February Art Marks - Done!

It's March 1 and the February Art Marks Challenge is officially finished. And, I am done! It was a fun challenge but I have to admit I was running out of marks to make! Looking back on these pages, I think I like circles and dashes as well as black and white!

Days 22/23

Prompts: less; invent

Days 24/25

Prompts: build; root

Days 26/27

Prompts: replenish; rest

Day 28/back cover

Prompt: joy

Now that this project is finished, I will be looking for something else to work on. But in the meantime, I will be spending the weekend with a few of my artsy friends making art and enjoying our friendships!

Art Marks Pages 18-21

Four more art marks pages finished - only one more week to go!

Days 18/19

Prompts: tend; balance

Days 20/21

Prompts: learn; grace

On these two pages, I was all about using up some stash. I had just a few leftover glitter alpha stickers which wouldn't spell anything, so I added them to the randomly painted background for day 20. Then I just filled in with black tick marks to blend them into the background and to add pattern.

For day 21, I added some leftover purple reinforcers to a gelli-printed background and embellished with black and white doodles.

Journaling by 5s - Free play and final pages

Here are the last ten pages of my "Journaling by 5s" experiment. I like some more than others, but am pleased with how they came out considering the random and quick-paced nature of this project. In the "free play" step, on many pages I've added a bit more stenciling with texture paste, washi tape, Tim Holtz Small Talk word strips, doodling and additional stamping.

Pg 11

Pg 12

Pg 13

Pg 14

Pg 15

Pg 16

Pg 17

Pg 18

Pg 19

Pg 20

So, with that, I am finished with this project. There are probably many more things I could do to enhance these pages, but, truthfully, I am ready to move on! This was a fun, sometimes challenging, and productive exercise. I am sure I will do this again sometime!

Journaling by 5s - Session 5 and "Free Play"

For some reason I either didn't photograph the pages after the fifteen minutes of pen and pencil work (Session 5) or I somehow deleted them.  This session took much longer than the allotted time - I did get something on each page during the fifteen minutes but it wasn't much.

In the original Journaling by 5s by Shannon Green, after all the steps have been done, you can have "free play" and take as long as you need to make the pages look complete. I took several days of doing a few things to each page and then coming back to do more. Among other things, I added washi tape, doodles and outlines in black and white pen, texture paste through a few stencils and some Tim Holtz "small talk strips."

Here are the first ten pages, mostly "done." A few still look like they could use something more, but I'm not sure what at the moment. I'm going to set them aside for awhile and then come back to see if I should add more.

Pg 1

Pg 2

Pg 3

Pg 4

Pg 5

Pg 6

Pg 7

Pg 8

Pg 9

Pg 10

I still have some details to add to the last pages so I will post them in a few days.

Journaling by 5s - Session 4

This session is all about adding images and words to create a focal point. I did this session the day after doing the previous three sessions. I spread out a few piles of various pictures and words I'd cut from magazines and got to work.

This session was the most time-consuming one. Really you should just grab and glue but I found myself overthinking a few times. Racing against the clock eliminates much of that though. I had one more page to do when the timer went off, so I just finished it afterwards (don't think that's too much of a cheat...).

Here are my twenty pages. They are coming along nicely.

Pg 1

Pg 2

Pg 3

Pg 4

Pg 5

Pg 6

Pg 7

Pg 8

Pg 9

Pg 10

Pg 11

Pg 12

Pg 13

Pg 14

Pg 15

Pg 16

Pg 17

Pg 18

Pg 19

Pg 20

Do you have a favorite yet? It's amazing how each layer changes the pages. The last page was my least favorite in the first two stages, but the last two sessions have changed it around to where I quite like it.

One more session to go - pen and pencil work for details.

Journaling by 5s - Session 3

The prompts for Session 3 are to use stamps and stencils. 

To make it simpler, I limited myself to white acrylic paint and a make-up sponge for the stencils and black Archival ink for all the stamps. I gathered several favorite "texture" stamps such as script, circles, crackle and numbers and stencils in repeating patterns such as hearts, stars, harlequin, chevron, triangles and circles.

I did all the stenciling first, hoping the paint would have time to dry a bit before stamping. Then I stamped on all the pages. That worked very well and I even had extra time in this step! Using black and white created a nice contrast to all the colors and I'm even starting to like some of the pages!


Pg 1

Pg 2

Pg 3

Pg 4

Pg 5

Pg 6

Pg 7

Pg 8

Pg 9

Pg 10

Pg 11

Pg 12

Pg 13

Pg 14

(This is the page that I didn't have a photo of for Step 2. You can see I had added some magazine scraps and heart tissue paper.)

Pg 15

Pg 16

Pg 17

Pg 18

Pg 19

Pg 20

Adding focal images and words in the next session will be fun. I'm looking forward to how these pages will develop.