ARTFUL JOURNEYS WEEK #31 - GO ORGANIC

Our prompt this week at Artful Journeys is to "go organic."  Our original line of thinking was to use real organic materials but I just wasn't feeling it at first and I think my Muse has perhaps gone on holiday. And besides all that, everything in my yard is getting brown and crispy. It is our hottest time of the year and I am no gardener.  For heaven's sakes, I can kill silk plants!

So, I created this first spread Friday night after my weekly dinner date with the hubs. I had wandered around in the yard and just couldn't seem to find anything I felt like was suitable that was growing, er.... dying.

I sat down with my Dylusions journal and let the page just happen "organically".  We've had a bit of a stressful week, and friends and friendships are definitely on the forefront of my mind and how important those relationships are.  So this little idea started in the back of my head.


I started by stamping across the bottom with my large Dylusions curly-q stamp (not sure what the official name of it is, but I love that stamp!)  Then I used a large tree stencil and applied lightweight spackling through the stencil and let it dry.  In hindsight, I should have finished the background colors first, but oh well, right?  I then used a small flat brush and applied some Liquitex acrylic in a light brown to the trunk and limbs.  I used a large foam sun stamp in the corner and filled the page with Liquitex Cadmium Yellow Deep Hue and added some embellishments with the light sepia.  I then proceeded to use some Dylusions Distress ink in Orange to make some dots all over the tree. I liked how that was going, so I opened up a Quin Magenta and a Neon Pink and made some more random dots on the tree using my index finger.  So freeing to paint with our hands, isn't it?

I also applied other random dots in the lower margin and using some Spring green, added leaves and stems everywhere.  I tried a couple of different techniques coloring in the curly-q's at the bottom, including a baby wipe (epic fail), finger painting (fail) Dylusions Inks - sprayed (fail) and NeoColor II's.  Obviously I had much more control with the NeoColors and will likely be making some use of some gesso later and redoing the bottom part.  But for now it just has to do.

My favorite part is the tree.  I will we had "feel-a-vision".  I love the way the lightweight spackle works through a stencil.  Something so fun about feeling that texture.

Lettering with a 0 fine liner brush and black acrylic paint.  My friends are the flowers in my life. And I'm so glad you're planted where you are.

Then this morning, Saturday, I got to worrying about not really following along with the prompt in a closer sort of fashion. I went outside with my coffee to the front porch and stood there looking around.  Would my neighbor mind if I went and snagged some stuff from her flower beds?  Probably. My poor flower beds are pitiful. Dry. Dying. Tired looking.  I went to the back deck. Had a look through the garden -- which is barely hanging on. Nothing good there. The Basil looks good, but I was definitely uninspired by that.

Back to the front.  We have this stand of 100+ foot Sycamore trees across the front of our yard. The leaves are generally HUGE.  Time for a closer inspection.  Oh, look!  Some baby leaves...... that could work.  And Sycamore tree leaves have an interesting shape -- so I selected several and returned to my dining table and fixed a fresh cup of my favorite elixir.

Turn the page in the Dylusions journal.  I picked up my Dylusions acrylic tubs in Turquoise and Bubblegum Pink and added paint all over everywhere.  I added some stamps.  Hated all that. Out comes the gesso. Same colors, different application this time with a brush and some babywipes.  That worked better.

I was sent this great face image on deli paper in happy mail some time back -- sorry I cannot remember who shared it with me.  I grabbed that and played with it on the page, laying the leaves here and there.  I felt like those leaves would make a great "crown" and so I went with that.  Leaves and face image were applied to the page with Faber Castel Gel Medium, and the leaves were given another coat with some DIY Mod Podge.  I had previously used this with another leaf project over a year ago and the leaves are still soft and green.  Nobody wants brown crumply leaves in their journal, right?

I grabbed up some Liquid Pearls in Peacock and a bottle of Scribbles in gold metallic and added the veins and outlined the leaves.  That "crown" needed some sort of edging so with the Scribbles I created the crown base and added jewels there and on the tips of the leaves. She looks pretty good, huh?  The flash on my camera made the deli paper show up more, but in natural light, it just seems to blend in perfectly.

