment which perfectly described my mood that morning.  LOL  I added some Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste thru a stencil for some more texture working around the images and words.  I added some Ferro in white for the whipped cream, some stickles for the glitter over top, and some white shimmer pen inside the cup to lighten it from the background.  I used some charcoal pencil to shade around the cup and the words.  I wanted to frame the page a bit so I smudged some pink, white, and brown gelatos randomly around the edges.

I had fun making this to lighten the mood of the morning.  :)  I think she had fun making her page as well and I look forward to her coming over again and to play some more and I can show her more techniques.

Since then I was lucky enough to acquire some rolling carts like the Raskogs from Ikea and took a day to get my room somewhat organized and usable again.  I am in love with these carts and managed to load up 3 of them completely full without a sliver of space left to share with anything new.  LOL  Yup, I have an addiction.  :)  Could be worse right?  I work hard so I should be able to play hard.  :)    Here is my slightly more organized room now with the rolling trays.

I hope you enjoyed my blog entry today and got a good chuckle out of my morning of sleeplessness.  When angry or upset, put it to paper and it'll instantly make you feel better.  :)  Total therapy.  LOL

Leave me some lovin and share some of your not so great mornings.  ;)  Thanks for stopping in.  :)

 

Getting happy and scrappy...

Where the heck has this year gone?  My gosh time flies by so fast and I seem to have gotten so little accomplished this year.  Today I was caught in a dilemma of do I houseclean, since this is a task I haven't completed in a while, or do I sit down and enjoy some time to myself and work on some art.   The answer is pretty obvious considering I'm on here blogging about it!  LOL  I just got a bunch of new color inks from CTMH, which my GF sells and at our last group we tried a technique that she learnt and I wanted to use the inks in my pages today.  I have been so used to using Distress inks, archival inks that I usually forget about my CTMH inks.  They are fabulous.

My first page was using 3 different shades of blue ink and applies them randomly to marble them onto the page.  Then I took a stencil with variety sizes of circles and used the pigment white ink to create highlighted circles over the blue.  This is the technique she showed us.  I added more layers on this page so they do get hidden a bit and are harder to see in the pictures, but they are there.  :)  Next, I took a swirly stencil and used a mid-tone blue and created some more background swirls for added visual texture.  I then took my new Indigo Blue stamps and stamped the ink pot, the feathers and the wording, all from the same stamp set.  I pulled out my pan pastels and colored in the ink pot/lid, the feathers with them.  I love my pan pastels, they are so much fun to work with.  I colored in the little hearts with my white gel pen.  I think took a modeling paste and a stencil to create some textural elements on the page.  When it dried it picked up the color from below and so it was hard to see it, I added some white pan pastel over the paste to lighten up the look a bit.  It's subtle but that is what I wanted.

My next page was using CTMH inks again.  I again picked several different tones of oranges and I did the same marbling of colors on the page by applying with a sponge.  I then sprayed some water droplets onto the ink so they would react.  They react the same way distress inks do which was great!  Next, I used a stencil with a darker orange ink and created the swirls. I then stamped the flowers and the words which are from CTMH on the page with an archival ink so that it wouldn't bleed when I add more color.  It seemed really bland looking so I grabbed my Dylusion red spray and sprayed a spot into the center of each flower.  It still seemed off so I used my sponge a darker orange and added more ink to the background.  I took a charcoal pencil and went around each flower.  I think took a black fine tip marker and outlined the swirls.  They color inside swirls was too light so I took a paint brush and dipped it into the Dylusion red spray and shaded the swirls leaving some of the orange to peek thru.  I then took the charcoal pencil again and added some shading around the swirls.  I distressed around the edges of the page to frame it.  :)

Ok, I have to admit this next page is not my favorite by any stretch.  I am so challenged when doing faces.  I usually use a template or stamp to get me started, but I thought I'd attempt to draw this time round.  Yeh, ok... good thing I have a day job!  I'll keep practicing.  I started this page quite some time ago and wasn't feeling it so I left it partly done, mostly unfinished because I was just frustrated with it.  Today, I felt I just couldn't move onto another page without finishing this one first.  This is were I left off at...

Ughhhh....My proportions are way off.  Ok, moving on.  I tried to color in some hair using this new paste called Rusty Paper.  OMG, horrible.  Hated it.  It sounded so cool and it was far from.  I covered it with white acrylic paint.  It had some neat texture underneath from the paste.  I added some ink over the white to give the backdrop to the hair some color.  I then took a stamp of leaves and created the texture for the hair.  Pretty cool!  Ok, getting better.  I used more CTMH inks to go back over the horrid mess I had made prior.  I then took 2 other colors of pink and purple and blended thru a Donna Downey stencil to create the wording.  Love how bright the colors are.  I contemplated outlining the words but I like how they float over background and kind of melt into the colors.

Be kind..... I know her eye is super huge and her lips are way off scale too.  Oh well, we all have to start somewhere.  LOL   Good thing this is just for me and I'm not looking to get an award with this one.  LOL   And so ends my fun for the day!  Time to get things ready for work tomorrow and back to my busy life for another week.  ;)  

Thanks for popping in.  I love to read any comments you may have, so please leave some love.  :)

 

Back from holidays...

