Paint it Book

I have done something rather unthinkable, at least to me.  For as long as I can remember I've been book nerd, cherishing a good read, and loving the thrill of finding a great new book. However, with my new found hobby of art journaling I have been viewing other art journaler's work and some have created really cool pages in books.

When I first discovered this I was horrified.  How on earth could someone do art journaling in something as sacred as a book, but the more the pages I viewed that had used book pages, the more enthralled with the idea I became.

So last Sunday, rummaging around my closest I came across a book that I received as a white elephant gift about cat care.  I do not own a cat and don't plan to any time soon.  So I thought perhaps this may be the book that I tried art journaling with book pages.

I took a deep breath a dove in.  Unfortunately, I used paint that was a little too dark to actually see the words of the page but the idea certainly has potential, and I've decided not to be such a book snob but be more open to other backgrounds for my art journaling pages.

Design Inspiration Through Art Journaling

Another activity I enjoy is quilting, particularly designing quilts.  As of late I've had this idea swirling around in my cranium about a new quilt design but it's still fuzzy.  I can't fully envision it.  So the other day I was playing around with some new ideas for art journaling and I thought of using my art journaling as inspiration for quilting.

My current fuzzy idea consists of having a solid back ground with different colored strips of fabric running through.  This is where my clear idea becomes hazy, so using some artist's tape I played around with what it might look like.  To be perfectly honest, when I started this page I didn't have the idea of using it to clarify my quilt design, but in the end I came to see how my art journaling could be used for this purpose.

I think it will be cool wot create fun and creative art journaling pages but then use that inspiration to jump start my ideas for potential new quilt designs.  Sort of percolating the idea that I may be able to literally wrap myself in my art journaling. 

I'm really excited to see where this leads.  I was feeling a little stuck in a rut when it comes to quilt designs but this could certainly be my new lease of quilt design creativity.  

Successful Image Transfer

Great news all! I have been successful in my quest to transfer an image. As I have mentioned early, my first couple of attempts didn't turn out exactly as planned.  AKA- it was a glob of gel medium and printer ink.  However, following the directions of L.K. Ludwig in her book Creative Wildfire I have successfully transferred an image.

And it really wasn't that difficult.  All you need is an image printed out on computer paper by an ink jet printer, some regular gel medium, an old credit card/brayer, a clean rag, and water.  After you print out your desired image you cut it to size and then spread the regular gel medium onto the background you wish to transfer the image.  You then press the image into the gel medium and using a brayer or old credit card you press the image into the page.  Then you take a clean damp rag and clean up any gel medium that may have squished out on the edges.  Finally, leave the image to dry completely.

Once it has dried using your damp rag press it on the back of the paper with the image you are transferring.  Then using your finger rub the damp area until the white backing starts you roll up and peel off.  Continue to do this until the entire image can be seen.  Be careful not to rub to hard so you don't rub the entire image off the page. 

I have to say I'm very pleased with the outcome and would like to experiment with this process to see what kind of cool effects I can achieve.

Leave your Mark with Home-Made Stamps

Stamps can add a cool effect to art journaling pages, but let's be honest they are expensive if you buy them at a local craft store.  However, I have discovered that it's super easy to make your own stamps. 

All you need is some craft foam.  This is readily available in the local craft store in the kid's section.  The best kind to buy is the one with a sticker backing.  It's pretty thin so you need to by a few pieces of thicker foam without a sticker backing to be used as a supporter.

All you have to do is take the thin foam and draw whatever design you wish.  Then using a craft knife you cut it out.  Peel off the sticker backing a place on the thick foam.  Then just cut the whole thing out and you now have a stamp.  This is really inexpensive and allows you all kinds of different options since you can design your own.  

Adding your own Whimsical Flare

Sometimes you just can't get your creative wheels turning, if your like me it's probably because you are over thinking it.  You need external inspiration to grease your gears to get those creative hydraulics moving again. 

One way to do this is to mimic another's page and when you feel comfortable going on your own, you deviate to make it your own.  I do this when I'm staring at a blank page and feeling like I'm stuck.  I grab Randi Feuerhelm-Watts handy-dandy deck of inspiration cards and flip through until I find one that I like. 

For instance, the page above is one that I did based on one of Randi's works.  Hers included actual photographs and they were all nice and square with the page, but my instinct was to be a bit more whimsical. 

