Inspiration Wednesday - Week 8

A quick and easy project to share with you today, using decorative napkins! Seriously, this is genius! I know, folks have been using napkins for all kinds of craft projects, but this is the first time I dipped my toe in the napkin waters, and let me tell you, the water was fine!

My only challenge? Finding napkins! Where do you find those babies? I ended up finding these stashed in my kitchen pantry, a left over (I think from the dollar store) from last Thanksgiving. And what do you know, these napkins contain a few of my favorite things...flowers, script text, and butterflies. That's a happy find! Now that I've collaged with these napkins...I need more!

This layout was based upon Donna's IW video from a few weeks ago. It's a simple project, consisting of napkins, a few manila tags, stamps, and some Distress Ink. The beautiful "Hello Sunshine" stamp, which goes perfectly with the napkin design, is from my sweet friend Catherine Scanlon. You can find all of her stamps here. The other random stamp designs, seen on the smaller tags, are from Prima. And, yes, the number 49 is my age...but a few more months until the big 5-0! Ugh...I'm going to need a month long crafting spree to get over that hump! LOL!

Hope you enjoy today's layout...happy crafting!

Bloom Collage Lifebook Project

Hiya, strangers! I have a photo tutorial to share with you today...that's right...I crafted AND I'm blogging about it! LOL! This art journal page was inspired by the 2015 Lifebook classes.  Let's get started!

This is a small art journal, created by Donna Downey, size is 6" x 9". I started by covering both pages and the inclusion with Tim Holtz tissue wrap. I used Matte Medium for all of my gluing.

I used Distress Paint to cover both pages and the inclusion. Distress Paint is great for art journal backgrounds! The transparent nature of the paint combined with the thinner consistency makes for easy spreading, shading, and color.

I added a bit of texture using embossing paste (this is Wendy's white paste mixed with black gesso) and stencils from the Crafters Workshop.

I then added my designs, two giant poppies (designed by Donna Downey) to one of my pages. Both were stamped in Archival Ink. Stamping the designs first gave me guidelines for my collage.

Next...collage! I used designer papers, all with red being the main color, and torn into small pieces. More matte medium and lots of pieces of paper later, and my flowers were created!

I used a stamp positioner to restamp the poppy images so that flower design was still visible. I also added black collaged paper for the middle of each flower and green for the stems.

You'll notice on my finished piece that I got rid of that dark black, embossed text. It was too stark so I mixed gesso with some whater to whitewash over the black text. A baby wipe helped to blend the whitewash into the background and allow just a hint of the black to shine through. I added a bit of stamping (the crackle design) around the edges and on the inclusion, along with some shading around the flowers and on the art journal edges.

The quote was added using two Tim Holtz alphabet sets (just a little twitchy that my "pl" is a crooked...arrgghhhh) and highlighted with a white gel pen.

Both sides of the inclusion got just a hint of stamping (more Donna Downey designs) and a few quotes from one of Tim's word books.

That's it for me today, friends, hope you enjoyed the tutorial! 

Life Book...Hard Lessons

 

My next Life Book project...the lesson that took me over two weeks to complete.   This baby was hard work...so much so that I almost gave up.  (Notice my quote...)

The lesson was from the super talented Jane Davenport.  I adore her work, love her faces...oh, her eyes are divine, but I could not...for the life of me...seem to draw anything even remotely close to a "Jane" face.  I even tried to trace...for a bit of practice and it was a disaster.  It was if I had never drawn a face before!  UGH!  Frustrating!  I think that I tried five or six times before I decided to give up and try something completely different.

I'm in the middle of reading Pam Carriker's book on face drawing and I opted to follow one of her lessons for drawing my face.  Ahhhh...it was just what I needed...to completely change direction.

This project started with collage.  I added pieces of designer paper and vintage text paper to a 9"x14" piece of cold press watercolor paper.

 

Next, my face was actually drawn on a separate piece of watercolor paper and colored with a combination of gelatos and watercolor pencils (following Pam's tutorial, which was super helpful on shading)  Once the face was completed, it was cut out and attached to the collaged page.

 

(You can see my failed drawing attempts over on the left hand side...sigh...)  Once my face was attached, I hand drew the neck and shoulders.  Then...this is the really fun part...I applied gesso to the entire background, with the exception of the face, neck, shoulders, and hair.  Loved this part of the project!

  Gesso also does much to cover up all mistakes (I love gesso...)!  I used more gelatos and paper to color the neck, add shading, and give her some clothes. (Isn't the hair totally fun!)  The entire piece was lightly outlined with a Stabilo pencil for shading.  I added some lines to her hair and a whole bunch of butterflies to her head...fab headband!  I also added a tiny bit of stenciling around the entire page. And then...my sentiment on perseverance was stamped with individual letter stamps.   So happy to have this project finished!

 And guess what I did after I finished?  Bought Jane Davenport's book...yup...I'm going to learn how to draw her eyes if it's the last thing I do with art! LOL!  Here's to persevering!!

 

 

Life Book Lesson 8

 

I confess that I'm a little behind with the Life Book lessons.  I was having a hard time getting my head around lesson 7...had a thought on how I wanted to approach the lesson and then things didn't turn out the way I wanted so this piece of background, shown above, sat on my studio table for a week.  When the lesson 8 class rolled around I realized that my background would be perfect for my boat!  I momentarily let go of #7 and fully embraced #8!

I'm a big fan of designer paper and love the idea of using collage to create a picture.  I was a bit rushed on this project, but it's something I've experimented with before and would like to explore in greater depth in the future.

My background was created by using a brayer to apply a few layers of acrylic paint.  Once the paint was dry, I added the fun clouds, which were created by hand cutting a cloud stencil and then using a make-up sponge and white acrylic paint to add the design.  I also added some white paint speckles all over the entire page.

For the water, I mixed Wendy Vecchi's Crackle Paste with some Tim Holtz Distress Paint and applied the mixture to the bottom of the page with a palette knife.  When it was dry I added a hint of aging around the edges, using Gathered Twigs Distress Ink.

  I hand cut a boat shape and sails from designer paper.  Added some more aging on the edges of each piece and glued my boat to the background.  The mast is a painted wood stick that I used to adhere all of my Tim Holtz rub ons.  I used a white gel pen to add a bit of design.

 I also added some stenciling, using black Archival Ink and a TCW stencil, to the background (before applying the boat), and added a bit more paint over the bottom of the boat so it was in the water instead of on top of the water.  This was a super easy project and "boat" loads of fun to create! **giggle**  The week 9 project looks promising so here's hoping I find some time to play this week!