Monthly Journal Page

Hi folk hope your all managing to survive these gloomy day!!

I was at AFTH last week for my monthly journal day with the wonderful Dyan Reaveley and she had us tearing pages in our new dylusions journals and making our usual inky mess - Totally loved it.  

So this is what I started in class and then finished at home.

Liberal use of Dylusion inks, stencils and stamps and we had several very colourful background.  

Then with some folding and some of Tim Holtz lovely tissue tape we created pockets.  

Then to finish off a wonderful figure from Stampotique with generous application of their bee stamps -  and I had a vibrant spread.

Lastly I added perfect pearls to the stars and bees wings, some doodling and all that was left was the quote!!!

More ink and stencils and we made ourselves 4 tags - finished off again with the tissue tape.

 Simon says stamp blog has a weekly challenge and this weeks is 'just add pearls'.  So I will be entering that as its a $50 prize so pop over and have a look at all the other fab projects which have been entered.

Ok hope you all have a great week.

xxxx hugs xxxx

Dylusional Challege

Hi this is the page I have done for the challenge that Dy set us on her art journal  facebook page.  The challenge was to use the new journal she has just bought out and to do a page (not using the first page) using orange and her spider stamps with the words 'new beginnings'.

No problem I thought and did the background using Dyslusional Ink sprays with a bit of perfect pearls mists - heirloom gold, thrown in for  bit of blink.  I was happy.  Unfortunately at that point my MOJO vanished - by the time 5 days had gone by and the dead line for the challenge was looming I figured I would have to sit this one out!!! 

However at the last minute I decided just to sit down and do something with it and see what would happen - if it didn't work I just wouldn't have put it in the the challenge.  Since last month when I did my very first drawing in my journal I have been wanting to find the courage to do some more so as I had given up hope of getting this page finished for the challenge I thought I would combine both and see what happened.  This was the result!!

I was so pleased after I had done the eyes that I nearly bottled it on the letter - well I was going to hand write it but that went out the window and out came the faithful stamps.  

I was well pleased with the results and submitted it for the challenge - only to realise that I had forgotten all about the poor spider.  So a hasty return to the stamp draw and on went mister spider.  As it turns out I think he finished it off nicely.  Think I might have got my MOJO back!! lol

Have a great week xx hugs xx

First page in Dylusions Journal

Hi got my new Dylusions Journal yesterday at AFTH preview day and couldn't wait to get home to try it out.

Did the background with some acrylic paint and some Dylusions spray ink on top and ghosted through some stencils. 

Stamped the tree using 2 different colours of distress ink pads for the branches and the Stampotique stamps for the figure and lights.  Coloured the figure and clock in using Distress Ink pads. 

I always enjoy christening a new journal and this one takes the ink fabulously!!!

Have a good creative week!
xxx hugs xxx

Journal class challenge - second page

Ok as promised at the end of my last post I'm going to show you what I did with the lovely she art lady - 'she leaped' (by Christy Tomlinson) which I painted to use on the last challenge page - but didn't!!

She was so pretty (I don't do pretty so much) but she didn't sit well on the dark colours of the last page so I went hunting for a home for her!!  

Fortunately in my journal I found a clean up page which suited her down to the ground!!  (This is one of the joys of cleaning up in your journal - as well as not wasting any ink of paint LOL).

Unlike the last page she just pretty much put herself together in a matter minutes - love when this happens!

I used several of the new Stampotique stamps to add additional detail to the background, some stickles to add some bling to the stringed lights and printed off the quote 'Take time to reflect, be ok with where you are even if you know you want to change'.

So 2 totally different pages from the same challenge - I love it!!  Thanks for the challenge Dy! 

One final note - about this old journal I use, its such a different size from the ones that I normally use it makes you design your pages in totally different ways and is also really nice if it's one that's been used as leaving the background thin enough allows the writing to show threw and automatically gives you an additional layer to your page!

  So if you fancy a challenge - try doing a journal on a long thin page for a change and see what yours turns out like.

