Another step on the Circle Journal journey!

As Wanda has now received Hazel Agnew's Circle Journal I am able to post some photos of my process for the two pages I recently completed in it. Hazel's journal pages are a mix of recycled papers, card and  packaging waste. I had free pick of all the 'pages' so chose a piece of corrugated card with some of the corrugations exposed. I knew I wanted to complete both sides and chose to create two completely different spreads.

I started by painting both sides first with black Gesso, then white gesso but leaving a wide margin of the black gesso all around the pages. For the darker of the two pages I also drew/scribbled into the white gesso while it was still wet. 

I also added some text paper to the scribbled page with matte medium. 

Then it was a case of adding paint with a dry brush until I was happy with the colour blending and using the same colours to add more layers with stencils and stamping. 

I also added Snowflake and Little Blackdress in different areas using bottle tops, the side of a scraper and PaperArtsy mini stamps. I used a lovely little Stampotique image for the main focus on the first page. This was stamped and coloured with my prisma colours. I prepared the area with Snowflake so the image wouldn't be overshadowed by so much detail in the background. 

I prepared several images to see which would best complement the background. I added a little bit of doodling with a white gel pen. I used washi tape around the painted white box I'd created for the focal image and to help 'ground' it so it wouldn't appear to be floating. Then I typed a title to finish the page. The second page, using different colours was developed in the same way but completed very differently. I just had great fun with this page. 

To complete the page I used a large jar lid to draw out three circles. Using my finger and the new Crayola Twistables/slick sticks that I'd bought from PaperArtsy at Port Sunlight, I blended various colours inside and round the circumference of the circles, but where I used the crayons too heavily I found they were easy to remove and knock back with a baby wipe to reveal the paint colour underneath. I then used a stencil to add white paint across the circles to create an explosion of paint through the page. I also splattered Snowflake paint with a paintbrush to add to the effect. I only needed to add some labels to complete the page. I hope Hazel likes what I've added to her journal. I certainly enjoyed the process. Hope you enjoyed the post too. I would love to know you dropped by.

My Wanderlust journey 2

Hi folks, hope your weekends have started well despite the rain! This week I have been catching up on some of the Wanderlust videos that I've missed and revisiting some that I've enjoyed. This resulted in me playing around with some ideas that became a mesh between Joanne Sharpe's video on Whimsical lettering and Beckah Krahula's video on Zentangling. I love all forms of calligraphy but I realised long ago when I took a series of Calligraphy classes at the school I was teaching at, that it takes a lot of practice. Now, I also knew that I wanted to enter a piece of art work into the PaperArtsy current challenge on 'doodling' having been inspired by Darcy's selection of samples last Sunday on The PA blog. See the link in the blog list to the right. So, using the epithet: it's just a piece of paper, I started playing in my journal. And this is the result!

I love this cursive linking style that Joanna Sharp demonstrates in the Wanderlust video but even more clearly in her 'Alphabet Soup' video (Craft Daily). I highly recommend her book too: The Art of Whimsical Lettering'. So be prepared for more blog posts on various font styles!
I started off with no real idea of where it was going. I have a cheap notebook where I just practise different font styles, so I selected one I'd tried previously and enlarged it onto a full page in my Strathmore journal. It has lovely vellum smooth pages. Perfect for lettering.

Some recent ATCs

A very short post tonight ( quite unlike me) with no step by step explanations I'm afraid but just because I've realised that I haven't posted for a whole month. Crazy when I'm crafting daily! However, a few of my projects can't be revealed until particular deadlines have been reached - well that's my excuse anyway. Think it's safe to blog these little babies now. Some ATCs that I've made recently for a couple of challenges: one for Mini Marvels ( if you haven't joined the FB group, why not? You'll be very welcome!) and the other challenge is for Crafter's Ink. The first photo are Altered Playing Cards. I used black gesso first on each of them (Seth Apter idea) then added so e PaperArtsy Fresco chalk paints swooshed randomly across. Then added collage pieces  on top. Some of the images are Nancy Baumiller's Crowabout Studio images that I bought and downloaded from Mischief Circus. Some are Teesha Moore images I bought from her Etsy shop. Others are magazine cut outs.

These are about to wing their merry way to 9 lovely, talented, creative Mini Marvel group members who all took part in this challenge - although there were 13 of us in all, so that took some working out! Next up are three little ATCs I made for an 'Anything goes' challenge set up by Fraser Ives in our Crafter's Ink FB group. This time I made the ATCs from a masterboard I'd created after watching Emma Godfrey (of Paperartsy fame) demo her techniques for creating masterboards using a credit card! Not so easy I can tell you but I got the hang of it after about 10 masterboards! Here are the first three I created with various gorgeous PaperArtsy Fresco chalk paints. 

Not as successful as my last three but I seem to have lost my photos of those. However, I do have the three ATCs I made from one of the last masterboards I made! Here: 

All the lovely encouragement and advice I was given by the PATWITS about my backgrounds turned out to be absolutely true. Once the backgrounds are cut up and used in this way they become little mini marvels that I'm really happy with. 

So Thankyou Emna Godfrey for your help and inspiration. I'm going to make another 10 of your wonderful masterboards now I've got the hang of the credit card scraper and white paint layers! 

Many thanks for dropping by. Do let me know who you are so I can drop by your blogs too!