Those big Sycamore trees were still in my mind. More digging through happy mail and I found these beautiful papers sent to me by Kay Theuerkauf in Australia.  I lettered a "thought" on these two papers with a black Sakura Gelly pen, adhered to the page with Gel Medium and added the Queen Elizabeth Australian stamp just for fun. Out lined with a black china marker.

In case you can't read it --

"As she sat in the shade of the old Sycamore tree, she fashioned herself a crown.  She felt like Queen of the Earth.  And it was so."

The last leaf I picked was added to the corner of the page and tarted up like the crown.  And lastly, I grabbed some Liquitex Neon Green and a small circle stencil and added some additional paint and called it good.

And here is the finished spread.  More in tune with what we originally had in mind.  I feel better about it.  It was fun playing with those leaves after all.  Did I noodge my Muse to wakefulness?

Thanks for stopping by, and have an artful week.  Be sure and show us how you interpret our prompt this week, and don't forget to stop by and see what Melody, Shana and Lynn have created!

ARTY AUNTIE
~~Betty

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #20 PROMPT

This week at Artful Journeys, we are asking you to incorporate a paper napkin or serviette into your journal.






I had a lot of fun with this one. Recently I received the motherlode of napkins in happy mail packages plus I had purchased quite a few lovely ones while on a shopping trip.  The decision of which to use was difficult because I had too many choices.  But I ultimately decided on this one with bold hydrangeas, first because of the design, and secondly because it was an oblong napkin or serviette that opens to a  huge size and would fit on my 9x12 mixed media paper I was working on.

There is just something magical and so lovely about hydrangeas to me and they are one of my favorite flowers...so big and showy and the colors change based on the alkalinity of the soil.  If you can grow hydrangeas, I will be jealous.  I have a black thumb.  I leave all the growing to Mr. Jim.

MATERIALS USED:

Canson 9x12 Mixed Media journal
Apple Barrel Acrylic craft paint - Lilac Mist & Petunia Purple, Antique White
DecoArt Crafter's Acrylic - Lavender
Dina Wakely/Ranger Gel Matte Medium
Signo Uniball #207 Bold, black
Caran D'Ache Neocolor II - Turquoise, black
Copic Marker - #RV55 Hollyhock
Hydrangea serviette from Tuesday Morning
Metal, triangular palette knife
That fancy tool -- spit and my fingers
Watercolor paper scraps

Before you begin to apply any part of your napkin, whether whole or fussy cuts, you have to carefully separate the layer(s) of your napkin to make sure you are working with only the printed image.  My napkin was crimped all around the edges, making it a little trickier.  But to get it separated, I gently rolled the edge of the napkin back and forth until I got a tiny little bit of separation, then carefully pulled it apart, avoiding any tears.  I have used napkins in the past that had 3 layers, making the printed layer super, super thin and transparent when applied to the page.  You don't have to apply paint or anything, but since I was applying to a pre-painted page, the method I used was easy, as you will see below.

I had a  page in my journal that I had already laid down some lovely lavender acrylic, but it was boring so I thought I would just cover it up.  Using a wide, flat acrylic brush, I very quickly applied Dina Wakely's Gel Matte Medium to the page and began to lay down my napkin carefully lining it up with the page and smoothing as I went.  If you need to lift, you can do so, but do it carefully so you don't tear your image!  Then, after it was all applied to the page, I trimmed all the excess off the edges (and there was tons) and applied another coat of Gel Medium all over the napkin.



While reaching to put my tub of medium down, I inadvertently tore the top of the napkin with my thumbnail. Not sure how I did it, but I went, WOW!  Look at that.  I like that paint peeping through. So I began to scrape off more of the napkin here and there and decided I wanted to scrape it big time, so out can my flexible, metal, triangular palette knife and I hurriedly scraped in and around the image to reveal a LOT of that lovely lavender paint underneath.  And it scraped up quite nicely and evenly. The edge and tip of my palette knife did work a LOT better than my thumbnail. LOL  A couple of places I had to smooth back down (both with a little spit on the end of my finger and then again with the medium and the paintbrush. Coolio.  I had to stop and admire this bit of ingenuity.  Well, maybe someone else already did this fun thing, but it was a first for me.