I started with just a magazine page and then scraped orange paint on one side and covered the rest in green or white, but using a light enough coat to let the words show through.  I then clustered stamped circles on the scraped orange paint and finally placed three colorful magazine pictures over the green and white page.

This exercise helped get the ideas flowing and resulted in two more really fun and colorful pages.  This first one was done with old torn up index cards that I painted orange and then stamped with green paint and placed a church at the bottom.  The index cards have fact about the Catholic Church I did for a research paper in college.  Hence the reason I placed the church at the bottom of the page.

This second picture is just a paint scraping but one where I didn't cover the entire page, and decided to add a few lines of bright green color. This was a great way to kick start my creativity, and I have discovered inspiration can come from some unexpected and strange places.

Using Photography

I have always found photography fascinating, but I haven't had much experience.  And besides my iPhone, I don't even own a camera; however, one morning while looking through the app store I found an app call Color Splash. It allows for you to upload a picture which then is automatically turned to black and white and then using your finger you can color back in the parts you want. 

So I took a few pictures around my neighborhood and played around with them in the app. Then I thought that some of them might make a nice addition to an art journaling page.  I printed one of my favorites out and added it to a page that I had painted yellow, added a few black lines, a strip of light blue card stock, and an old used index card I painted a bright blue color.

I have started looking at other ways to use photographs.  One thing that I decide to give a whirl was painting the pictures after I printed them on photo paper, and the effect is kind of cool.  It allows a certain flexibility when using photographs.

For instance, I used a black and white sketch of a woman wearing a bra and then painted the bra a dark teal color, her hair brown, and her lips a classic red.  It was easy to do and had a cool effect.  I've started experimenting with other photos of well and am excited to see how they turn out.

What a Beautiful Mess

As I've already mentioned that everything that happens in art journaling doesn't always turn out beautiful.  But experimenting is half the fun and to be honest even experiments that goes spectacularly wrong can be remedied and result in some cool pages.

A prime example is my first attempt at transference.  The notion of image transference seems simple enough.  This is where you take a image printed on computer paper and press it into a background page covered in either gesso or gel medium.  You rub it down and then peel the image up and ta-da the image is now on your background.

However, it doesn't always work out this easily, for I did as I described above but when I pulled the image up it was a gloppy mess of distorted color and gel medium.  Obviously, I missed something, but I was currently left with a very messy page. 

I scraped as much of it off as I could.  I then doused the page with a smattering of watercolors, but the left over muck was still noticeable, so I pasted a piece of tissue paper over the offending area, then smothered it with blue acrylic paint and gesso.  Now that most of the mess was camouflaged I decided to add something else to re-direct the viewers' focus.

What I chose to add was a purple leaf stamp.  This is a stamp that I actually created from craft foam I purchased at the local craft store.  I then painted  it purple and pressed it onto the page.  The result was surprisingly nice based on how it originally turned out. 

Sometimes mistakes make your creativity stretch much further than you ever knew it could go. 

Getting Stuck

I had been on a pretty good roll with my art journaling.  However, around the time of Thanksgiving I came to a rather abrupt halt.  I don't know why.  The idea of art journaling still exciting me but just sitting down and doing it never happened because I couldn't think of what I wanted to do once I sat down.

I decided to give it a break, but left all my materials out, so when an idea struck me I would be ready to go.  After Christmas I went to Barnes and Nobles because I had a gift card. I decided to check out the arts and crafts section.  Here I found several books on art journaling and a deck of inspiration cards called Wide Open: Inspiration and Techniques for Art Journaling on the Edge by Randi Feuerhelm-Watts.  This seemed to be just what I needed a little boost in my creativity.  I purchased it, and while I was waiting for the train I opened up the package and thumbed through some of the cards.

One card talked about hands and for some reason this tripped an artsy trigger, and I knew I was back in business.  I came home plopped myself down at my desk grabbed some purple paint and gesso and got to work.  I smothered a blank page in my purple paint/gesso combo, then somewhat haphazardly glued pink tissue paper over that.  I then rather savagely ripped some card stock and placed that at an angle over the page.  I then proceeded to add a bit of text from an advertisement.  At this juncture, I planted my hand in the middle of the page and drew around it with a charcoal pencil. I then decided, quite instintual, to add some random stenciled letters to the mix as well as covering the page with a piece of peach tissue paper that was off-set from the page. And I finally ended with a smear of blue paint with a dash of gesso.

