Art Journal Cover by Karen

For today's post I thought it was time I decorated the cover of my art journal. What to do if you want some texture but without things that will catch and tear? Tissue paper and different texture pastes was my answer.

Manila paper tends to suck the colour out of everything and I wanted to have a bit of white space so I started with a layer of white gesso, feathered out so there were no hard lines. Then I added a bit of light background stamping and stamped my title on to tissue paper.

I painted the back of the tissue paper white so that it would stand out against a coloured background...

and I added Turquoise acrylic paint to the cover, again feathering out to avoid hard edges.

For a pop of contrast and some texture, I mixed Magenta paint in to transparent relief paste (now called Design-It) and stenciled this over the other colours.

To take the title stand out more, I added a light touch of Cadium Yellow and used gel medium to stick down the tissue paper adding a coat under and over to be sure it was well adhered. I added a third lot of stenciling too.

Mixing Yellow and Scarlet paint for a bright orange, I added more stenciling and doodled round the stars and circles with black and white pens. I used Black Acrylic Paint to sponge round the edges of the cover.

For more texture and contrast, I stenciled Black Expand-IT paste on to the cover. I also added lines with the edge of a paint knife to the 'Art' letters, and heated the Expand-IT to puff it up for some volume.

I am sure I will continue to doodle or add to this over time but, for now, it makes me happy that my journal has a decorated cover in some of my favourite bright colours. It gives a hint of what is inside. More of that another day!

Bye for now
Karen
x

Soft Form Relief Paste	EXpandit 3D expanding medium	StazOn Jet Black	Plastic Painting Knives	Golden Matt medium
white gesso	Heat Gun	Golden haired nylon brushes	Eco Acrylic Paint

Art journaling 'Dream Tomorrow' by Karen James

I've returned to my art journal and ColourCraft Acrylic Inks for another double page spread.

I used warm tones - Golden Yellow, Orange, Scarlet and Deep Crimson - for the background and then contrasting Turquoise, Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue for the focal points with Copper Design-It paste giving more texture and a lovely sheen.
I filmed the process so you can see how all the layers are built up. It is edited to keep it short and I've given a voice over with lots of art journaling tips and tricks: Hope you enjoy it!

Please don't forget to subscribe to the ColourCraft channel while you are there.
With thanks for spending your time with us.
Karen
x

Acrylic Inks	Soft Form Relief Paste	Clear Spray Bottle	Plastic Painting Knives	Eco Acrylic Paint
Heat Gun	Golden haired nylon brushes

We're All Mad Here Journal Page with Suzi

Good Day All, Today I'd like to share with you an Art Journal Page I've created featuring Brusho Crystal Colour Powders, Koh-I-Noor Polycolour Pencils and some wonderful stamps.

The first thing I did was to take a page out of my A4 Art Journal, then using the Bubble Wrap Texture stamp from Crafty Roo Designs along with clear ink and white embossing powder I add texture to the top and bottom of my page.

Next it was time to add some colour to my page,  so I sprinkled the following colours of Brusho Crystal Colour Powders across the page in strips starting at the top with Ultramarine, Turquoise, Sea Green and finally Leaf Green at the bottom.

Once dry I used the Sketch Lines Texture stamp from Crafty Roo Designs and Green Permanent Ink to add lots of lines to the bottom of the page to give the impression of grass.

I then added Sketch Lines in Blue Permanent Ink to the top of the page to enhance the sky.

The Next step was to stamp my flowers to create my garden, I used a selection of Funky Flower stamps from Crafty Roo Designs.

To colour my flowers I created patterned papers with Brushos in shades of Blue, Purple and Orange, I then stamped my flowers onto them and cut them out ready to layer onto my journal page.

To colour the leaves I created a patterned paper with Brushos in shades of Green, stamped the leaves and then cut them out.

Before sticking the flowers and leaves down I decided to add some more texture behind them using the Cluster Texture stamp from Crafty Roo Designs.  Once I'd stuck the flowers and leaves down I added Blue inks to define the stems and flowers and edged the page with the same ink.  

I then added shading to the flowers and leaves with Koh-I-Noor Polycolor Pencils.

.I then decided to add some extra elements to my page, namely some Butterflies from Crafty Roo Designs, and Anya, Ian and Cat stamps from The Greeting Farm.

To finish the page I stamped my sentiment onto some leftover papers, cut the words out and edged with blue ink before sticking them to the page.  For final details I used a white pen to add highlights.

Here's a few closeups to show the details;

I had great fun creating this page, I love Alice in Wonderland and it's quite a while since I created anything inspired by it.  I love how the little characters make the flowers look really big and magical.

We are living in crazy times at the moment, so it's good to believe in a fantasy world were everything is beautiful and magical.  Hopefully our world will stop being quite so crazy soon, but in the meantime, lets all stay safe and look after each other.

Thanks for visiting with us today,

Bye for now

Suzi

xxx

Fun Brusho Eggs

Hello Everyone!
It's Easter weekend and much of the world is at home with plenty of time for making crafty things.
I was doing a sketch for #100dayproject and made an egg and thought it might be fun to show you all how to make some yourself! Great for cards, sketchbook layouts and I am debating having a social media egg hunt!

I started by sketching out some egg shapes on a dictionary page (Swedish dictionary, the page with the word for bird on it).

I then did some light watercolor washes in each egg shape- eggs come in lots of different shades!

While the eggs were still damp, I sprinkled on different colors of Brusho and even SprinkleIt  on a couple of the eggs! The fun thing about the surface being damp is that the Brusho clumps in some places and spreads in others- giving a lovely speckled effect that is often seen in actual birds eggs.

I then drew around each egg with a black pen and cut outside the lines.
Then I glued them into a junk journal I have started - such fun!

I love how they turned out and hope you enjoy making some yourselves!
Remember- eggs aren't just for Easter! They are a great symbol for Spring, for new beginnings as well as just being a satisfying form to work with.

See you in  a couple of weeks!

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

15g brusho

Golden haired nylon brushes

Art Journal pages by Karen

Art journaling is used by many people as a form of therapy, letting emotions out on to the page which can then be hidden by the art layers. I don't often do this but today I thought I would show this process because it does help to sometimes get feelings out of your head and on to the page.

Without any planning as to how the page would look when finished, I made a process video:

I scribbled some thoughts in the journal and then covered the pages with some gesso and started my mark-making, adding colour with Colourcraft acrylic inks. These translucent inks are permanent once dry so they can be layered without creating mud and have a lovely soft effect.

The colours were softened further in places with white ColourCraft Eco Acrylic Paint and the stencil was used with black.

 Further contrast and texture was added with Design-It paste in Glossy White.

Finally, I used a white pen to add highlighting to some shapes and the text.

Thanks for stopping by today. Do you do art journalling? I hope you like this spread and the lovely acrylic ink colours.
Karen

Soft Form Relief Paste	Clear Spray Bottle	Plastic Painting Knives	Eco Acrylic Paint	white gesso
Heat Gun	Golden haired nylon brushes