Documented Life Planner - Week 25

June Theme - Travel Journaling

June 20 - Week 25

Art Challenge: Hometown Inspiration

Journal Prompt: There is no Place Like Home

The inspiration for this week was "hometown." I couldn't decide what to choose, so I used houses to represent the five major places I've lived.  I had just been creating with products from the Authentique paper collection "Playful" for my LBH Media Team assignment this month, so I used the leftovers to create the page.

The background was painted with a mixture of Dina Wakley heavy-bodied acrylic paints and Dyan Reaveley's new acrylic paints for journals. I first gessoed the pages and then blended the paints with a baby wipe. This creates a nice soft look. I also stamped some texture with paint and Archival inks. The words were computer-generated and I did some doodling with a permanent black pen.

While browsing through Hobby Lobby last week, I came across a framed quote which was perfect for my page title: "Wherever we are together, that is home."

Documented Life Project - Week 17 - and the process

April Theme - Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)

April 25

Art Challenge: Inks

Journal Prompt: Before the Ink Dries

This is my page using inks and my new Rae Missigman stencils.  I thought it would be fun to take photos of the steps along the way and show the progression of the spread.

Let's start:

I started by decoupaging various torn book pages, music paper and "under papers" (the scrap paper that catches the drips and messes from working on projects).

I sprayed Dylusions Ink (Bubblegum Pink) through a scallop stencil and then flipped the stencil and "stamped" the excess ink in the middle of the page.

Outlined scallop borders with white paint.

Dina Wakley "Night" acrylic paint through flower stencils, more spray ink (Lemon Zest) and white paint through a scallop stencil.

Inks (Squeezed Orange and Bubblegum Pink) over leaf stencils.

Turquoise acrylic paint in patches and also outlining white scallops.

Light wash of white acrylic paint over all to tone down.

Triangle stencil with "Night" paint and pink ink.

More turquoise paint on scallop borders and white paint through set-of-squares stencil.

Tried writing the title with a dip pen ("Before the ink dries, play with more ink!") but didn't like it and later did over. Outlined triangles with white pen and scribbled in centers of flowers.

Added days of week in pen and dates (circle punched book pages, handwritten letters and colored with turquoise ink).

And here again is the finished spread - you can see that I went back and wrote over the scribbly dip pen letters with a thicker marker.

New Scribbly Bird Stamps

This week I finally received my much-coveted "Scribbly Bird Stamp Set" by Dina Wakley and I just love the little birds and the sayings on this set.  I couldn't resist finishing up this art journal page with one of the cute birds. And since I already had a heart on the page, the saying was perfect too. It says "Keep a green bough in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."

The background was done with lots of "mop up" inks, paints, sprays and dribbles. The letters and numbers were added with modeling paste and stencils. The heart was a book page that I tested a new Balzer Bits heart stencil on - which failed as you can't read it but I loved the color and kept it anyway.

I cut the tree branch from some book text and cut out and colored the leaves. The bird was stamped on book text also and then painted and glued to page. The quote was stamped on a vintage label.  I love how this turned out from just a messy half-finished page.

And, just for grins, I thought you might like to see what my workspace looks like after a creating frenzy!