What else could I do to it?  I had an idea of the words I wanted to incorporate, but it needed something else.  I added a couple of strips of really cute pink and greed dotted grosgrain ribbons down at the bottom, all the while I am chatting on the phone with Melody and I shot her a quick pic, and we decided that adding a deeper shade or shades of the lavender around the central image would make it pop off the page, and it did.  I just painted it on with my finger and blended it out.  More chatting.  Another pic.  More brainstorming.  Edging.   It needed edging of some sort, but nothing too busy since I didn't want to detract from the beautiful flowers.  NEOCOLORS to the rescue!

I went around the edges of the paper with turquoise Neocolor II and smudged with my fingers.  Then, it needed a little more depth, so out came the black one, but this time with a lighter edge and hand, just adding enough to give a delineation to the page.  Whoop! Whoop!  I was liking it much better.
Then a little more black here and there around the image, smudging as I went.  Yup.  Not so flat anymore.


Time for words.  I dug out some watercolor paper strips and scraps, found some suitable sizes and lettered my words with a bold, black Signo Uniball pen and Hollyhock Copic Marker.  I set the page aside until this morning when I had another look.  The words needed to POP off the page, so my Neocolor II in black came to the rescue again.  And I also added a little more embellishment with antique white craft paint.

I pronounced it finished.  I hope you like what I did.  Sure, I could have spent a couple of hours fussy cutting that big image out, but it was so much fun to scrape it off the page. It was like revealing a treasure underneath.  Try it.  You might have as much fun as I did.  I hope you like what I created. It was great fun, and it makes me smile.

Thanks for stopping by and looking.  Can't wait to see YOUR journal page.

As always, I'm keeping it artful!

Betty

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #19 "WRITE A LIMERICK"

We're having some writing fun this week at Artful Journeys and are asking you to write a Limerick and incorporate that into your journal.

I know many of you will balk at this exercise, but seriously, it is fun and the rhyming is easy. Take a couple of minutes of your day, and look at some examples of Limericks on Google and just follow along with the strict rhyme scheme of AABBA.  Incorporating writing and words into our art journals is difficult for many people.  Often, I find myself just creating art without adding meaningful words....my words.  I actually do journal every day, but do so in a specific journal that I use solely for writing, that periodically has art incorporated into it.  Not the other way around.

When we came up with this prompt, an idea for it immediately popped into my mind and once I set pen to paper, I wrote mine is less than 5 minutes, after spending just a couple of minutes getting the poetic meter in my head by reviewing some classic Limericks on the internet.  A couple of tweaks and I pronounced it done.  Sure, I could have spent hours tweaking and refining, but as always I have to move on to other projects.

My limerick:

There once was a man named Bart

Who loved creating his art.

But when the wind blew, 

Out the window the canvas flew 

Because the wind was only Bart's phart!

Background is sponged craft acrylic in Khaki and Tan. Bart was drawn direct with a bold Signo Uniball pen and then colored with watercolor paints. Letters embellished with watercolor.

I hope you get a little chuckle and have fun playing with limericks and then incorporating your own limerick into your journal. I did.  Just looking at my wonky Bart and the limerick makes me laugh. It even made the hubs have a good little chuckle.

Make it a great week, and I can't wait to see yours!

Betty
aka Arty Auntie

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #17

Gosh!  When we put our collective creative hats on, we can really drum up some craziness, and this week at Artful Journeys is no exception.

Our prompt this week:  CHANNEL PICASSO

Head of Woman With a Hat by Pablo Picasso

I actually love the works of Picasso. His quirky style, the ease with which his line drawings seemed to flow. The vibrant use of color. All things I love.

