Art Journal - Be a Butterfly

Happy Monday, everyone! This week is starting with a Mixed Media Monday art journal page share...and it's something a bit different for me. My art journals are little places to experiment and play, so not every layout is a "work of art"...more like a "work of wonder" as in "I wonder if this will work..." :)

I wanted to do something with my Indigo Blu/Limor Webber "Ink Splat Butterfly" stamp, and I wanted to pair it with a new Unity Stamp Co. butterfly quote stamp. But since I'd just about finished with another bright and sassy and experimental butterfly layout in my journal (you'll see that one next week), I wanted this one to be a bit moodier. (hmmm...wonder if the fact I was watching recorded "Falling Skies" episodes had anything to do with that...ha!)

Here's the finished layout in my small Dylusions journal...

The use of a lot of embossing powders, and paints with iridescence mixed with the flat paints and inks, gives this "moody" page a touch of brightness...here's a side view of the reflective surfaces...

Want to see how it evolved? The first step was to stamp and emboss the butterfly...I chose a couple different colors of embossing powder..so far, so good. Then I got an idea, so I masked the butterfly before applying the modeling paste through a brick stencil...

I wondered if this last step would give me the impression of looking through a hole in a brick wall at a butterfly flying in the distance. So I went ahead and colored the brick wall using a few different Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals, and shading with a few more...some flat, some iridescent...keeping the mask over the butterfly stamp as I painted the bricks and mortar...

Then I painted in the background colors with more Magicals...blue, orange and pink in the sky area, and more green and blue at the bottom. When I added some darker shading colors around the edge of the "hole," I started to see where I was headed with the layout. Mind you, I did think twice when I got finished with this step...I kind of liked the bright and happy feel to the page. So I let it simmer in my head overnight, while I did other things and wondered if I really wanted to take this in the direction I originally envisioned...

When I came back to it the next day, I looked at the wall and thought "no brick wall with a hole in it is going to look that neat...it needs some graffiti on it."  So out came more embossing powders, and a Ranger Fudeball pen, and a script stencil to get me started with my letter shapes, and by now the page had a mind of its own and I was just going with the flow. I used some acrylic craft pigments to draw in some stems and tiny orange and magenta flower petals and leaves along the bottom edge..

At this point, all I needed to do was add some more shading, play around with those circles in the upper left, add some more texture with modeling paste, gussy up the butterfly, and add the sentiments...and that's how it ended up as in the top photo!

Here's a less reflective closeup of the embossed and stamped and shaded circles in the top left...

I used my Indigo Blu "Rugged Edge" stamp to get the embossed edges along the top. First I embossed with a dark blue powder, then topped with a lighter jade-slate powder. Here's a closeup of the two colors...at the top, the jade-slate deepened the blue, at at the bottom you can see how it's a beautiful green-grey shade...

Over in the right corner of the layout, I wanted some more circles, but not as heavy as those on the other page. So I pulled out one of my stencils and applied modeling paste through it...texture and some of a similar element on the opposite corner. (See that light "brown" at the upper left of this pic? That's the jade slate embossing powder over the orange paint...a totally different appearance when over the other color, but the same powder!)..

And finally, a closeup of the dressed up butterfly. Using a Fudeball pen, I drew inside the blue embossed circles on the wings to give them a textured look, outlined the outside, and added a strip of rhinestones through the center...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals:   Rizzos Rowdy Red,   Bodacious Blush,   Sandra Dee Sepia,  Gag Me With a Spoon Grey,  Pink Ladies Pink,   Pretty in Pink Pink,   Luscious Lime,   Tilt a Wheel Teal,   Orange Creamsicle

Lindy's Stamp Gang Embossing Powders:   Bonjour Butter,   Aurora Amethyst,   Tilt a Wheel Teal,   Hyacinth Blue Jade,   Twilight Jade Slate

Ranger Fudeball pen - black;     acrylic craft paints

Stencils:   The Crafters Workshop "Mini Bricks"  "Mini Halftone Borders"   "Mini Specimens";   Donna Downey "Scribble Script"

Stamps:   Indigo Blu "Ink Splat Butterfly"   "Limor Circles"   "Rugged Edge";   Unity Stamp Co. "Today is a Lovely Day"

Art Mediums:   Golden modeling paste             Miscellaneous:   Stabilo All pencils-black & brown,  clear crystal gems

Thanks very much for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!

Art Journal - Touch the Sky...

Hello again! Every now and then I take a small break from posting projects here while I focus on other non-crafty things, and take up learning some new (to me) techniques. This last little break was one of those times, but I plan to get back on a crafty roll and start sharing on a regular basis again...and that begins with today's Mixed Media Monday post. :)

This is another 2-page spread in my small Dylusions journal. It's filled with textures and rich colors...

It started with a coating of modeling paste through Prima's Stone Wall stencil. After the paste had dried, lots of Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays were applied, mulit-layered and lifted until there were darker shades around the edges fading to near-white in the center.

The large script stencil was inked with Watering Can (gray) Archival ink; the stamped lace edge and center stitching were stamped with Black Archival ink...

Modeling paste was mixed with brown German glass glitter, then applied through the Tim Holtz burlap stencil...a little bit more of the glass glitter was sprinkled over the top of the paste before it dried completely.