I was back, so to speak.  The page wasn't my favorite, but it was helping my creative juices to get flowing and that is all that I really needed.  I was excited to see what would come next.

New Experiences

At this point, my art journaling was moving right along, and I was starting to let my art just come as it pleased.  I played around with acrylics, stencils, clippings, transferring images on to tissue paper.  Here are some of the things I came up with...

This page is simply a magazine cut out with watered down red acrylic paint washed over the image and then number and letters stenciled in with a charcoal pencil.  I thought the effect was quite smashing.

This page is very similar to my first experience with gesso.  I used the same method of choosing pictures that struck my fancy and then painting over them with orange paint and gesso.  This time, however, I decided to add some black dots which I applied with a q-tip and then placed yellow tissue paper over the entire page.

This journal page was an attempt at transferring an image on to tissue paper, but one that went awry.  However, in the end it turned out rather delightful.  The middle section of the image is actually the ink that bled thought the tissue paper when I printed it.  When I removed the tissue paper and got to messing with it and mucked it all up.  So I scraped the whole thing, but noticed that the paper with the excess ink might be a great image with which to work. 

This last page is the same as the orange with gesso page but reversed.  I painted the page a purple color and then applied tissue paper.  Then on top of the tissue paper I put my cut outs and finished with a coat of a purple acrylic paint and gesso mixture.

Creative Mayhem

Now that I had discovered the wonders of paper in art journaling.  I decided to mess around with a few of my other supplies including a bizarre substance called gesso.  So I grabbed a nearby magazine and began thumbing through it for inspiration.  Soon I came across an article on make-up and it had a graphic of different colored powders.

 I torn it clean out of it binding, chopped it to the size I thought they should be, and pasted them on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper. This is the paper  I had been using for my journal pages thus far. I added a block of text and decided to, under the recommendation of, my go to gal, L.K. Ludwig, mix some gesso with blue acyclic paint and wash it over my new smattering of pictures. 

I squirted some blue paint and some gesso onto a nearby paper plate, mixed them like mad, and brushed some of the mixture on my pictures.  The concoction was a little thicker than I anticipated, but I brushed over it a few times to thin out the paint and let the color show through.

When I finished it was a very stark look and to be honest I wasn't thrilled, so I thought I would paste a light colored piece of tissue paper over it to mute its appearance.  I chose a pale pink paper and pasted it over the entire page.  The result was better but not something that I would classify as masterful, but still not bad.

I began showing my art journal pages to my best friend/roommate, including the ones I bombed on.  I did it because her take was always interesting.  So I showed her my latest creation and she, quite unexpectedly, loved it! She thought it was my best work yet!

I couldn't help but smile and think to myself that maybe my "mistakes" aren't really mistakes at all by just artful fate.  I needed to stop thinking so much and just go with the creative mayhem.

Rip it!

(Torn card stock and clippings from an old calendar)

I had faced an art journaling flop, and it wasn't nearly as horrifying as I anticipated.  Thus signifying that I could conquer the world! This revelation led me to think about using other mediums other than just paint.  Don't get me wrong painting is a blast, but I wanted a break from digging it out from under my fingernails.  Seriously, I don't know how it gets in there and takes up residence, but when it does it is hard to evict. 

I decided to play around with some card stock that was originally intended to be used in a scrapbooking project.  So I ripped out a few pages that struck my fancy and began tearing the paper every which way. Once I had unleashed all my pent up hostility on the card stock.  I laid the pieces out in a hodgepodge fashion.  I didn't put too much thought into this.  What it basically boiled down to was slapping some glue on the back and sticking it in a vacant space on the page.

When I finished this I was quite pleased with my handiwork, but I felt it needed more.  I had noticed in some of the examples that Ludwig provides there was a hint of text.  So I began the hunt for written words, I finally came across an old shoe calendar I had and in it was a mini-introduction.  It was perfect.  But then I thought...you know what would be more perfect?  Add one of the shoes!  I was a genius.  I spent the next half an hour rummaging through the calendar to find the proper shoe.  I had lots of choices, but I finally chose one with a nice color and gigantic purple flower.  One can never go wrong with a gigantic purple flower.

