Friday, December 21, 2012

Journal Covers

This is my current work in progress.  A painted canvas cover for a journal which is a gift for a fellow coworker's grandmother and the main word was to be "faith".  Used my scanner for the picture so it's not the best (slightly cut off - my camera is recharging). 

I used gesso on the floral stamp and stamped the canvas before painting with a selection of FW Liquid Acrylics.  Stamped "faith" using calligraphy letters from Quietfire Designs, "Blooms" and "love" from a couple of different Recollections alpha stamp sets and "precious" from Hero Arts.  Then I went over the words with calligraphy pens and different colours of the FW Liquid Acrylics.  The diamonds were stencilled in using Golden Fluid Acrylic Anthraquinone Blue and a Dylusions stencil.  Embellishments came next - beads, brads, buttons, charms, paper flowers, fabric hearts etc.  I leave a 1" border at the edges to fold over the book cover - remember that when you start adding embellishments - I did the beading on the front cover and ended up having to remove a bead (you can see the white spot) because it ended up right on the fold.  When it's finished, I'll use Yes glue to adhere it to the hard cover of the blank journal.  Hope she likes the end result...





Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Acknowledge Yourself!  We often do not take the time to acknowledge who we are and realize just how strong we can be.  I love the quote from Vivian Greene

Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass
It's about learning to dance in the rain...

And sometimes when we are feeling pain and sorrow, we should just run out in the rain and let our tears mingle with the raindrops.  When the tears have run out - swing your arms up, twirl and dance a little dance.

But if it's 3 am in the morning, I work in my journal instead, knowing that if I can do just one thing on the page I will have given myself a moment of solace.  Here's how my finished page looks.

Art washes away from the soul
the dust of everyday life.
PICASSO

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Back into Watercolour

I cannot believe how time flies.  I have not had any time to devote to this, but am going to make a concerted effort to try to post on a regular basis.  Strathmore Papers have an online video class on watercolour journalling, and I have just watched Class 1.  (I had to scan it in and it should have been cropped, but I am having problems).  I'm hoping to be inspired to get back into watercolours.  Here is the result.