Artful Journeys - Week 30 - playing peek-a-boo

It's been a while since I was good and happy with one of my spreads, but I really love how this week's came out.  I think the hardest part for me was the paint shading.

Our challenge for this week was to paint in our 3 favorite colors, then stamp thru a stencil over our background.  It dawned on me, after I was done with it, that I hadn't used an "image" stamp, but since I love how it turned out, I'm not gonna worry about that little oversight.

So let me get started by showing you what I did, then I will let you know what I used.  Here we go.......

So I started with a background I'd done a few days ago, but I didn't like the paint, so I grabbed my gesso and started fresh.

Here's the spread after the paint is finished...I would have been content to leave it like this, but the prompt said do more, so I did.  The reason I had trouble with the blending is because for this spread, I went to the tried and true craft acrylics, but you gotta be quick because they dry wicked fast!

Here's my first round choices for the stamping thru a stencil.

Here's a shot of the page after I went thru the stencil with my stamp.

And here's a closeup of one of the stamped spots.

And here is round 2...as you can see, I took the pic after I did the stamping, but I was just glad I remembered the damn picture.

And here's a shot of my stamp thru this stencil.

And finally, round 3

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And how it looked afterwards.

Here's a shot of the completed spread as a whole.

Here's a shot of the left page.

And a shot of the right page.

Now, for all the supplies used...3 colors of craft paint, a sheet of scrapbook paper, Adirondak ink pads in stream and wild plum and a black archival ink pad, 2 Dylusions stamps and one by Prima Marketing, A dylusions stencil and a Heidi Swap stencil.  Pretty sure that covers it, aside from the usual glue stick, paintbrushes, fingers and water, lol.

Now, in other creative happenings, I have gotten some more of my index cards for ICAD 2015 completed, and I am finally almost caught up!  I'm pretty excited, to tell you the truth because last year I didn't even make it past the first week with this challenge....

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The actual point of the challenge is to do one a day, but back towards the beginning of the challenge I fell behind and was 14 days out, but I really wanted to complete this years, so I have been steadily plugging away at it!

Thanks for stopping by to take a look and I'll catch y'all next week!

Artful Journeys Wk 29 - A List

We all have one...a bucket list...Things we really want to do/try before we leave this awesome life.  But let's face it, most of the time, we don't even acknowledge, or put in writing, those things.  Some are big, some are small, some are HUGE, and most put us WAAAAAAAAAAY out of our comfort zones, which is why they're on the bucket list.

Well, this week at AJ, we want you to acknowledge your bucket list...give it a place in your journal, and maybe even work at marking some things off of it!

I started with a background that I'd done a couple of months ago, made with acrylics and map pieces, then got to work....

I added a set of 50 die-cut states, leaving Texas out of it, because I live here already...and glued them down all over the two page spread, then wrote out my list and edged it with a black gelato and glued it down.  Easy peasy...I hope at some point to mark those little things off my list.

Also this week, I got some more index cards for the ICAD 2015 project created...nothing spectacular, but the creativity was there....here they are...

Paper, cardboard, brads and some sheet music

Brayered craft paint background, some drywall tape, a little mini file folder sent to me from a wonderful friend and a brad.

Acrylics scraped on with an empty gift card, some marks and a piece of a coaster from one of my favorite places to eat, along with my fave foods to eat there!

Random bits and bobs from my work area.

More random bits and pieces

feathers cut from a catalog, an altered globe image from a magazine, some ribbon on mop up card, as well as a few rhinestones and a piece of flair

a fabric sample colored with India ink, a piece of a catalog and some butterfly punches

bookpage glued onto an index card, with some tissue paper pieces and a quote by Mary Lou Retton

Not a bad week creatively speaking, although the spread is the only thing in the art journal that's gotten done this week...I find it incredibly hard to create when the kids are in the house with me...they are creativity suckers.  But, I love them, so they get to live, lol.

On Friday, I went and got my nails done...it's always nice to get away from the house for a couple of hours just for me, and to have something to show for it...

A little bit of the beach at my fingertips...oh, how I wish I were there

And that's it for me!  Hope you have a terrific week of art and love!

Later, Y'all!!!!!

Artful Journeys Week 28

Well, summer has come to Texas and I can finally eat one of my favorite treats without getting strange looks.  Ice cream!  I LOVE ice cream...

So for this week, I used a background that I had created a couple of weeks ago, when I was working on my July calendar.  I grabbed some cardboard for my ice cream cone, and a book page and a couple of pieces of painted paper to make my "scoops".  Once I had it all glued down, I grabbed my Marks-all pencil and outlined it, then used a water brush on it...just to give it a little depth.

Next I hit up my favorite inspiration destination for a quote about ice cream.  I played around with a few, but the minute I found the one I used, I knew I had to use it.  It's something I used to tell my kids all the time when they were little...or at least, something similar.

So here are some shots of my spread. It was a lot of fun creating this week...

And here are a few other things I worked on this week...

A coloring sheet from Tesselations by Creative Haven, colored with Crayola and Prismacolor colored pencils.

 Next are some ICADs that I worked on this last week....I'm still behind but I am trying hard to catch up.  Most of these are made with bits and pieces of happy mail or assorted papers.

 And, finally, a couple of swaps I sent out for one of the groups I belong to...

Well, that's all from me for this week's post.  Thanks for stopping by to look around, I hope you enjoyed your visit.  Be sure to say hi before you go to see the other girls!

Week 27 for Artful Journeys

So the prompt for this week is ocean/beach/summer fun...one of my favorite places on this great earth is the ocean and I was pretty excited about this prompt.  So I dug out my inks, some paper towels, my journal and a pic I fussy cut from Va Va Voom - Classic Hollywood Pinups.  

I got started on a clean spread with my inks, but I wasn't getting the result that I wanted, so I got the paper towels I used to blot up the excess inks, and started tearing them into strips and gluing them down onto the paper to create my ocean.

Once I had them where I wanted them, and had everything glued down, I glued down my pic,  wrote my phrase, "wish you were here..." and began going back over the paper towels with some acrylic inks to add a little visual interest to my texture.    

I really love how this one turned out...and here are a couple more pics of some other things I worked on this weekend.

colored image by DiceBird, with an acrylic background and words in Sharpie!

Coloring sheet from Stress Less Coloring, Paisley patterns

I hope you have enjoyed looking and hope you'll come back again next week!