A Few Pages From My Art Journal

 I did this page specifically because I wanted to use the water droplet stamp by Ryn.  I used Dylusion spray inks for the background and then stamped the water droplet in archival ink.  I went over the center of each water droplet with a water brush and then blotted with a paper towel as shown in the "Ryn" link above.  I then put a dot of white paint on each water droplet.  I would normally use my Signo white pen for this but Ryn suggested using white paint for a crisper look.

  I stamped a butterfly and a dragon fly and colored them in with distress markers.  Then I painted over the image with Rock Candy Crackle paint and set it aside to dry.  I had the violet in my stash.  I believe it was made using a Sizzix Die and was colored with Distress Markers.  I punched a border with a Martha Steward edge punch and colored it with....you guessed it....Distress Markers.  I LOVE them.  Then I cut out the butterfly and dragon fly.  I stamped them on the page where I wanted them and glued the center of each cut image on top.  This way the wings curl up and the stamped image below creates a shadow.

I didn't have a flat surface when I was stamping the water droplets and didn't get a clear image on the bottom. Something to watch out for in the future.

 I wanted to use my Cricut Expressions "Folk Art" Cartridge and made these whimsical little farm animals and the birdhouse.  The birdhouse is actually a house but I cut it an inch big and thought that it would make a great bird house.

I used the Tim Holtz Lamp Post die and cut two of them.  I cut the light off and turned one upside down and glued them together.

 To cover the mark where they are glued together I made a flowery vine. The flowers are from Tattered Flower Garland die,colored with distress markers and a little bling dot added to the center.

I glued the flowers in place first, then used the leafy vine, Martha Steward edge punch.  I had to snip off a few branches to get it to wind around the flowers.

While I had my Cricut up and running I also decided to cut this bee from the Art Nouveau cartridge.  The gray part on the wings were cut from white card stock.  I then used Copic markers (C3 Cool Gray) to color the wings.  After that, I gave them a good coating of Rock Candy Crackle Paint. The picture doesn't show it very well but the wings look really cool.  After I assembled the bee, I thought the yellow and orange card sock that I used was way to bright for my taste.  So I went over it with Vintage Photo Distress ink and a blending tool.  I added some bling to his eyes and whala he is done.  I love, love, love him and can't wait to find a project to add him to.

Wow, what can I say about this except that it didn't work out the way I had hoped.

I started out with a page that I had used to clean my stencil from another project.  Then I used Crackle Paste through the card stock remanent from the Moon and Stars Die cut. 

 The paste didn't crackle like I thought it would.  But, I decided to persevere.  I colored the moon and stars by squeezing distress ink daubers to my craft mat and used a paint brush to apply it to the paste.  This way I had a little control while applying the ink.  I used a Copic Marker (Y35) to add dimension to the moon and give the appearance of craters.  I used a gold pen to outline the moon and the stars to try to give it some definition.

Then I thought the moon and the stars looked too much alike.  I covered each of the stars with gesso and let it dy.  Then I went back and colored each star using Copic marker (Y11).  I added various stencils and then wrote the When you wish upon a star.....with a black Pitt pen and outlined this with my gold pen.

The page doesn't look as bad and jumbled as this picture makes it look.  It isn't one of my favorite pages but I had fun experimenting with different products.

This one........welllllllllllllll.  it is the opposite page of the Moon and Stars above and was also started from a page that was used to clean off a stencil from a previous project.  I then used this set of stamps from Hero Arts to fill the background using different color inks.

Then I used various mini stamps to fill each of the shapes.  I used a black pen and outlined each of the squares.  I used an Inktense water color pencil to fill in the background and then went over this with a water brush.

The original stencil in the background hides some of the stamping and makes the whole thing look too busy.  But, again,  I had fun doing it and I used some stamps that I hadn't even tried before so that was fun.