July Art Journal Page Swap Entry

For July, my recipient for the art journal page swap asked for bright colors.  Here they are!  I had fun creating these pages!

Stenciled and Gelli Printed Tags

This afternoon I wanted to play with my stencils, gelli plate and Dylusions paints.  These tags are the result!  They are for sale in my Etsy store.  Thanks for coming by my blog!

Lin's Art Journal

My friend, Lin (click here for Lin's Etsy store) and I are participating in a little art journal round robin - just the two of us.  Here are the first two pages that I've finished in Lin's journal.

The top spread, the birds, was a lesson in how there are no mistakes in art, only opportunities.  I had a perfectly fine background created and messed it up adding more stuff.  I can save just about anything!  I ended up painting over the top of it and trying it again.  I used Dylusions spray inks and rubber stamps.  I used 2 of The Carfter's Workshop templates.  I added texture with modeling paste.  I love the Dina Wakeley "Scribbly Birds" stamps.  I colored the birds and houses with the new Dina Wakely heavy body acrylic paints.  In both spreads, I used a page or part of a page from a vintage children's spelling textbook. 

The second spread uses mostly Victorian scraps available at Collage Stuff.  I love the timeless beauty of these images.  I used lace, a doily, buttons, two items from the Tim Holtz Thrift Shop ephemera pack, Petaloo flowers and lots of butterflies!  I fins some sort of stencil to be a must and used one of The Crafter's Workshop templates - available at Collage Stuff.  For this spread, I also used a paper that I created with my gelli plate.  I toned it down a little with white gesso.

I encourage everyone to art journal.  It's art that you create for yourself.  I love the feeling of artistic freedom that I get from just playing and trying different things.

Thanks for stopping by!

Five Christmas Tags

I'm hosting a Christmas tag swap at the Collage Stuff Yahoo Group.  I decided to finish my tags last night.  They are just about finished.  I have to finish the back of two of the tags and add the ribbon trim..  These tags are about 4" x 8".  They are in stock at Collage Stuff.  The background papers are from the Basic Grey Aspen Frost 6x6 paper pack.  I love the 6x6 paper packs because the papers are already coordinated.  The Santa images are Victorian scraps that are available at Collage Stuff.  I just created a new Christmas collage sheet, "Christmas Past", and used images from this collage sheet on some of the tags.  The German scrap items used include the Merry Christmas Script, Red Medals, Red Renaissance Border and Tiny Red Border - all available at Collage Stuff.  The other images are from Tumble Fish Studios at the Deviant Scrap website.   I really like the Tim Holtz Mirror Stars, also available at Collage Stuff.  On some of the Santa images, I used Distress Picket Fence Stickles.  On some of the bells I used Mustard Seed Distress Stickles.  I had a lot of fun making these tags!  Which one is your favorite?  Thanks for stopping by!