Well who would've guessed journalling was so much fun!

Recently I had a really good day out in London with Darcy, Emma and Alison looking round art shops,eating and walking round Soho and Bloomsbury with my trusty phone map.

One of the shops we visited was Cass Art in Islington (oooh its posh round there) and Darcy persuaded me that I needed to try the paper in these art journals from Seawhite. The killer statement was "they can really handle water"  So two ended up in my shopping bag along with many other things.

The statement was true and boy am I loving it just to splosh paint around and make backgrounds on the pages, some I finish off, some I don't.  At the moment its nice just to splosh and splash.

I haven't painted the cover yet as a) I thought I'd wait and do and the end as I knew I'd get paint all over it and b) I was too impatient to start sloshing paint around.

So this is a page I did finish using Emma's lovely new stamps and lots of the new PaperArtsy paints.

First I started off gessoing the page and then a layer of China.  I then did lots of flicking with watered down paints in Blueberry. Purple Rain and Chalk.

Over this I used the Lin Brown circles stencil in Smurf. Sanded this to help the circles blend into the background and on some of the larger circles used a toning coloured pencil.

Added some text stamping using  a PaperArtsy mini and Adirondack Light Cool Peri ink. Its very very subtle but adds another layer.

The next layer was Chartreuse paint in places added with a paint brush and them moved around with the brush lightly wetted with water.  As this paint is translucent it sort of sits on top of the page, but allows the China and everything else under the Chartreuse to come through. It looks a bit scary because you've added this greeny colour (well I got a bit oh no)the final layer of paint is watered down Chalk. Start with a little amount of paint (pea size) and add about a teaspoon of water.  Using a brush slosh it and dry.  Keep adding the ash layers until you feel happy that it has blended all the layers together.  I then added some more splats of the watered down Chalk

I knew I had a photo in my extensive photo collection of a battered street sign I saw in Peel in the Isle of Man on holiday last year and as this journal is about me embracing colour and especially bright colour I thought it was an apt sign to tell me to use my creative right side of the brain more.  The sign actually says no right turn but I covered that up with two of the stamps from EEG05.

I really wanted to use all the arrows on this plate to act as a background so I first added a light layer of Blue Oyster stamped an Ellen Vargo strip background in China and then stamped the arrows in black ink, rotating them around and masking of areas where I didn't want the stamps.  I then coloured in the arrows with pencils in toning colour's.  

I painted a scrap of card in China and then stamped the frame, added the photo and stuck the banner over the top.  The "journalling" is the who, what, where, when stamp and I just edged in white pen as well as the frame just to make them stand out. 

 I'm not too in love with my writing, its much better when I'm writing sentences etc. My Dad said he could never read my writing when I sent letters home from Uni, "looks lovely Joanna but I cant read it"  Mind you he had beautiful copperplate writing.  I used to love just looking at his letters and he could write really detailed descriptions on what my brothers were doing, the cats antics and the latest Archers saga.  

I'm about a quarter of the way through the journal, so there will be more pages to show using the delicious PaerArtsy paints - look out for more colour!

Hugs

Jo

xx

Pink Hearts using the new PaperArtsy Hot Picks stamps.

So this week has been a monumental week over at PaperArtsy with the release of the new paints and stamps from the PA talented family of designers (I don't think they all live in a big mansion and I don't think Leandra is Maria and Mark Captain Von Trapp, but hey, its an interesting idea).

Ive been lucky and have for the delight of playing with some of the new paint colours, Emma Godfrey's new stamps and the new Hot Picks and boy have they given me ideas.  So over the next few weeks you'll be seeing me use these new products to give you ideas of what you can do with them.

So today Hot Picks range.If you haven't seen nip on over tho the PaperArtsy blog to see the full range or watch the video!
  

 There is a lot of stamps on all the sheet, so I decided to use the whole of HPXTO6 as a background stamp.

In my new A4 art journal (thanks Darcy, the paper is good).  I created a border using washi tape. I then brayered Prawn from the new JOFY range of paints, Rose and finally Candy Floss.  I then stamped the Ink and the Dog Backgrounds Plate 5 in Archival Blue Violet Ink.

Once this had dried I stencilled a swirly design with Prawn and gave the whole page a wash of Sherbet, just to soften it. 

I finally inked up the whole sheet of HPXT06 with Claret, turned the sheet over and stamped on the page.  I love how it gives a billboard / destinations style of background.  Once I'd dried this I gave it a light sand. With Black Soot Distress Ink I lightly went round the edges and carefully (well tried too)  pulled the washi tape off. I went round the edge of the pink panel with a pencil just to add some shading and make the panel pop.

The hearts were cut from Kraft card that had some of the natural tissue paper PaperArtsy had (id forgotten I had it).  I scrunched it up then glued to the card and painted with Prawn and Candy Floss.  Stamped over in Sepia Archival with Backgrounds Plate 3 and cut out large and small hearts. On the 3 small hearts I stamped yesterday, today and tomorrow from HPXT09.

All the Hot Picks have great versatility both individually and as a whole plate, The trouble I'll have now is splitting up the plate from HPXT06  as I love it so much as one big plate - special request Maria and Captain Von Trapp, can I have a special stamping of the words in one big plate just for me?

Hugs
Jo

Fish supper

So I have my art journal out on the table whenever I'm painting, so I can use the excess paint and clean my brush a bit.

Today I've been working on a new piece (A4 size) to go in one of the frames on my stair wall and this page in the journal is the mop up of that piece.

It feels good to use the journal and use up some of the "extras" like the water colour paper and the second ATC.I cut and made just in case I didnt like the first one!

The background is is various PaperArtsy chalk finish blues with some stencilling and stamping with blue shades of Archival Inks.  Walnut Stain Distress Ink added and spritzed with water to give the water marks.

 

The ATC was made from a scrap of blue card, some book paper with Inky Pool as a first layer and then Blue Ice and Inky Pool as a top layer.  A crackle stamp from Blu Indigo in Watering Can Archival and then the PaperArtsy fish stamp embossed in black.  Distressed the edges and then two layers of clear embossing to get the glass effect.  When it was cold, I created the cracks by bending the card.  

This was stapled to the watercolour paper and before I stuck it down I used a water soluble and ordinary brown pencil to scribble the square.

I think I'm going to enjoy using this journal in this way, quite quick using up scraps as I create bigger pieces. Still not sure whether I'm ready to write personal stuff in it yet though!

 

Hugs

Jo

xx