Hearts & Flowers Journal page 5

Hi Everyone,

My latest journal page is based on a painting by Charles Rennie Mackintosh 'Stylized Rose' with a few changes.

I used acrylic paint and a white uni-ball signo pen. Ideally I would have scratched the pattern into the black paint but as usual this page started off as something else and was blue underneath.

I started this journal/sketchbook when I joined the flickr group Sketchbook Friends and I entitled it Hearts and Flowers.I have one more page to complete. The next one will have no title or theme. Its purpose will just be to play and explore different styles and themes. I may even treat myself to a Dylusions Journal, which I have been promising myself for a while now.

Hope you like this page and thank you to those of you who left a comment here recently. It means a lot.

Bye for now, x

Hearts & Flowers Journal Page 4

Hi Everyone,

I have started to wonder if  there is enough interest in my blog to make it worth carrying on posting . I just don't seem to be getting much response. If my blogger stats are reliable they are not very encouraging.

I know you have to get yourself out there, so to speak, to get yourself noticed. I joined in with 'Tag Tuesday' last year  which initially generated a bit of interest and now I have joined  'Sketchbook Freinds' flickr group but that has not generated a noticeable increase up to now. Some blogs choose a topic and invite you to link your blog post to their blog. But being a bit of a' technophobe' I am not sure how to do this.

Maybe it is because my work is not interesting enough. I used to explain the process of  how I created my artwork but lately I have wondered if it is worth it. It is difficult to get enthusiastic when you feel like your talking to yourself. ( LOL!)

Well that's enough of feeling sorry for myself, here is my latest journal/sketchbook page.

This page went through many transitions before the finished result so I couldn't begin to explain the process except to say that it includes layers of acrylic paint, homemade stamps, a flower stencil and Lumiere paint, Brusho Spray and collage pieces made up of found papers and pieces of my leftover papers from cleaning off stamps and mopping up excess paint. I love useing leftover papers from cleaning up your paint etc. as the random marks sometimes are more interesting than the marks made on purpose. (LOL!).

You can also see this page over on 'Sketchbook Friends' flickr group page where there are lots of great sketchbook pages to be seen. So pop over there and have a look. On the positive side, over on the flickr group I have had two 'Likes' which is a first for me (Hooray!).

Bye for now. x

Journal Pages 3

Hi Everyone,

Here is my latest page in my art journal.

When I first finished this page I thought it was just okay. But the more I look at it the more pleased I am with it.

I check my blogger stats to see the number of pageviews I recieve.  It seems that I am receiving pageviews each day, however the number is realitivly small and my comments are even smaller. If you have viewed my blog because you are interested in seeing my journal pages I would love to hear what you think. All comments would be greatly appreciated. A big THANK YOU goes out to those of you who have recently left comments.

Bye for now x

More Journal Pages 2

Hi Everyone,
I have two more journal pages to share with you, both very differnt in style.
On my journey around the world-wide web for inspiration I have seen so many different styles of art that I love.  This journal/sketchbook is really one of experimentation of different styles in the hope of eventually arriving of a style that is recognizable as my own work.

My first page was inspired by the work of Teesha Moore. Her work is so detailed and colourful compared to my feeble attempt. But it is my first attemp. She has such a vivid imagination of which I can only dream.

Materials used for this page include: altered magazine cut outs, acrylic paint, washie tape, handmade stamps and a black Sharpie pen.

For the next page I wanted to create a black and white background with a splash of red.

Materials used : Pan pastels,acrylic paint, charcoal pencil, red and black ink, gel medium transfer and a butterfly rubber stamp.

I want to share a tip with you regarding gel medium transfers. There are lots of tutorials on this subject and this tip may already be known and written about already but I came across it by accident. When I first tried this method I painted the ink- jet printed image with gel medium then applied it to the page (or fabric), burnished it and removed it, rubbing any remaining paper off with my fingers. Some people leave it on for a length of time before removing it, but I found that it was more difficult to remove the paper.

What I have found much easier is to paint the surface you are transferring the image onto first with gel medium, dry it then coat the image you are transferring with gel medium and apply to the surface, burnish, and remove. Leave to dry and then
rub any excess paper off with your finger.

This is what the images looked like on the above page before they where knocked back with layers of paint and pastel.

This was using a laser printed copy but I have also had success in ink-jet copies.

Bye for now x

Revised Journal Pages

Hi Everyone,
I was looking at a coupleof my journal pages and I wasn't happy with them at all. So I thought I would do some more to them.
To one I added some more shading and another flower and also added some more petals to the flowers that were already there.The other I covered with some crumpled up tissue paper and started again. The original pages are on the post 'New Art Journal Pages' and this is how they look now.

I much prefer this page to the original.

Bye for now x

More Journal Pages

Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to share two more journal/sketchbook pages with you.

This was created using Brusho Sprays and Pan Pastels. I cut out the heart shapes from previously sprayed pages left over from other projects and stuck them to the page using a glue stick. The silhouette was made using a body shape cut from a magazine and I used a black inktence pencil to go around the silhouette and hearts.

This page was made up of acrylic paints, stamped images, and I used modelling paste and a flower stencil which you can just make out on the middle of the page. The butterfly was an image transfer using gel medium on a tag which was covered with Brusho stained paper towel and applied to the tag using gel medium.

These two pages are my favourites so far. Hope you like them too!

Bye for now x

New Art Journal Pages

Hello Everyone,

Well, its the first post of the year and although it's a little late, Happy New Year.
This year I am going to try and create more and blog a little more often . Late last year I joined a group  called Sketchbook Friends.  I made the sketchbook/journal and posted the cover but didn't get around to doing any pages.

I decided that the cover was missing something so I added some stenciled flowers at the bottom in Lumiere paint in Russet.

Front Cover

Over the last few days I have completed two pages.

I  am a little disappointed how they turned out. I changed the look of the pages a number of times adding layer upon layer. Particularly the first page which originally looked like this.

Which I prefer to the finished page .
This is my first art journal so I expect it  will be trial and error until I eventually come up with a style of my own that I like.

This month I returned to my textile class and we started the year off by making a handmade felt picture.

Ideally felt pictures should be framed showing the outer edge of the piece so as to compliment the organic nature of the wool felt. But as you will see from the picture above the actual scene does not go to the end of the piece of felt so I prefer to frame it as in the picture below.

I don't think my textile tutor will agree but I prefer it that way.

Thanks for popping by.  I hope you will take a moment to leave a comment as they ar much appreciated.

Bye for now x


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