30 days in your journal - more continuing the journey!

I am loving Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's 30 Days In Your Journal course and can highly recommend it as I have learned so much!

I shall be so sad when it is over!

I am loving this idea from the course, to draw and colour your own alphabet using your own style of handwriting. I have used watercolours, plus watercolour crayons, Derwent Inktense pencils, black and white pens and Sakura gel and souffle pens, plus some wonderful Liquid Applique - for which I am indebted to Vicki Z on ATCsforall.com who sent me some as I could not get it in the UK. It's great stuff and puffs right up when it is heated.

I am thinking I can use this scan and print it out in different sizes to use as a really interesting font to cut and paste - and I can do the same with numbers! Wow, looking forward to seeing some of these letters as words!

This second spread is taking the leftovers and scraps approach of Julie's - I have the card and paper that's left after using Cuttlebug dies, and it makes great stencils and collage elements. I like the white gesso over the top to unify the page.

I also love the Letraset list for today - even though I should be doing what is on it instead of blogging about it!:)

And Yet More 30 Days In Your Journal

I am still doing this wonderful on-line course by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. It is really good for showing new techniques that I have never tried before and also it has freed me up to do much more of the journalling - instead of just the art!

This was an interesting spread to do, as it uses a collage of old book pages, plus gesso and watercolour as the background and has a focal point of a face and hair.

I like the idea of the face becoming an integrated part of the page, with journalling flowing around it.
My first woman had wonky eyes so I had to repaint her. My husband says all my women are dreamy pre- Raphaelite types with full mouths, large eyes and languid expressions ( he thinks they are very soppy!). Therefore this face is a much stronger and more powerful one... I did not like her much at first, but she is growing on me! I think she would be someone to turn to for good advice!


The next page was great fun; this part of the course involves playing with alphabet letters, and trying to use your own style to make a personalized font.
I shall be interested to see how this page develops (watch this space!)

I made a grid for the alphabet and used the left over right hand side of the page to add to the left hand page to make a slightly wider spread for journalling; I used Julie's lovelyThanksgiving image as although we don't celebrate it here in the UK, my son is in Michigan with his US wife and they were celebrating with a chicken stir-fry:)

(Some of the journalling is a rant I'm afraid as my husband's hospital referral - which was supposed to have been done a month ago was never made:()

However - for the headings I used some Dover and Sizzix alphabets, some peel offs and the numbers were Tim Holtz chipboard letters, Sizzix again and some Cuttlebug numbers - plus my nice new spotty washi tape as thanks to Julie I have found this new arty resource!

30 days in your journal - continuing the journey!

Because I am in the UK so I could not get the recommended  journal but I already had a a really nice cheap little book from specialist crafts art design www.specialistcrafts.co.uk/products-Economy-Sketchbooks_D... It is A4 cartridge paper and gives me 19 double spreads and was only £1.94!! "Economy Sketchbooks A range of low cost sketchbooks that contain good quality 160gsm white cartridge. Ideal for most sketching and illustration exercises. An excellent low cost bulk usage product. Staple fixed - 20 sheets per book." It has stood up really well to painting, layering, collaging and stamping. I decided to go back to the beginning and add a title page, using water colour washes, paints, stencils and collage, so it leads in to the book now. The background of this double page spread uses  Cuttlebug plus Sizzix Ink-its Letterpress Plates which "combine style and ease to create artful ink-debossed impressions. This easy process impresses paper, cardstock, chipboard, mat board and other soft, thick materials. Elegant enough for any occasion, they provide the perfect accents for cards, invites, scrapbook pages..." I used archival Whispers stamp pads and collaged the  prints on. Then I used the Tim Holtz Sizzix bird cage and bird dies, blue Cuttlebug butterflies and numbers.  Most of these were cut from an old French paperback of "The Witches of Eastwick" as I love foreign text, and I am just going through the book adding watercolour washes to every page ready for use.

Now back to the course!! This spread uses a black background instead of white

 Something I have never done.


I should have used black gesso and watercolour crayons but did not have the gesso and did not want to wait for it! :( so I used black airbrush paint instead - it covered well and has a matte finish, BUT the surface would not take water colour crayons. So I used watercolour paints instead to draw and colour the butterflies, then I decorated and journalled with a white uni-ball signo broad pen. This covers everything, so long as I remember to let it dry first!
My husband LOVES this spread!!

Chine collee on dry point acetate sheets using the Cuttlebug as a press

More 30 days In My Journal

On this spread I used a Tim Holtz slide die cut.
I have been experimenting with using a Cuttlebug as a printing press with dry point on acetate sheets; I pushed archival stamp ink into the cuts I had drawn in to the sheet to make a face. I printed on damp paper so you can see the different attempts.
It also worked for chine collee - I inked up the plates and then laid collage elements face down on top, glued the back surfaces (facing up) and laid damp paper on top - which means the collage sticks to the paper and the dry point prints through making a kind of sandwich .. v pleased with this experiment:) 
I alos used the Cuttlebug to make lino cuts from a fish cut I did - again using Whispers archival ink pads, also worked - yay!!

More 30 days in your journal

I am really enjoying this course. This page uses tags and ephemera for journalling.
Following the course I did stencilled rectangles on a watercolour background.
On the left hand side of the spread I have used  lots of bits and pieces that have been sitting around. I used a parcel tag sandwiched with a piece of Cuttlebug remnant paper with tag dies cut out, copies of 3 old autumn atcs I did ages ago and fragments of poetry.
On the right hand spread I have used print outs of pieces I made using the Serif Craft Artist software and elements from their Daisy Trail Digikits. You can change colours, sizes and orientation and there are alphabets and numbers. I also used some autumn images and some digital tags.
I printed two copies of the digital piece with the clock, distressed the back and stuck one on top of the other, so the top section lifts up and I have journalled underneath in white pen. (So that part is both  interactive and personal)

30 days in your journal

This is a great course I am doing with Balzer Designs; it has really got me doing the actual journalling in art journalling instead of just the art!!

This is about going to see a broadcast of Tosca from the Royal Opera House at a cinema in Lincoln on Nov 7th...

While this is the beginning of journalling about several days in November - with material about autumn, night and day etc.

More altered books - reborn books

Lisa Vollrath's Reborn Books Class


If you are ever looking for the best ever course on reborn books take this!!!!
 Lisa Vollrath's Reborn Books Class -If it runs again sign up!!



See Lisa's brilliant work here...
http://www.lisavollrath.com





It is one of the best courses I have ever taken and I have learned how to take an old book and use the cover to bind my own pages.


This was an old encyclopaedia and the pages are back to back distressed inkjet prints (of pages from medieval books of hours that I have been collecting for ages)


I am going to use it as a kind of calendar of the year - spring, summer, autumn, winter -  and maybe doing some material about universal festivals like Yule/Christmas, Festivals of Light and so forth.


I have been planning to do a book of hours for ages and this course has created it for me!!


(See also http://www.tentwostudios.com/ and the Monthly Muse and Go Make Something)

Zetti Journal Pages

Two mixed media zetti pages for a journal page swap - mixed media