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!

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!!

And now some happier pages

I love this colour scheme - red, black and neutrals - and I also have asked for it in my new deco book which is about to go into a deco journal swap on atcsforall.com.

Again I was planning to use some Cuttlebug bits and pieces - Tim Holtz dies again, the steampunk cogs and wheels and slide die, and used them to cut out stark black, red and lettering.

I also used lettering from the Melody Ross SoulFood, pages again, plus old book pages, and positive and negative cuts for the butterflies,

Finally I used a script Cuttelbug embossing folder to make a back ground of embossed semi distressed script and used some frames made from Paper Cellar Ltd Victorian Classic papers waste after I had cut out some journal pages.. I wanted a strong composition of squares with repetition of elements..

I was  terrrifed of my work becoming twee by using embossing folder and cutting dies, but I am really pleased with the drama of this page...

More Using Fold Out Journals -

I always said it was a hyperactive blog - but it is not fast!


Back in April I was writing about using the Strathmore Journal workshops to make stepped pages and fold out pages, so I have had some pages with the backgrounds waiting to be used since posts in April and June... as another part of my Art Journal Every Day challenge...

I had got as far as using some eraser stamps I carved to stamp "seek", "find" and "live" all around the edges of the page, but then I was playing with my new Cuttlebug.

I have got some Tim Holtz dies and big up plates for the Cutttlebug, so I have used his slide film die plus other Cuttlebug and Sizzix dies for lettering, butterflies and dragonflies.

I got some lovely paper by Melody Ross designer collections called "Soul Food" with these great generic fifties/sixties women, so I cut those out and used the same paper as some of the die cut material.

There was a quote on the page with the girl on the left saying "She stopped to smell the daisies" so I used that as the theme of the page. I used two other figures - one on the left looking serious and studious with one in the middle encouraging her to have a full life and also take some time out.

Then I had a rush of flowers and insects going across the whole panorama and to link the women and to give it a joyful feel...

I feel happy just looking at it!!