Unity Stamp "dream Big" was stamped in three places, again with Watering Can Archival ink, and then it was time to add the hearts, balloons, and text strips.

I placed the hearts on the page with removable tape and traced around them lightly with a pencil. (I wanted to shade around the hearts, and wanted to make it easier to get right up to the edges - and this was the easy way... :) )  I shaded with a black Stabilo All pencil around the tracing lines, then permanently adhered the hearts to the pages.  The "rust" hearts are chipboard, with the rusting effect achieved by using The Dusty Attic's Rusting Powder, then wiping it off with my fingers once dry, so I had the rusty shades, but not the texture. A little bit more modeling paste was added to the red hearts just for fun...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Sprays - Caribbean Blue,  Tilt a Wheel Teal,  T-Bird Turquoise,  

Gag Me With A Spoon Grey,  Cattail Copper Brown

Art Mediums:   Golden white gesso and modeling paste

Stamps:  Indigo Blu "Limor Webber Rugged Edge";   B Line "Lace Duo;   Unity Stamp Co. "Dream Big"

Dies:   Penny Black "uplifting"

Stencils:  Prima "Stonewall 3";  The Crafters Workshop "Mini Tile Texture"; 

 Donna Downey "Scribble Script";  Tim Holta "Burlap"

Miscellaneous:   The Dusty Attic Rusting Powder,  brown German glass glitter,  Black Stabilo All pencil;  Black and Watering Can Archival Inks

Thanks for visiting today, and I hope your week is starting with a smile!

Art Journal - I Am Not Who I Was Yesterday...

It's Mixed Media Monday here in the Korner, and today's page was a fun experiment gone right. :)

I've used my Gelatos a bit recently, but so far only for accent coloring and almost always mixed with water or an art medium like texture paste or gesso. I've never made a page or layout using "dry" Gelatos as my only color medium, so that's what I set out to do with this art journal spread in my small Dylusions journal. Heavily inspired by Tracy Scott's colorful style, and itching to play with my new circle stamps, I dove right in. As vivid as these colors may look here, they're even more vivid in person...

I didn't do step-out photos, but the process was simple. I wanted to scribble on the colors, and be able to blend with my fingers, so I applied a coating of gesso to the base pages first. I used a brush, alternating my brush strokes horizontally and vertically, because I hoped the brush strokes would show through as a small bit of texture - and they did...yay!

After applying the gesso, I stamped the circles across the pages using my new Indigo Blu "Limor Circles" stamps ...love these...I'm sure they'll be getting a LOT of use in the future! For lack of a stamp or stencil, I had to hand-draw the flowers onto the pages (using Pitt Artist pens in black).  I always say I can't even draw a recognizable stick figure, so I purposely made these flowers look inexact...but in fact, it's the only way I *can* draw them! LOL

Also, in the background, you can see some black smudges...those are intentional, as a bit more added texture. They're made with one of the other stamps in the Limor Circles set...the largest paint splatter...I just didn't stamp them cleanly and neatly. I inked them up with Archival ink, and used my fingers to press down randomly as I applied the stamp to the page. Once covered with the Gelatos, they're more subdued and fade a bit more into the background.

I started coloring in the circles with Gelatos, then the flowers, then the background. I'd originally planned to list the colors I used, but then I realized there was an easier way. I received this set of Gelatos for Christmas, and the *only* colors I didn't use are the grays and the black! I just layered and rubbed, and layered and blended, until I got the intensity and colors I wanted.

Once the colors were applied, I took a black Pitt Artist pen and a white Uni Posca paint pen and added some small accent circles and white polka dots, and touched up the edges of the flowers that had gotten lightened when applying the colors over them.

Next was to add just a bit of vertical texture by using some modeling paste and a stencil in the corners and through the center of the two pages.

The final piece was to add the sentiment stamp. I used a baby wipe to gently wipe away some of the coloring in the area where I wanted the sentiment, made sure it was dry by hitting it with the heat gun for a few seconds, then stamped the sentiment using a black Big Brush pen applied to the stamp and quickly laying it onto the surface. (As sometimes happen, my hand slid a bit, so I went back over some of the letters with an extra fine Pitt Artist Pen to make sure the letters were all there...oops!)

Because Gelatos are waxy, it's hard to photograph them without getting a bit of reflection back into the camera lens when taking the photo head-on, so I took a few pics around the pages to show you just how vibrant these colors are in real life! 

Starting in the upper left corner...

This is the actual intensity of the pink/orange in the upper corner...much stronger than it appears in the "head-on" photo above due to the way the light bounced off the page in the larger photo...

Wiping away just a bit of the background colors with a damp baby wipe highlights the area around the quote so it pops off the page a bit more...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Faber Castell Gelatos

Stamps:  Indigo Blu "Limor Circles";   Unity Stamp Company "empowered words"

Stencil:   The Crafters Workshop "Mini Confetti"

Art Mediums:   Golden modeling paste and white gesso

Miscellaneous:   Faber Castell Pitt Artist and Big Brush pens;   Uni Posca white pen;  Ranger  Black Archival Ink

Thanks so much for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!