November AJ Page-Time

Hello friends and happy weekend! Monday will be the first of December already! Wow, time seems to be going so fast especially at the end of year! This is exactly what my page was inspired by in this post!

Last Saturday of November brings us to the monthly “SMASH OUR STASH” Art Journaling. I’ve collaborated with my crafty friend Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) to join in. Here’s my AJ page with the NOVEMBER prompt of “TRADITIONS”:

This is a little different type of style, but most of the time I just come up with whatever happens to pop into my head and hopefully with older items I have from my stash!

This may not seem like I’ve used the “traditions” prompt for this month, but if you look at the wording at the bottom of the pocket watch, It says “Sentimental Traditions”. I was thinking of “old timey” type of things and the story about traditions on my page comes from my family going to our favorite place every fall for picking apples and now my children go every year as well, so it’s fun to know they’re still enjoying the same tradition we had with them.

For the background: (size of Mixed Media paper is 5.5″ x 8.5″) I ink blended with brushed corduroy oxide ink and spritzed with water to create the watermarks. I stenciled the dots with fired brick oxide and went around the edges with black soot oxide. I added some background paper to the other side that has the apple tree and then I added the paper doll couple over top and then added the “TIME” lettering that was die cut with black cardstock above them. I also sponged around the edges of the apple tree paper with black soot oxide. I added a gold metallic sticker line in the center between the paper and ink background.

I took a really old Whimsy Stamp stamp set with the pocket watch stamp and stamped it with black ink and then used a pen to write the words: “TIME has a way of showing us what matters.” I then stamped a couple more of the pocket watch image in brushed corduroy oxide and then splattered some gold watercolor over right side of the page.

Thanks so much for stopping in today! Hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – A Moment In Time
Anything Goes in a Card Free Zone – No cards
Creative Artiste – #121 Anything Goes Mixed Media

April Art Journal Page-Recycled Spring

Hello friends! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and have been enjoying the wonderful Spring weather outside! We have all sorts of blooms and buds everywhere which is really exciting to see! I think I need to trim some lilacs from my bush to put in a jar and enjoy the lovely smell from them!

Today is our monthly AJ page with my crafty friend Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) who is collaborating with me to “SMASH OUR STASH”! 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” April prompt of “RECYCLE/UPCYCLE”:

Flowers are everywhere, so I thought I’d place them all over my page today too!

For my “recycled” elements, I have used a floral napkin in the background which gives it some wonderful texture and I’ve also painted some white paint over it for a “wash” so that it wasn’t so bright and vibrant and too busy for the background. I splattered some black and gold watercolor over it as well.

I found a darling image with these gorgeous Spring birds perched on the fence, cut it out and popped it up at the bottom with foam tape.

I thought that a strip of gold cardstock (left over from a project) would make a nice bright accent to go with my gold embossed “HELLO SPRING” sentiment and gold splatter.

I’ve also “recycled” an old part of an ATC project and half of a doily to add on the side with the sentiment and I’ve tied some old twine around that ATC panel.

Lastly, I’ve added some flowers and a butterfly from my old collection of ephemera pieces left over from years ago!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today and it gives you all the feels of Spring in the air! I had fun putting this one together! Thanks so much for dropping in!

(Feeling a little bit under the weather this week and I’ll catch up as I can! Thanks for understanding!)

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Spring Birds
Anything Goes in a Card Free Zone – April No Cards
Creative Artiste – #114 Mixed Media projects
Neglected Stuff – April (doily, Tim Holtz ephemera)
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Blooming Blooms

October Art Journal-A Strange Feeling

Hello friends! **THIS IS A PRE-SCHEDULED POST AS I’M AWAY AT A STAMP RETREAT!!**

The weather is finally starting to cool down now and we’ve finished cleaning the yard to prepare for winter months to follow soon. Halloween will also be here in a few days, so I thought it would be fun to make my page today with that in mind!

