A little bit of creativity

 Like I said in my previous post, I haven't had a lot of time to be creative lately, but here's a few little things over the last few months that I've done to try to keep those creative juices flowing.  Doodling, painting and keeping some sort of notebook seems to be about it lately.  I often find myself practicing lettering styles more than anything. 

Mixed Media painting

I decided it was long enough to go without painting, so I pulled out my most colorful paints and went to town!  I enhanced a few pieces I had already gelliprinted and did some new pieces as well and absolutely love them.  Here's a few I've done so far.  

#mixedmedia #painting #letters #stencils #acrylicpaint #artjournal #biblejournal #pocketletter #scrapbookpaper #7gypsies #jillibeansoup

Art Journal

 I don't feel like I've been very artistic the last few months. Not as much as I have been in the past anyway. So I've been trying to get back into the groove with my paints and watercolors. I've been working on my brush lettering and accents lately. I've noticed with my paints and digital art I like to use really bright, bold colors, where as with the watercolors I've been using very soft, pastel colors. The artist loft set I have doesn't seem to have any really bright / bold colors though. :I
Next is to try to get back into creating more digital art. :D
‪#‎artjournal‬ ‪#‎gelliprintjournal‬ ‪#‎gelliprinting‬ ‪#‎painting‬ ‪#‎colorful‬ ‪#‎playful‬ ‪#‎brushpen‬ ‪#‎watercolor‬ ‪#‎pastel‬ ‪#‎bright‬

Do something remarkable

Another ‪#‎artjournal‬ work in progress. I laid down a layer of masking tape on this first and the colors came out a bit more muted then I liked. I had to keep adding layers to get some of that vibrancy back. Which is what ‪#‎mixedmedia‬ pages are all about right, adding layers? Still I like how it's turned out so far. I picked up some stickers at ‪#‎tuesdaymorning‬ awhile ago that have a bit of transparency to them and used a few of them here. ‪#‎alwaysremembertofollowyourheart‬. ‪#‎dosomethingremarkable‬ ‪#‎painting‬ ‪#‎layers‬ ‪#‎colorfulpages‬

Awesome stuff

A couple of art journal / painting pictures for this week so far.   

In the one above, you may have noticed a monoprinting / printmaking sort of thing?  (The thick plate looking item on the right next to the blue/circles print.) If you haven't already heard of it, this thing is called a Gelli Plate.  I've seen them around for awhile and have wanted one pretty much the moment I laid eyes on it.  The video tutorials and prints people have created make it look so mouth wateringly awesome.  So, after much deliberation, I decided it was something I wanted.  Well, that's not true, I already knew I really wanted it.  The reason it took me so long to get it is because the only way I can get one is by buying it online.  And I hate buying things online. :P 

But I finally bought one anyway and honestly, I hate that I waited so long.  I LOVE IT!  It creates such cool designs and is so easy to use.  I bought the 8x10 but I've seen videos where you can use the smaller sizes the same as you would a stamp!  There's so much I love about it, it's hard to list them all.  One of the best things is that it lets you create backgrounds so quickly and easily.  It's really not that hard to clean either.  I've heard mixed reviews on that but I cleaned mine pretty well between uses with an old t-shirt rag and water.  It actually feels like a plate of really sturdy, clear jell-o which is kind of weirdly awesome?  When I was sharing it's general awesomeness with my family, they all wanted to (and ultimately did) touch it.  LoL!  It also has a general stickiness to it which is great for keeping it from sliding around.  For my trial run I pretty much left it in the clear package it came in, as you can see, but if you're planning to use it long term, I recommend mounting it to something that's probably a bit more secure and permanent, just so it doesn't move around too much on you.  The more paint I used the more the entire thing seemed to want to move around on me. 

I'm sure you'll be seeing lots more prints in my future posts and hearing more then you want to about it, but I wanted to share this with you guys while it is fresh in my studio.  ;)  Also, if you're looking to purchase one for yourself, I ended up finding that Dick Blick art supplies had them at the cheapest rate and lowest shipping fees, at least for US customers.  (Quick thanks to Alisa Burke for sharing her finds on this as well!)  If you have discount codes you may be able to get it cheaper, but for me they had the best deal I found. 


P.S. I would recommend getting a rubber brayer to go with it as well.  It's not absolutely necessary but I think it would be much easier if you have one, especially if you plan to do lots of layers and want to do them quickly.  I didn't end up getting one with mine but I'm pretty sure I'll probably be picking one up on my next art supplies run.    

Happy belated New Year!

Happy belated new year!  Sorry everything has been so quiet around here the last month or so.  I had so much to do over the Christmas / New year holidays that I just basically went offline for the end of November until this past Monday.  I have barely even had time to create anything during that time either.  :/  I snagged these from one of my other social media feeds so I apologize if anything is a reshare.  And some may not make a whole lot of sense, but more then anything it will give you an idea of what I've been up to really and what may be something I'll share more about in the future.  ;)


One thing I will talk about is a new project I've decided to start this year.  All of last year I kept seeing people post their Project Life or Documented Life pages.  You may remember me mentioning them even.  If you haven't already heard about these, I'll explain them briefly.  Both are mostly just different ways of keeping track of your life and what is going on in it.  Project Life is more like a pre-designed scrapbook with slotted pages for adorable scrapbook page inserts/pictures where as the Documented Life Project is about keeping a sort of planner that combines your artistic talents, whatever they may be.  I've been wanting to do something similar that's a bit more personal.  I started doing a daily post it note project which I still have going on, but it's not quite fulfilling the cravings I have for something to do daily.  So I took one of the K&C Co. Smash books I got for Christmas and have transformed it into a sort of art journal smashbook diary.  If you've seen these around already, you know that they contain tons of awesome pages that let you smash in whatever you want, however you want.  Sadly mine is the older kind with the spiral bound core, although the new ones look to be a 3 ring binder, so that you can easily add, delete, or rearrange pages.  You can honestly even make something like this yourself if you wanted, but I like the pages used in the books so I decided to use it instead this round.  However, as I am documenting my life every day in this book, this one will only get me to March 1st, so I will be able to decide to do something different by then.

The fun thing about this project is that it is letting me be creative everyday while also looking at my life in review and appreciating it while documenting the parts I want to remember.  So far it's been a great daily project.  I started altering the pages the week after Christmas and got pretty far, since I wasn't sure how much time I would have once I started back to work and on other projects, but so far I don't think it would take much to create a daily page from scratch.  I keep my pages pretty simple, hiding anything I don't care for and putting things where and how I like.  Usually I'm just adding space to write on, since some of the pages are filled with large photos or designs, but I have added in some small decorative things where I want to break out the page and just add in some cuteness.

While most of the pages are going to end up as fairly personal, it's probably not likely I will share many of the finished ones.  However I do hope to share some of them before I start journaling on them.  (I simply hand journal on them so far in my scribbly hand writing, sometimes in one big space or some times I will break it up and write sideaways or something.  Either way that's about all I do so far on the pages I have already gotten ready.)

 I will try to post some more pictures and tips/tutorials/etc. on this project later for anyone wishing to do something similar.  

I hope you all had a great holiday and enjoy the silly things I've been up to.  Hopefully I will have more to share with you all again soon!  

Mixed Media pages

Still busy working on some projects, but in my moments away from those and my computer, I've rediscovered paint and have been playing around with some mixed media stuffs. I've been enjoying it immensely and I love that its allowed me to be more free in my creativity. Here's just a few of my pages so far I thought I'd share with you all.  They're still a bit of a WIP.