I pasted my new loot on to the page and voila- Art!  It was so much easier than I thought it would be.  I couldn't wait to try something else!!

Art Journaling with a Splash

(Paint scraping of blue and black acrylic paint with water splotches)

Since I had mastered the art of paint scraping, I decided perhaps I had enough intelligence and skill to pull off a variation of the technique which L.K. Ludwig just so happens to provide.  So my bold, brave self chose to do a paint scraping with a little splash. 

This is simply where you do a basic paint scraping of two different colors and then throw some water on the page willy-nilly and blot up the water with a handkerchief, an easily accessible sleeve, or paper towel.  If one wishes cheap, easy clean up and a non-purple nose I would recommend the paper towel. The blotted up water allows the first color of paint to be displayed in a smattering of splotches across the surface. Mine turned out rather brilliant, if I do say so myself. 

So with this success I decided to try another paint scraping variation. This involved beginning with a simple paint scraping and then the use of a stencil and damp paper towel.  You use the damp paper towel to remove the first layer of paint within the stencil.  It sounds simple enough and to be honest, it probably is but, nevertheless, mine turned out to be more of a paint smear and not an attractive one at that.  

While this was disappointing, it showed how the world would not end if I screwed up a page.  It also taught me about the limits of certain techniques with certain mediums.  This was very important because up until this point I had really no experience with any of the stuff I was using besides a little practice with some everyday paint-by-numbers.

Luckily, my paint smudge did little to discourage me, and I plowed ahead, but now that I was gaining momentum.  I thought perhaps I should move beyond the paint and old debit card and see what other wonders were waiting for me out there.

The Discovery

(One of my first art journaling pages using the paint scraping method.)

As of three months ago, I had never even heard the term "art journal."  It was around the time of Halloween and my roommate and I went to the local fabric store, so she could obtain the necessary items to construct her Halloween costume.  I, being the great roommate I am, went along for moral support.  Everyone else who lived in a five mile radius must have had the same idea to be economical and make their own Halloween costume.  And, furthermore, decided to purchase the material the very same sunny Sunday afternoon that my roommate and I went on our adventure.

So while my roommate was standing in a line at least 60 long waiting to have an absurd amount of tulle cut.  I wandered about finally ending in the craft book section.  With nothing else better to do, I began flipping through them a bit like one does at the dentist's.  It was through this mindless perusing that I discovered a book called Creative Wildfire: An Introduction to Art Journaling- Basics and Beyond by L.K. Ludwig.  I became enraptured by the wonderful pictures and enthralled with learning about art journaling.  Before I had nearly enough time to fully investigate my new discovery my roommate appeared at my side and said she was ready.  So we left.

But within the next few days I couldn't help but think of the wonderful concept I had stumbled across.  Finally, my curiosity got the best of me.  And like any self respecting, somewhat, technologically advanced person, I googled it.  This resulted in me not only finding the book that had peaked my interest, of which I promptly ordered. I discovered that there were a great many books on the topic of art journaling. I was completely fascinated.

In just a couple of short days after my purchase, the item appeared on my door step.  I ripped the package open and devoured the pages hour upon hour.  I did this for several days reading and re-reading sections.  I wanted to try it out so much, but I was afraid that I would screw up or not be able to make anything half as beautiful as the book showed.  But I somehow found the courage to meander down to Michael's and pick up a few basic items including a pad of 140lb. paper, tissue paper, a simplistic drawing kit, gel medium, and a strange substance with a funny name called gesso.

That's all the further I got that day.  I was still paralyzed by fear, but the book starts off with a very simple exercise to get you going.  It is simple paint scraping, meaning you squeeze out a line of paint on one end of  the paper and then take an old credit card and drag it across the page.  You can then squeeze out another line of paint (a different color) and drag that across and get an interesting effect.  So with paint I already had and an old debit card, I took a deep breath and made the proverbial dive. And may I just say what a spectacular feeling.  I did page after page and by the time I considered finishing up, I was covered in paint and giddy as a school boy who has just put a toad in the school snob's lunch box. So in other words, I liked it.

And so began my new hobby and journey in the world of art journaling, something that was not only for the mind, but for the soul.