Today is 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” October prompt of “ODD/Oddities” (anything unusual or strange):

I don’t know if this is considered odd to anyone else, but I certainly do! This weird scientist looking guy has a strange facial expression as he’s holding up a head in the bottle! I’ve put so many details in this page that I thought you’d need to see close-up photos below.

For my background: Starting with a 5.5″ x 8.5″ heavy watercolor paper with pre-punched holes at the top for binding later, I sprayed the background with mica sprays in Hocus Pocus, Jack-O-Lantern and Flickering Candle. I sprayed some extra water over top to get them to blend together as they seem very concentrated and they didn’t move much over the watercolor paper after spraying a few times. I took a leaves stencil inked over places with light brown ink. I then ink blended the edges with black ink and stamped some lettering stamped randomly. Lastly, I splattered with black and gold watercolor.

Upon a closer look at the bottom: I needed an area for shelves to hold the potion bottles, so I took some Tim Holtz Halloween collage paper and attached it with matte medium. It crinkled a bit, but I sort of liked that look. I then found some decorative strips in my stash and added those for the “shelves”. The crow and “curious” ephemera was also found with all of my Tim Holtz Halloween stash….along with the paper doll “guy”. I cut off a head from one of them to place inside the jar. I added some thin metal wire around the jar and cut a slit in the guy’s hand to make it look like he’s holding it. I also added a bit of color to the guy’s flower and bow tie on his jacket outfit with markers. BEFORE popping up the paper doll guy to the page, I ripped some black cardstock for the ground underneath him and tucked in the bones.

For the Bottles: I used a Taylored Expressions “If You Dare” Stamp & Stencil set to make all of the bottles. I also used the TE “If You Dare Halloween Labels” to foil and cut out to place over each jar. To die cut some extra “strange things” to put inside a few of the jars and the bones at the bottom, I die cut pieces from the TE “Little Bits Cauldron Confetti” dies. (The die cut bats from this were also used on the top of the page.) For more finishing details, I doodled in some of the jars and then added some colored glitter/sparkle and pearl drops for the inside contents. If you look closely at the crow’s eye, you can see I’ve added a tiny dot of yellow sparkle. Some of the details were popped up and some were just glued down.

A closer look at the top: Mostly die cut pieces were used at the top and the first I put down was the spider web and spider from Whimsy Stamps called Spiders and Webs…they’re huge! (this store is so good at spooky things!) I drew a line with a black marker from the spider to the web. For the window, I die cut it out from a really old Mama Elephant die I’ve had in my stash…not sure if it’s still available. BEFORE I placed the window down, I die cut the moon from the Lawn Fawn Shadow Box Halloween Add-On die set. I blended in some yellow and gray and covered it with a glitter sparkle pen. I added the die cut bats and placed the window over top.

Lastly, I took some Tim Holtz Halloween clippings word strips and added to the page. I took a black marker and went around the strips above the paper doll “guy”.

I know there are people that are not Halloween fans or care for the spooky things, but I really enjoy the weirdness of it all and have fun making things with it! In the words of Lydia from Beetlejuice: “I myself am strange and unusual“.

Winona Ryder in a hat as Lydia in Beetlejuice

I do hope you’ve enjoyed my page today and I really appreciate you stopping by! I will be back later with things we’re doing at the retreat! See you soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Autumn Colors & Inspiration (Purple, orange, yellow and black!)

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:

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

March Art Journal Page-You Just Have to Ride

Hello friends! We are at the end of March, and it happens to also be Easter weekend as well this year! So happy Easter and I hope you’re enjoying the beginning of the Spring season! I will be out as this post goes up, but I wanted to get in this month’s AJ 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” March prompt of “POSTAL”:

For this month’s theme, I knew I had lots of real postage stamps in my stash and some ephemera pieces as well as some postal tissue wrap from Tim Holtz. I have a huge roll of it and it was time to get it back out and use it up! When looking for my postage stamps, I also found a post card that I previously created and a vintage looking photo that I printed out…which I also turned into a very large postage style stamp.