Have a great weekend!

xxx hugz xxx

Journal class challenge - first page

Hi, I want to do a post to show you one of the pages that we did at journal class last week.  As our intrepid leader is away in America - she left us a challenge: to attempt doing things out of our comfort zone.  So to use colours we wouldn't normally, and stamp which wouldn't be our first choice - or things cut out of magazines if we weren't comfortable with that and she left us a selection of quotes to choose from.  So with this in mind we started the day!!

After rather a struggle this is what I ended up with!

I picked red and blue inks to use because thought I often use turquoise I don't use true blue and I never seem to use red at all - I have to say I didn't feel it went well.  

I didn't like the basic background - did a bit of stamping on it - which improved it a little but I wasn't convinced.  

So I decided to move on to using a very nice she art stamp - not something I would normally use but I thought I would give it a go.  I coloured her in with inks and really like her - but she so did not work on the red/blue background.  So I decided to put her aside also to use at another time.

Next I found these lovely new Stampotique monsters - (which I would use normally LOL) but decided as the page wasn't going well I would play around colouring them.  Did the first 2 - orange and blue and didn't like them on the page either - but I decided I would just go ahead and do some more and use them regardless!!  But I did use my own hand writing on the quote - which I don't often do.

So all in all it was rather a struggle. 

 I don't normally find it that difficult but I think I made it harder for myself by choosing 2 such strong colours for the background - if I had used red orange and yellow the colours would have blended easier.  Still it was a good challenge and stretched me a bit so I will try and do some more using blue and red just to make myself more comfortable with them.  If  I hadn't been doing the challenge I think I would have put my balloon monsters (which I love) on a different background and left this one until such time as I found something that I felt worked on it!!

In my next post I will show you what I did with the she art lady!!

Happy creating

xxxxx

October calendar page

Ok last month I decided I would try and get my calendar page done early - so I got it started in good time only to find half way through it really wasn't what I wanted to do for October, so it got abandoned to be returned to for a different project.  So time went by and I was back to my default mode, last day of the month and thinking I really want to get my calendar page done on time!!

   

 Oh well never mind, I'll many be manage it another time. LOL  But I did manage to get the background started and I was really happy how it was looking.  So I thought I would take a few pictures so you could see the process.     

      

   

I did the background as always with Dylusion ink sprays but I added in a little Perfect pearls mist - heirloom gold, when I was spraying to add a little sparkle.  As I wanted the edges quite dark I had to spray them several times, which meant there was a lot of ink lying around.  As always I'm not a one to waste ink so I used sheets of paper to blot off with!! And look how great they turned out in there own right - and these are mop up sheets!!!! I love it!

So next I decided to add a few appropriately spooky elements.  Tim Holts skull stamp was an obvious one.  I stamped it using perfect medium and brushed on a couple of colours of perfect pearls.  Then using a stencil I used a black soot distress ink pad to blend through the stencil to create the lightning (or dead tree branches - depending on how you look at it).  I also stamped in some cobwebs using a orange/red stamp pad.

I also bleached out the moon and a faint fence line along the bottom.

Next I decided to used grave stones for the days - it took me a while to decide between them and pumpkins   and even nearly changed my mind half way through, but fortunately went ahead with the stones. 

These are stamps (I think are made by inkadinkadoo!?!  They come with sayings in each one) which I altered on the computer to the size and details I wanted and printed them out.

Next I randomly stamped them with a cobweb stamp, then coloured them with 3 different shades of Distress ink pads.  I did it while still on the sheet so that I was less likely to damage them.  These were then cut out and the edges inked to darken them a bit. 

So finally using letters from Tim Holtz Halloween paper stack, I cut out and stuck on 'October' along with the tomb stones.  The final touches were to add a bit of red detail and to stamp and perfect pearl more cobwebs over the top.

Well I hope you like it and if you are following Kate Cranes calendar page challenge - which is what is keeping me doing this each month - I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.

Have a great month!!!

xxxxx