If you take a few minutes on Google and really LOOK at his collection of artwork, it is truly inspiring. No wonder he is a master!  But what do you think this guy was smoking or drinking?? Was he one of those zany artists that lived for his Absinthe, aka The Green Fairy?  Absinthe has often been portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug and hallucinogen.  Maybe this can explain some of Picasso's work, since he was living in France during a time when Absinthe was all the rage with artists.  Did he smoke funny little cigarettes? Was he an alcoholic or just plain nutzoid?  Some of his work is realistic in nature, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Picasso definitely saw the world through a different set of lenses than most of us, but still his work endures, inspires and is emulated the world over.

While searching for some "inspiration" through his work, I came across this image entitled "Head of Woman With A Hat".  I loved the vibrant colors, the bold line work, the quirky-ness of the whole thing.  The basic shape was something I thought I might actually manage. The colors, well, I thought I might could emulate that as well.

 This really was an exercise for me.  I brought my journal to my desktop and studied the photograph and sketched a brief and quick little outline.  I took my journal to the dining room and purposely left the image so that I could just recall the "essence" of the painting from my mind.

When you look at Picasso's work, you think, that looks simple enough.  But in reality, it isn't.  The basic shape--easy.  Where to start?  Poised with paintbrush in hand, I started with the lightest colors, beginning with white and began adding paint to various areas of the image.  Mostly I used my Dylusions Blendable Acrylics in white, turquoise, lime, orange, pink, black and red.  Hmmmm....I thinks that's all the colors just about in that collection excepting purple and the royal blue.  LOL I painted my background with a cameo pink craft acrylic, lightly watered down for a smooth finish.

Picasso's stroke work in her hair is what mesmerized me.  They are strong and decisive.  I was a bit more timid or hesitant I think...not knowing exactly how to emulate this style.

So what I wound up with is this.  My version of a lady in a hat.  The whole image has a very ethnic feel to me when looking back at it, and she looks pretty stern.  Once completed, I got up and brought my journal back to my desk and looked at the images side by side.  Not bad.  Not great, of course, but a valiant effort considering I wasn't "copying" the work or even trying to replicate it. Just using it for inspiration.  This is wayyyyyyy out of my comfort zone, but overall, I'm fairly happy with the end result. Time to move on to something else.

So get out there, get your Picasso-groove on, and channel ole Pablo and see where your art mojo takes you.  Be sure and show us your efforts at Artful Journeys.  We'll be your biggest cheerleaders!

Stay artful!  Until next time.....

Betty aka Arty Auntie

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #14 DOODLED FLOWERS

Hi everyone!  I hope spring is breaking out at your house. It certainly is here in north Texas.  The hubs has all the garden finally in, the trees are all budding out and losing pollen all over everywhere...driving me and my allergies crazy!  The temperatures have been really great during the day and we're doing our best to enjoy every second we can before it gets hot.  That lasts a LONG time!


This week at Artful Journeys, our prompt is to "Doodle Flowers". You could doodle the borders, all over or however you want, but doodle them we must!





Following last week's color scheme, I went with a dark pansy purple background in acrylic craft paint, applied with a wide flat nylon bristle brush. All the flowers were at least first doodled with a white Sakura Gelly pen.  I then added White, Green, Blue and Pink Chalk paint as fill ins on my flowers and did my lettering with green Chalk marker.





And there you have it. Easy peasy. Bright and breezy.  Enjoy your Easter everyone!

~~Betty

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #13

The end of March is rapidly approaching and we are getting into the full swing of spring here in north Texas, while some parts of the country are still getting buried in snow.  While our spring weather down here can be quite tumultuous--changing sometimes from one hour to the next -- early signs of spring are all around us.  And talking about weather, many prayers are going out to the folks in Oklahoma who have recently suffered loss and damage by more tornadoes.  Those things are the bane of Oklahoma to be sure.  Tornado season doesn't officially begin until May 1st, but it seems mother nature has her own way of announcing spring, doesn't she?





