Thinking happy thoughts.

The Three Muses have the theme 'black and white stripes' today.  Unfortunately I wanted to work with bright colours, so did both - black and white stripes surrounded by a riot of colour!

When my day is dismal, I create my own happy place

Here is a double page spread in my art journal.  It started out as a series of pencil doodles and then before I knew it, I was doing stripes.  There is no logic or rational behind it, it just is me having fun.

Pencil drawings then over drawn with black fine line pen, then some black paint and some black felt marker.  Once all the black and white was completed, I pulled out my Inklensils in lemon, orange and red and randomly coloured the background.  After wetting the colours really popped out and I felt a rough day become bright and cheery.

Next came some stamping in Archival Monarch Orange, Memento London Fog and StayzOn black.

My two favourite stamps are the Reality Check and the flying pig.  I love my barmy stamps!

Thanks very much for taking a look and I hope my journal has brought some joy to your day too.

It's halloween!

The challenge at Sunday Postcard Art this week is Retro Halloween.  I'm not really a fan of Halloween and always struggle with art for this holiday.  However, it wouldn't be called a challenge if it was easy, would it :)

I'm such a lonely pumpkin!

I coloured white card stock with both yellow and orange water soluble crayons and then wiped it with a baby wipe to spread the colour.  Next came some quickly hand drawn buildings on a hill.  For some reason I painted them with Mars black rather than colour them with a marker, which would have been much quicker.

Next came stamping across everything in Archival Sap Green ink and a cobweb stamp.  Then stamping again with the same stamp but with Monarch Orange Ink.  I notice it looks silver on the photo where it overlaps the Mars Black paint.  (Might have to play with this as a technique)

I drew a pumpkin and coloured him with Inktensils in orange, yellow, dark brown and light brown, then applied a little water to spread the colour and blend.  I drew around the outside of the pumpkin with a deep blue inktensil and applied water to give a soft outline.  The moon was hand drawn on white printer paper and painted with silver paint.

Finally I stamped around the bottom edges with a leaf stamp, first in StayzOn Black and then my favourite London Fog.

There's something fishy about this...

A couple of weeks ago, Captain Slow and I went to the aquarium where I saw a tank of Piranha fish, that glittered and shone as they swam.  They were the most beautiful colours and  the sparkle on their bodies looked like stardust stickles to me.

Last weekend I decided to do a journal page and test my theory that Piranha fish are made of stickles

You can't really see the sparkle in this photo but each fish has quite a bit of texture, the bodies have star dust stickles and the eyes have a coating of glossy accents to raise them and make them more 'eye' like.



This photo better shows the texture and the fish eye.  The fish were drawn and coloured with Inktensil pencils and then collaged to the page using Golden gel medium.



You can almost see the sparkle in this shot, but I must admit it does look more like Rock Candy distress stickles!

How clever are you?

This is a simple page I made using the Phrenology head stamp from Stampers Anonymous.  I really love this stamp so much I have it digitised so I can produce it at any size for whatever project I'm working on. 

This page is from my A5 art journal.  I added a coat of gesso and then covered the page with various red, orange and yellow Inktensil pencil by Derwent and then washed over with a wet brush.
Next came a layer of mica spray in gold and some in red with gold mica.
The next layer I used a template and Barn Door red distress ink by Tim Holtz.  Next came the phrenology head which had been stamped on coated white card stock and coloured with flesh tones and pink water soluble wax crayons.  The final layer was used mostly a watery white wash and various techniques, splattering, dashed lines, circles etc.  There are a few other layers too but I lost track of the various things I did. 
Around the edges I used a black Posca paint pen and created some pearls with a Viva Pearl pen in white.