Tag: Nature

June Art Journal Page-Finding Happiness

Hello friends!  Happy weekend!  I hope you’re enjoying yourself with whatever you have going on.  It’s hard to believe that it’s almost time for us to celebrate the 4th of July holiday! 

We’ve been having higher than normal temperatures this time of year and you never really know if that humidity is going to circle back up in the air to create a thunderstorm.  Nature can be a wonderful thing though, and this is what the focus is for my page.

  • It’s time for the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month.  I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” June prompt of “DISTRESS”-(rough up/sand/rip, etc): 

So taking this approach with the prompt of “distress”, I thought it called for green colors and lots of nature collage type elements from my stash!  I have tons of those Tim Holtz ephemera packages, so I pulled those out along with distress oxide sprays.  I haven’t used those in quite a while.

For the background:  I started with a 5.5″ x 8.5″ (pre-punched holes with the Bind-It-All machine) very heavy weight canvas paper.  I started with a couple of pieces of ripped printed papers and distressed/inked the edges of it with Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink.  I then took a Tim Holtz stencil and randomly applied paste over it.   After the paste dried, I placed the panel into a box and sprayed it with variations of water and distress oxide sprays in Peeled Paint, Rustic Wilderness, Fossilized Amber and Vintage Photo.  I added water and dried with my heat tool after each color until it was blended as I liked.  I took off the Vintage Photo cap and splattered a few drop with it.

Before applying the ephemera pieces, I had a solid fern stamp that I randomly stamped with Rustic Wilderness Distress Oxide ink.  I also stamped a few of those “rain drop” images randomly in the center of the page with black waterproof ink.  I removed the background color out of the images with a watercolor brush and then added back in a touch of blue color from an ink pad lid.  I used a white gel pen to add a highlight and covered the drops with a glitter brush pen.

Finishing the page, I’ve stamped the bug and magnifying glass, colored them in and added some acetate behind the magnifying glass, I ripped, sanded and distressed the edges of the page, the card behind the bird and randomly over the background.  Before attaching the pieces, I took some white pearl wax and rubbed over the stenciled paste areas.   I also sanded around the edges of the black sentiment strips.  I attached all of the ephemera pieces and popped the card and butterfly pieces with foam tape.  I added a safety pin to the card and glitter to the tops of the flowers in the corner.  (hard to see in photo)

  • The sentiment at the top reads:  if you want to find happiness, find gratitude.

Another prompt I worked on with this is the challenge over at Art Journal Journey which was “What Makes You Happy“.  So although nature helps with happiness for me, I find that happiness is multi-faceted with the purpose being exactly what the sentiment says.   I thought it went perfectly with this page.

Since my husband is retired and we now have time to take little road trips here and there and sometimes stop along the way to find an interesting trail or nature walk or park to explore.  We’ve had some great times doing this and I love being out in nature especially among the trees after a gentle rain.  The smell and coolness in Autumn are fabulous for this!

 Click on a photo to enlarge it if you’re on my website:

This was quite a wordy post, but I hope you’ve enjoyed my inspiration today and how it was inspired.  Thanks so much for joining me today and please check out Carol’s blog too!

Challenges:

  1. Art Journal Journey – What Makes You Happy
  2. Creative Artiste – #105 Anything Goes Mixed Media
  3. Anything Goes in a Card Free Zone – June challenge ATG
  4. A Place to Start – Anything Goes optional:  Anything but a card
  5. Paperminutes – #852 Stencils

November AJ Page-Winter Wonderland

Hello friends!  Hope everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving for those that celebrate.  And with that, there is also the Black Friday deals, and today is “small business Saturday”.  So have you’ve gotten some really good deals or do you shop during this time?  I don’t really shop too much during this time, but I enjoy hearing about the great deals everyone has gotten!

The last Saturday of the month also brings us to the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month.  I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” November prompt of “STENCILS” (can also make your own):

I do love stencils, don’t you?!  I have lots of them in my stash and I don’t always use them as much as I’d like to, so how fun to pull out several of them for this month’s prompt!  All of the ones I’ve used on my page are from Tim Holtz.  The entire page is stencil expect for the deer, sentiment and bottom snow!  (I would’ve used the deer for a stencil too, but I don’t have one.)

For the background:  Started with my usual 6″x9″ 140# watercolor pre-punched holes on the side.  I took the large star looking stencil and sponged some VersaMark ink over it towards the top of the page and heat embossed it with clear EP.  (This made a “resist” for the ink I layered on top.)  I took a long strip of masking paper and ripped it to create some hills for the bottom.  I needed to mask so the colors didn’t go over it.   I took several different colors of Distress Oxide sprays along with spritzing with water to help the colors move around and made a few layers with this.  Once dry, I went over the background with the dotted stencil and sponged ink over it with a blue color.

For the tree stencil, I needed to be sure that it would cover the background I created, so I used some green paint to sponge over the stencil, but because the background is blue, it’s sort of harder to see the green.  This stencil also had a second part where you can cover each tree with another layer for either another green or snow.  So I used some Hero Arts white paste to cover it with.  I also used the same paste to add another layer of stencil to the sky for snowfall.

The silhouette deer is a stamp that I stamped with black pigment ink and then I heat embossed it with clear EP.  My final touch to the page was to take the Hero Arts white paste and cover the hills at the bottom using my spatula.  Really love the dried look of the paste as it has a wonderful shine to it which works great for snow!  It didn’t take as long as I thought it would to dry. (About 2 hours it was hardened.)

I found a couple of the Tim Holtz sticker quotes to go with my theme, added to black cardstock and went around the edges with a silver paint pen.  I cut them out with scissors and glued to the page.  I took some silver wax and went around the edge of the page with my finger and lastly added some glitter drops to a couple of the centers of the “stars” in the sky.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today or have been inspired!  I appreciate you taking the time to stop in! 

Challenges:

  1. Art Journal Journey – Nature (I love nature in the wintertime!  So pretty covered in snow!)
  2. Try It on Tuesday – Baby, It’s Cold Outside!
  3. Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes
  4. Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media (stencils, pastes, paints, inks)
  5. Stencil Fun – Anything Goes using stencil(s) optional: leaves
  6. 613 Avenue Create – Anything Goes optional embossing (heat embossed)