Mixed media cards

Yesterday I decided I wanted to get inky so I made a master board on watercolor paper. What's a master board? You make one large piece of art and then cut it up into smaller pieces and further embellish. Years ago when I first started card making it was called "one sheet wonder!"

I used two colors of green Distress Inks and one blue one, swiping them on my craft sheet and spritzing with water. Then I "smooshed" the paper into the watery color several times, repeating as needed to fully cover the paper and drying between each step.

Once I had achieved some pretty color, I stamped some script and numbers with black Archival ink. I also added some heavy white gesso through a number stencil and splattered watered down gesso over the cards.  The final touches were adding white floral die cuts (Tim Holtz) and some word strips (also TH). Then I edged the card fronts with black ink and mounted them on white cards.

I love how they turned out and had fun getting messy again!

More Art Journaling Pages

Here are two more art journaling pages I've made in the past few weeks.

The first one I challenged myself to only use Distress inks, as that was what I was teaching in the art journaling class this month.  Everything on the page is Distress ink except the tiny stenciled dots (modeling paste), star and text outlines (journaling pen) and a touch of Stickles on the large stars. The background started with some Distress stains and lots of water, then I applied the ink directly to the page with a blending tool and also through some stencils (small stars and numbers). I stamped with a few different colors of Distress ink (script and lines).  When the modeling paste was applied, some of the inks (which are not waterproof) bled into the design, which added more nice color. I cut the large stars out of book text, inked them and then glued to the page. The black lines are made with a credit card and diluted black Distress ink on my craft sheet and the small black flecks are flicked with a paintbrush dipped in the same diluted ink. 

This page was inspired by a similar one on Pinterest. I happened to have several small kraft colored tags leftover from another project, still on my workspace, so I glued these to a small journal page and then gessoed over the entire surface.  Once that was dry I used Picked Raspberry Distress Paint and ran a thick, juicy line across the bottom of the page. I spritzed with water and used a paintbrush to wash the paint over the entire page, using more water and less paint as I progressed to the top of the page. This gives a nice ombre effect.  I punched a few butterflies from card stock and painted them with the respective shades of pink.  The embossed metal foil heart was also a leftover and I thought using it as the focal point grounded the page. This is very simple but I love the effect!