The top of the page says: “Some days you just have to ride, however difficult it might be!“

For the Background: I used an 8.5″ x 5.5″ piece of acrylic paper with pre-punched holes at the top and blended some media paints over the background which gave me the bright blended colors. I ripped pieces of the Tim Holtz Postale Tissue Wrap and attached with matte medium over the blended paint background. After it was dry, I ripped some more of the pieces and sanded the edges. I also took some ” Rusty Brown” wax and went over the textured areas and around the edges with my finger. Then I splattered some white paint over top.

I popped up the pre-finished postcard and also added some ephemera around it and added that Shetland pony postage stamp. I thought it went well with the vintage photo that I turned into a postage stamp with a die. The quote at the top was printed on my computer, ripped edges and sponged with brown ink.

This is a bit busier in design than what I had planned it to be, but I had fun playing with it and I was glad to use up some more of that piled up ephemera! I hope you got a “KICK” out of it too! 🫏 Thanks so much for stopping by and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – On All Fours
Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes

Smash Our Stash-“Learning to Fly” AJ Page

Hello friends! My fellow U.S. friends will be celebrating Memorial weekend which means that the end of the month is here already! Summer is coming very quickly and it seems that time is really flying by!

The end of the month also brings the monthly AJ page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), so please check out her blog for more inspiration too! We’re trying to get creative by using up our never-ending stash piles! So here’s my Art Journal inspiration with the “SMASH OUR STASH” May prompt of: “ephemera/chipboard/cut-outs, etc.“:

With the AJ prompt this month of “ephemera” my first thought turned to the the H-U-G-E pile of packages that I have of those Tim Holtz Idea-ology ephemera and paper dolls packs. There are actually SO many different pieces in just one package that I decided to concentrate on just one of those packages from the “Botanical” collection. (I did pull in one more layer from the “Snippets” pack as well.) I actually love the images which pulled me in to purchase them, but there they sit and never get used…so I’m using some today! Yay! That “Botanical” pack is my fave with the birds and butterflies in there!

For my page background: I started with my usual 6″ x 9″ watercolor 140# paper with the pre-cut holes at the top for my book. I glued some of the “Tim Holtz Idea-ology Tissue Wrap” ripped pieces over the blank background first. I then took a baby wipe and several colors of “DecoArt Media Fluid acrylics” and blended them together until I achieved desired look. Trying to get another color over top, I decided to pull out the “Distress Oxide Spray Salvaged Patina” after the paint had dried up. To help spread some of it around, I also sprayed with water too. I was pleased with all of the coloring in the background, but felt it needed a toned down border because of the Vintage looking ephemera, so I blended some “Vintage Photo and Black Soot Oxide Inks” at the edges.

At this point, I started adding images by working on the stamping around the edges with a script text stamp using a hybrid brown ink in random places. I also used the same ink to stamp a couple of the flying birds in the background. This is where I thought it would a good idea to add some splattering with white and brown paint. I finished it with more splatters of some “Liquid Pixie Dust” which gave it some pretty subtle sparkle all over.

So starting at top of my page, I decided to start adding the images to create my scene. I ended up die cutting a branch from some dark brown cardstock and attached it to the edge of the page and then took one of those ephemera birds and popped it with foam tape over the branch. I glued the butterfly above the bird and the “daisy” flowers off to the right were glued down while keeping in mind the placement of the large birds at the bottom.

The sentiment came from one of the stickers from the “Tim Holtz Idea-ology Clippings Sticker Book”. I used a brown Micron pen to sketch around it, but decided it was too light, so I went around it again with a black one too.

For the bottom portion, you can see that I’ve glued down the little tag under the title. (I added a piece of twine around it before I attached it.) I also glued the corner floral spray in the bottom left of the page. I’ve used foam tape to pop up the large birds as well as the butterfly above the floral spray.