 I love snapping pictures of the earth being "reborn" in the spring, and this is a lovely Redbud tree that has sprung to life in my brother's front yard this week. Sadly, the blooms don't last very long, but oh they are so glorious while they are here for us to enjoy.  And of course, if we get high winds or hail, that hastens the disappearance of those blooms, so we're enjoying them while they are here.




Weather. Spring.  It goes together like peanut butter and jelly.  This week at Artful Journeys, we are drawing on the weather for inspiration for our journal prompt.  We want you to push yourself to create something beautiful and magical, and inspired by the sky.

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT:

NORTHERN LIGHTS or STARS

One of the most amazing weather phenomenons to me are the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis.  Nothing is more striking, more beautiful, more amazing than those magical lights in the sky, when mother nature is putting on her own spectacular show of light and color in the northern hemisphere.  I would love to be where I could see for myself this mystical show live and in person, but sadly, this happens only in the winter time so it is likely not something I will get to witness in my lifetime.  We visited Alaska in the summer of 1994 and had an amazing journey.  I was sad a little bit knowing it was the wrong time of the year to take that in, but oh the other sights were definitely a feast for the eyes.


My "surprise" media this week is DRYER LINT.  Yup, good old fashioned dryer lint, straight off a load of white towels from my dryer. There it was.  This week's prompt was swirling in my head, and as I scraped that lint off the screen, I really looked at it.  Ding!  This would make fantastic clouds I thought to myself, and that is exactly what some of it became!


Sometimes you just have to look at ordinary things in extraordinary ways.  I have rarely seen images of the northern lights that were without some spectacular clouds and cloud formations.  So I knew I wanted to use this in some way. I carefully unrolled it and set it aside.

I gathered up these other supplies:  Helmar's adhesive glue; Apple Barrel acrylic in Admiral Blue (makes a fabulous night sky) and Medium Grey; Dina Wakely's Heavy Body acrylics in Lime, Turquoise and Violet, Dylusions Blendable Acrylics in Lime, Turquoise, & Magenta, DecoArt's Black Cat black,  a wedged cosmetic sponge and my trusty white Signo Uniball pen and my large Dylusions journal.  I also used a fan brush, a worn out 1" flat nylon bristle brush, a #6 pointed round sable, and a stiff 1/4" flat.

I applied a good basecoat of Admiral Blue using a palette knife, plastic card and some paper towels to the entire two page spread.  Looking at all that dark blue was really inspiring. It WAS a night sky. But of course, I had to apply more paint, more layers.  First, I played around with the lint.  Pulling, pushing twisting into shapes I thought were 'cloud-worthy' and affixed them to the page.  I then used a cosmetic sponge to apply all my other sky colors over and across both pages in thin layers, reapplying where I wanted more defined color.  I brought the color way down into the page. The original idea was that I would have a stream reflecting the lights, but it didn't quite work out that way in the end.

Once all that was good and dry, I started my silhouetted trees.  Getting trees to look something like real trees is a challenge for me, and as I said above, I used an assortment of brushes to get a fir and pine-like tree effect.  The hubs didn't think they looked like trees at all. What does he know? ha.  I "illuminated" a few of the trees with Medium Grey and my Uniball pen.

The poem "The Aurora Borealis" by David Venner I knew was going on this page somewhere. I love that poem.  It reads:

Tumultuous streams of glory gushed,

Ten thousand thousand rainbows rushed

And revelled through the boundless sky,

In jousting, flashing radiancy.

Careering around the welkin's brim

Like bright embattled Seraphim;

Or soaring up to the dome of Night,

Flooding the Milky-way with light;

Or streaming down on the mountain peaks,

On the muirland wastes, and the heather brakes;

On lake and river, on tower and tree,

Showering a sky-born galaxy,

Like a storm of pearls and diamonds driven,

Imbued with the gorgeous hues of heaven!

So here you have it.  I call it done.  It was great fun thinking outside the box. When I look at the finished page, *I* see the Northern Lights as I imagine them in my mind.  I don't care what the hubs sees.

So jump on over and see what Melody, Lynn and Tamie have created this week at Artful Chicks. We hope that we have inspired you in some way and can't wait to see what your mind conjurs up this week!