Well, I'm back from a nice short week away from home.  I count my blessing everyday that I have a cabin to go to on my time off where I can unwind from the crazy hustle and bustles of life, work and day to day stresses of the real world.  My plan was to spend as much time working on my art journaling as I could while I was up there but the weather was so nice that I spent so much of my time outdoors enjoying the scenery, the wildlife and the sun!  :)  We had a few rainy days so I used that time to snuggle up indoors and work on some pages.  I didn't do any tutorials for these, sorry, but I hope you will enjoy them.  :)  

I hit the local craft store while in town picking up some groceries and I found some great goodies to add to my stash.  What a nice haul!  :)  I used some of these great finds on my pages that I did.  :)

 Did I get lucky or what!!!   Well, here is what I found some time to work on.  :)

I hope you like.  If you have any questions please ask and I'll try to answer as best as I can.  :)  A few beverages of the fermented kind were of assistance in the creative making of these pages.  LOL  Here are a few photos of my time away in what I think is absolute paradise.  :)   Sorry about the bug splattered windows of my car.

Thanks for stopping in.  :)  Have a great day and happy scrapping!!!

Let your soul and spirit fly!

Firstly, Happy Mother's Day to all the Mom's out there, whether you are a biological mom, a step-mom, an adoptive mom, or mom to a furry little one.  It's a day of pleasure and pain for me.  I'm a step-mom to 2 great kids, well adults who have children of their own, but I'm also at a loss of my own mom who passed on almost 15 yrs ago though it seems like only a short while ago sometimes.  So, my feelings are bitter sweet on Mother's Day.   So, this page is my tribute to my Mom this Mother's Day.

I started my page by prepping it with gesso.  Once dry, I sprayed some sprays on the page to marble them and create some runs.  I then did some ghosting with the stencil to create a lightening effect of the roses.  My Mom loved roses!  The image was very faint and not very detailed so I took the same stencil and went back over the images and used the blending tool and gesso so create a whitening effect.  I loved how it turned out.

Next, I used the new Tim Holtz distress ink and went once again back over the images and added some of the gorgeous coral color to the roses.

What to do with the leaves.  I wanted something shimmery and beautiful and something that would pop off of the page.

I colored in the leaves with the embossing pen and some Perfect Pearls in heirloom gold which has this beautiful green tone to it.  Love it!  I also took a background stamp and lightly and randomly stamped some background imagery with an archival storm grey I think it was.  I added a butterfly stamp to the center of the page.  The butterfly represents my beautiful Mom.  Death isn't the end, it's a metamorphosis of something new, reborn that is free in body, soul and mind.

The roses needed some outline and definition to them.  So I used the Glitter brush pens in both white and clear to create a clearer imagery of the flowers.  I also used the clear to add a bit of the shimmer to the coral color as well.  Soft and subtle and ties in with the shimmer of the leaves.

I wanted a bit more sparkle to the butterfly so I added some Clear Rock Candy stickles to the butterfly.  Once it dried, I did go around the butterfly with some white charcoal pencil just to lighten the backdrop a bit so the butterfly popped off the page a bit more.

I stamped the sentiment onto some cardstock and cut it out, then misted it with the pink Lyndi spray.  I inked around the edges with black archival ink.  Then I glued it down and used some charcoal pencil a bit more around the edges so it popped off the page.

I love you Mom!



 

Fast or Far...

Sunday's... my favorite day.  Why?  Because it is the one day that I can usually dedicate some time to my art journaling.  I signed up for another art journal challenge that will be trying to do 2 pages a week.  Well... I might have to pick and choose which prompts I will be doing, but I'll try.  The first challenge prompt hasn't been given yet so this page was just diving in and doing something, anything.  I recently bought a whole load of napkins from the dollar store and so I used one of the napkins today from one of those packs.

I used 4 different colors of gelatos and randomly made swipe marks on the pages and then dampened my finger and blended them out trying not to blend all the colors together to muddle them.  The new orange color in the gelato was a lot brighter than I thought it would be so once I had them all blended I took some white acrylic paint and went over top to soften the colors a bit.

Next, I took my napkin of butterflies and used gel matte medium to seal down the napkin covering both pages, and to white out some of the branches from the napkin at the top of the page I added some more white acrylic paint once the matte medium was dry.  Once dry again, I grabbed my Prima stencil in basket weave I believe it was and used Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste randomly on the page trying to avoid going over the butterflies.

Next, I grabbed Wendy's new Archival ink colors in Forget Me Not, Tea Rose and Sky blue and a blending tool and lightly blended the colors over the embossing paste to color the raised texture.

I then took a Prima stamp for the circled water marks in Forget Me Not archival ink and stamped it randomly around the page.

Next, I used my Posca paint pens and colored in the butterflies in a light blue.  I outlined the butterflies with my gel pen.  I then took some of my Inktense pencils and added some colored details in a darker blue to create some shading within the butterflies.  Next, I went back in with my black gel pen and added a few light sweeps in the wings, and some white touches with a White out pen.  I took a charcoal pencil and added some shading around the butterflies.

Next, I added some color to the branches with my inktense blocks and a small detail brush, then went back over with a charcoal pencil to add in some darker shading.

I stamped my sentiment onto a piece of white card stock, cut it out and inked the edges with a black archival ink.  I then used the rest of the color from my blending tools and blended the Tea Rose and the Forget Me Not onto the paper so it wasn't so white.  I glued it down onto the page and then used a charcoal pencil to shade around it.

I took the Forget Me Not archival ink and distressed the edges of the pages to frame them and add a border.  I find that just nicely finished the pages.  And whallah... my page is done.  :)

I can't believe my day is already done and back to work tomorrow.  I am starting to count down my days to my holiday.  I'm so looking forward to my quiet time at the acreage in amongst the squirrels, the deer, all the birdies chirping each morning and the total serenity of the outdoors and mother nature.  I'll be taking my art supplies with me and hope to get lots of pages done while I'm up there.  I should be able to get a few blog posts done for you.  :)   Thanks for stopping in.  Please pop down to my comments and let me know you were here.  :)  It makes my day to hear from you.  <3