Postcard size owl art

This is a 3 x 5 piece that I made.  I really like the quote "Storms make trees take deeper roots".  I thought the quote went well with the cards design.  To make this, I applied a patterned tissue paper to the background.  I then sprayed it with pink, yellow and orange inks.  When that was dry, I used a tree stencil and modeling paste.  Once it was dry, I colored it with distress inks.  The final touch was the owl which is a stamp by Stampotique.  This was colored with copic markers.

I made this for my personal challenge of creating 1 piece of art for 52 weeks.  So far, I'm on schedule!

Using charcoal pencils

I really enjoy doing graphite portraits but have an issue with making them too light.  I want to try to bring more contrast into my pictures so, I pulled out charcoal pencils to push myself to really bring in dark values.  Here are the results.  These are just practice pictures in my art journal.  Overall, it was a good exercise and I keep practicing, practicing, practicing!!!

Art Journals out of file folders

I saw another artist paint a great picture on a file folder.  She then bundles them up together and makes a journal.  When I heard about that, I got onto Youtube to see what else might be out there using file folders.  Of course, there are loads of great videos and people use them for a wide variety of creative uses.   I picked up a pack of 25 at Walmart for less than 3 dollars and am giving it a try.  I struggled with putting the album together so, I'm not going to show any steps on that.  Anyone who is interested would probably be better off checking out the Youtube videos.  I am posting my first page though.  The double pages are about 6 x 9 inches so, it makes a fun mini journal size.

I started by spraying the page with inks in blues, greens and yellows.  When that was dry, I used a seaweed stamp (from Dylusions stamps) and just stamped it repeatedly across the bottom.  I colored it in with Ranger Distress Markers.  The mermaid is a stamp by Stampotique.  I stamped her on white card stock, colored her in with markers and then fussy cut her out.  Before gluing her to my page, I stamped the album with the mermaid first and then laid the cut out version on top of that.  The reason I did that is because some of the fine detail was cut off but is easily added back in by stamping the page first.  For example, her earrings are a thin black line that would be impossible to cut out.   The fish are from the same stamp set as the seaweed.

I finished it off with some words and a stencil with modeling paste applied.  The ink bleeds through the paste which I like for this page since the colors all blend together nicely.

St. Patrick's day tag


Making tags is a fun way to decorate for different holidays.  I currently have some Valentines Day tags displayed and now I'm ready to work on St. Patrick's Day.

To complete this tag, I started with a base of heavy duty cardboard.  It was actually the back of a paper pack that I used up.  It is a heavy duty chipboard material.  I cut it to the size I wanted and painted the front with a base coat of off white/beige.   While it was still slightly damp, I added in some green at the bottom and pulled the color up into the tag about 1/3 of the way up.  The next layer is a flower stencil by Tim Holtz.  I used modeling paste and placed flowers at the upper left and the bottom right.  When that was dried, I used distress paint and slightly brushed it over the stencils.  I used a green color for that.  The last layer was a background type stamp shaped in small circles and randomly applied through some of the middle area of the tag.

Now, I was ready to decorate the tag. I glued on a small white lace doily in the middle, ribbon on the left and used a Julie Nutting doll as my center piece.  The doll is colored in with Copics and the hat and dress where stamped in different papers, fussy cut and applied to the doll.  She has a Shamrock charm attached to her hat.

The bottom left is a St. Patricks Day sprig from the craft store which is cut up and glued down.  I applied a bow over the glue blob to hide it and to add more ribbon.  The butterfly is a craft store item and it was on a thin wire so, it is simply hot glued into the sprig.  The last touch was ribbon at the top and a small Irish themed picture cut and glued under a glass flat square.  The back is covered with scrapbook paper cut to size.

Art Journal

I finished the last page of one of my art journals today.  I've been thinking a lot about what style I would like the next one to be.  I loved the paper in this current journal but, due to the way it was bound, the front and back pages did not stay flat.  That's a challenge when doing 2 page layouts.  I've seen some journals made out of file folders which I found very interesting so I'm looking into that more.  If I make one (instead of buying one), I'll be sure to post what I do.  Here are the last 2 pages.  The Star Wars one is inspired by youtube artist honeybunny.

Tags

There are a number of trading groups that exchange art tags.  The majority of them seem to be associated with paper dolls exchanges, especially the Julie Nutting stamps.  I have done them for a couple of years at Valentines time so, I have 2 in the collection with one on the way for this year.  Here is a of the tag I did:

The size is about 3.5 inches by 7.5 inches.  I started with a sturdy cardboard base cut to size and covered it (front and back) with Valentines papers.  This paper comes from Michaels and their Recollections line.  The doll is stamped separately on white card stock then colored in with Copic markers.  The dress is stamped on Valentines paper, cut and applied on the doll.  The tag is finished off with a wide ribbon at the bottom and a buckle type oval gem that the ribbon slides through, stamped saying, heart stickers, heart bling, "Love" banner (stamped with letters and cut out) and lots of ribbon at the top.  You can't see it to well in this picture but there are also a couple of charms attached to the ribbon.  One of the charms says "Happy Valentines Day".