What's new at The Loft - Episode 97

It seems like my life had not been my own for the last several weeks thanks to an increased work load at my day job.  It's made me so tired that I've not felt much in the mood to be creative in the way of art.  Instead I have focused a little more attention on doing some sewing in my off time, along with some other things.

And while I haven't been working in it recently I wanted to share some other pages from my art journal. 

For these 2 pages I tried doing a full page image transfer on top of a colored background instead of painting around the transfer.  I like the red tone - it conveys a romantic feeling and I coupled that with a quote from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". 

...and I coupled that with a quote from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".  This page however started with a watercolor base, but had a liquid acrylic in a pink shimmer lightly applied on top.  The small image of the woman in the corner is a gel skin.

For this two page spread I glued a full page image directly down, hence the bubbles.  No matter how much I brayer it, I still end up with bubbles, but I think the texture of the air bubbles adds a more distressed look to the page, which works in cooperation witht he thought I wanted to convey in my journal.

Different size and style rub-ons is a great way to add journaling and use some of those extra letters left over from other alpha rub-ons sets that you might have laying around.  The combination creates a bit more visual interest.

 For these fonts I used metal letters and traced the outside of them.

For the opposite side I did a full page magazine painting.  I started with watercolor and a charcoal pencil but found that even with a base of absorbent ground, I didn't like the subtleness of the watercolor, in combination with the charcoal pencil so I added pan pastel on top, and found I liked it more. 

I wanted to try something a little different here, so I stared with the yellow pages as a base.  I lightly penciled out the area that I knew I would do a photo transfer on, and put down a watered down absorbent ground in the area around the section I marked off.  I laid down some watercolor and then stamped out the frame, using several border stamps.  I did a straight image transfer in the box and used concentrated watercolor to bring out her eyes and lips.

Stamps, doodling and hand journaling rounded out this spread.

Well that's all I have for today.   Leave me some comments and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

What's new at the Loft - Episode 90

Truth be told I got very behind in this class.  I loved the class, and really enjoyed the techniques I've learned, but it was very labor intensive, and I had way too much going on to keep up.  My own fault of course, but I am glad that I have a year to watch all the videos and finish all the projects.  Julie's class was amazing and she really gave a lot of information and was definitely worth the money.

Here are more projects that I had to do for the class.  The first is a mixed media clutch purse.  The project called for us to first paint up some canvas.  Luckily I had several large sheets of painted canvas leftover from Alisa Burke's Graffiti Chic class.  I had been saving them, hoping to one day find a project for them.  Julie's class was the perfect project to put these painted canvas pieces to good use.

Here's how my purse turned out.

Here is the front

Here is the back

We also had to make a mixed media strip pillow

So I took a lot of scrap fabric, a lot of paint, and a fresh Sharpie marker and here is the result.

 Another project we had to create was fabric ATC's using a transferred image.  Most who know me will tell you how much I love ATC's, after all why would I make one a day for an entire year, right.  In a weird coincidence it also required us to do an image transfer which is one of my favorite techniques to use when I art journal.  So this project was right up my alley.  I used white muslin that I glimmer misted with sunflower yellow and vintage pink.  After it dried I cut these two butterflies out and used gel medium to do the transfer.  The preferred method to do a transfer on fabric is to use a transparency, but I didn't have any so I did a direct image transfer, which makes the fabric a little stiff where the transfer was done.  I then made a mini quilt sandwich with batting and another piece of muslin for the back, then took it all over to my machine and free motion stitched the scrolls and outlined the butterflies.  Lastly I used a zig zag stitch around the edges.  And here is how it came out.

Speaking of Art Journaling

It has taken me a while but I finally got around to finishing the Art Journaling page I started when I posted about it way back on March 30th.  I had only finished one side of the page so here is where I left off.

and here is where I ended up

Well that's all I have for today.  Comments are always welcome so feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 85

Sorry for the long absence.  It's seems like lately I've been so busy, but my level of creative output has significantly decreased.  What's worse is that I'm not sure how that has happened.  I'm trying to get back into the creative swing of things though.

I'm happy to report that although I still do not have a studio to work in, I do at least now have a designated work area in my kitchen which I love.  This spot I now call my own allows me to be more organized and gives me a place to leave "work in progress"  It's a small space but one in which I am very grateful for.

You may have noticed that there is a few changes to my blog site as well, most importantly it has a small gallery of the latest photo's added to my flickr pool.  I've just finished a new photography class called Photo Manipulation 3 with Susan Tuttle and I will be posting on that next time. 

Also I'm excited as I've started a new class, "It's Sew Easy" with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, so look for upcoming posts on that as well.

SO WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING:

I did this painting for my hubby at a crop in January.  It was intended to be a Valentine's gift for him, but he saw it when I came home so the secret was out.

I have always wanted to try Art Journaling, and with the release of the new Strathmore Visual Journals and the free online workshops Strathmore has been offereing I finally took the plunge and created some pages.  The first workshop with Pam Carriker was about reusing your own art work in your journals.  I am not an artist in the true sense of the word, so I didn't have a collection of sketches that I could pull from to recycle, but I did this cute painting back in January and used it in a page for the workshop.

The workshop was great for giving even a simple sketch new life.  Here is what my journal page looked like recycling this image.

The above is 140 lb cold press watercolor paper.  Without a well of my own personal art to pull from I started working with magazine images and gel transfers. I also wanted to try different paper surfaces to work on. 

Here are some other pages from this journal:

The journal I used above had a surface area a little small for what I wanted, so I move on to 98 lb mixed media journal that was 7 x 10".  The size is great but downside to the 98 lb paper is that after awhile the paper wears down, and if you add too much water when removing the paper backing on a gel transfer you begin to rub holes in the substrate.  I will continue to use this journal and experiment, but I think next I will try the Strathmore Visual Journal in the 140 lb watercolor paper.  I have the smaller 5 1/2 x 8' journal but would like to try their's is 9 x 12" journal as well.

Here is some of my work in the mixed media journal:

Here I layered gel transferred magazine images

Altered magazine painting

Here 's a close up of the details

Here is one I've just started of a gel transferred magazine image.  You can see the white areas where the actual substrate paper was wearing away.  It gives a more distressed look, which is great if that is what you are going for, however when you got do a spread on the backside, the paper is considerably weaker.

I'll  be working on the Strathmore Visual Workshop #2 with Linda Blinn soon, and will keep working and experimenting in both journals and will share more pages in the future. 

I hope you enjoyed today's post.  Please send me your feedback.  I love to get comments so feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.