The last thing I did was to grab the dark brown “Big Brush Marker” to add some shading around some of the ephemera pieces. I didn’t do anything to the pieces that were popped up with foam tape.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my Art Journal inspiration today! Thanks so much for joining me and Carol for our fun collaboration and you can always have fun following along with us every month!

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend and please stop to remember and honor those who’ve sacrificed for us.

I’ll see you again soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Birds
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media #82
Mixed Media Lovers – Anything Mixed Media
Dragonfly Dreams – Butterflies and/or Flowers
The Corrosive – Anything Goes
Arty Divas – Anything Goes

Try It On Tuesday GDT-Say It With Flowers

Hello friends and happy Tuesday! Hope you’re having a great start to your week. Now that Spring has officially began, we can start seeing signs of Spring everywhere and look forward to warmer temperatures here! Yay!

TioT guest designer 2022 I’m excited to share my project for the new challenge over at the “Try It On Tuesday” Challenge Blog as their guest designer this time! An AJ page I entered in a previous challenge earned me a spot as a future guest, so I’m thrilled to be joining with them for a new challenge! Their theme for this challenge is to “Say It With Flowers“, so please be sure to stop in and have a look at the amazing inspiration from the team! Here’s what I’ve made for the challenge:

Since I usually add a sentiment to my makes, I decided to say what I wanted to convey without any words which is how I took the challenge. So my thoughts were about Spring coming out in color with the dull drab of winter in the browns and blacks in the background. The dead is coming alive again in color! That was my thought process anyway. LOL

I love the flowers in the Tim Holtz Mini Bouquet stamp set. I’ve used watercolor paper to stamp them and then used the Distress ink pads smooshed on a mat to watercolor them in including the new Salt Water Taffy color that I’ve been wanting to try out. I used the coordinating dies to cut them with and then also die cut some stems in green and brown cardstock to attach onto the flowers. I rubbed a bit of gold paint with my finger over the edges of them. They were popped up with foam tape over a prepared oval die cut panel stamped with various TH stamps with some gold glitter added around the edges. I die cut an oval ornate piece behind it with some glossy black cardstock.

For the background, I’ve done various things to it including using Distress Oxide sprays for the background, adding some black heat embossed silhouette florals to the bottom as well as modeling paste through a TH floral stencil. To bring out the texture of the stenciled background, I used some more gold paint to rub over it with my finger. I also added some splatter with the gold paint over the entire background along with another splatter layer of white paint.

I distressed the edges and layered it over a piece of black glossy cardstock sized 5″x7″. I found some TH ephemera black and white florals that I cut in half to pop up over the bottom two corners and then used some metal corner pieces for the top. I sprayed a wooden butterfly with black spray stain and some Distress Mica Spray Stain in Crooked Broomstick as this gave it that “black/brown” combo I was going for.

Lastly, I took a piece of tan seam binding and sprayed it with some more Distress sprays, crinkled it up and wrapped some around the front layer and then added a bow over top of the stems of the bouquet. The oval panel was popped up over the center with foam tape.

There is actually lots of dimension on this as you can get a better look of it with a close up here. There are different layers in the flowers as well as all of the layers of panels underneath it. I like how it turned out and had lots of fun playing around and using up some more of my never ending stash too! ( I think I’m becoming a spray-a-holic lately! LOL)

So please be sure to hop on over to the “Try It On Tuesday” Challenge Blog to see the rest of the inspiration for the challenge. I hope you will take the time to join in the challenge with us too! Would love to see what you come up with!

Hope that you’ve enjoyed my make today! Thanks for dropping by and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Mixed Media Lovers – Anything Goes mixed media
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes mixed media
The Funkie Junkie Boutique – “Rather Blustery Day” – Struggle with NOT adding words/sentiments…I ALWAYS want to do that and so it’s a huge challenge NOT to want to add that somewhere! Plus, omitting color in some way.
The Four Seasons – Anything Goes Spring
Shopping Our Stash – Spread Your Wings (Wooden butterfly from stash! Yay!)
Crafty Friends – Flowers
Creative Inspirations – Spring Flowers

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