Wedding card

Art Journalling - layered backgrounds

Inspiring Lisa Vollrath art journalling year long course continues - here are my March layered backgrounds

I have tried collage elements plus gesso, acrylic paints thinned with medium, stencilling with sequin waste and borders,stamping on tracing paper and stamping.

and a similar one with magazine eyes and some text.

How to make a domino book

Domino books are tiny 1" x 2" books made -as you would expect - from dominoes for covers and a concertina of pages for the inside.

They are pretty, easy to make and have the inexplicable appeal of the miniature.

Alcohol inks make attractive covers on their own, The colours run into one another like oil on water.  Cover the sides and run over onto the under side as well so no white will show.

When dry Glue n' Seal can be used to add tiny images.

The inside could also be painted or a little story could be added.

The inside is made from a strip of watercolour paper folded into the concertina shape; each tiny page should be a little smaller all round than the domino itself. Watercolour makes a good blended background and then more tiny images can be added - I used unicorns off wrapping paper, Dover images of Victorians, roses off craft paper and a little ATC  book of vintage Easter images.

The pages may need trimming to fit neatly into the book...

The covers are attached to the ends of the concertina with all purpose glue; a length of ribbon is glued underneath the front and back to act as tie  closures.

 And there you have it - endearing little books!

Whimsical pages

Backgrounds for art journalling

One colour

Two colour with dry brush

3 colour

Collage

I carried on with the fish collage and added a second smaller canvas and lots and lots of fish.
It's is called Big Fish Little Fish - which refers to the canvas sizes, not the fish themselves.

The fish are cut out and stripes and spots added before they are glued down...

Rule of thirds...

More inspiration from Lisa Vollrath's wonderful course, which I highly recommend.

In the rule of thirds, there should be points of interest on the intersections, there should also be a focal point and some kind of linear connection.

The picture above was my first try at applying the rule of thirds , but I think this was very unsuccessful -it is bitty, it had no true focus and the middle is full of random tat!

So I scrapped it and did the one below instead... the figure on the right is a focal point and the juggling figure connects across the spread

I completed this one above one, again using the rule of thirds - although the central figure  is a strong one , the true focus is on the right staring out and the central figure has its back to the viewer. I did a lot of sanding away of the figure, which I like, and the connection across the spread is the text in this case...

These two incorporate the maps and text in the original book into the spreads, again with sanding

 

The final spread is a bit cluttered but I wanted to use the Modigliani images...