Thank you to my GIRLFRIENDS…

It’s challenge time over on the Mixing It Up Everyday Facebook group.  My friend Sandee is the creator of this page and we do have allot of fun.  I actually won the October challenge and won a gift certificate to Stampendous.  I was pretty excited about that!  This month’s challenge is to do a project around the theme of being thankful.  I decided to take a bit of a different twist to the thankful theme…..I have some napkins I’ve been wanting to try on a page for some time and this just seemed to be the time…..and the quote just sort of fit in to this month’s theme…..well, at least in my mind it did.  ;o)

I used my up cycled encyclopedia again for this double page journal page.  I’m seriously loving this book. I started out by putting a light wash over the pages using my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Flat Shot from the Under the Boardwalk collection called Pop Rock Purple.  I then put a light coat of the Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Gesso over as it’s a thinner Gesso and works very well for a wash look.  I took my Faber Castell PITT artist big brush pen in Cold Grey III and one of my Stampers Anonymous background stamps from the Graph & Croc set and randomly stamped on both pages.  I really like the subtle look the Cold Grey pen gives to the background stamps.  I then took my napkin and adhered it to the pages using my Faber Castell Gel Medium.

Next I took my Faber Castell Whipped Spackle and my  homemade brick stencil and my Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil and applied it randomly to the page.  I shaded the bricks in and around the napkin pieces with my Stabilo All pencil and blended it out.

Added my quote using my Signo white gel pen, some Faber Castell Gelato in black around the edges of the pages and done!

Thank you for the challenges Sandee and for keeping the group in order…..or trying to at least!

Thank you also for dropping in and I look forward to seeing you next time as well.  Please feel free to leave me any comments.  Enjoy your day!

Huggss,

Yvonne.

Products used:

Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Gesso

Lindy’s Stamp Gang Under The Boardwalk Flat Shot – Pop Rock Purple

Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Pitt artist big brush pen – Cold Grey III

Stamper’s Anonymous Graph & Croc background stamp – my stash

Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Whipped Spackle

Tim Holtz Stencil – Dot Fade

Homemade brick stencil

Stabilo All pencil

White Uni-Ball Signo  gel pen

Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Gelato – Black Licorice

A new Art Journal journey….

Well, I’ve finally completed my first full art journal and have started a new one.  I’ll post the final pictures of the first one another day.  This new journal is being done in a beautiful old encyclopedia I picked up at our local Good Will store.  I absolutely LOVE the from cover and spine of this book……the texture and ‘sculpting’ on the front cover is amazing!!  The pages inside are relatively thick so I only need to glue two pages together to give me a good solid base to do my mixed media on.  This is what the front cover and spine look like….

Isn’t it gorgeous??!!!!

When I was at Limor’s place a few weekends ago, I picked up some Prima Art Basics Heavy Gesso in black.  I’ve always wanted to play with and try black, and decided to make this the first page I completed in this new journal.  I started out with one idea while I was in Edmonton, but it just wasn’t working out the way I had it in my head and ended up coming home and just Gessoing over it….hence why I love Gesso!  Then I decided I wanted to try a sort of water color effect and put down a very light layer of white Gesso so I’d have an area to stamp my poppies onto.  I used two of my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Magicals and used them as water colors.  I used the a Flat Magical in Aloha Avacado and a shimmer Magical in Time Travel Teal.  I used a couple of my background stamps that I’d picked up from Limor’s store as well just to add a bit more depth to the pages.  All of the supplies I used on this double page can be purchased from Limor’s store, except for the poppy stamp which I’ve had for a while from Stampin’ Up! The link for her store is found here.  Other supplies I used were my Faber Castell PITT artist pen big brush in black, my Faber Castell PITT artist pen in white, and my Stabilo All pencil for some shading around the flowers, stems and quote.  Here’s what the finished product looks like:

I really like how these pages turned out.  Will probably use this technique again!

Thanks for popping your head in…..until next time!  I’d love to hear what you think.  🙂

Huggsss,

Yvonne

Supplies used:

Prima Art Basics Heavy Gesso Black

Faber Castell Design Memory Craft Gesso

Lindy’s Stamp Gang “Industrial Chic” Magicals by Limor Webber Designs – Time Travel Teal

Lindy’s Stamp Gang “Hawaiian Islands” Flat Magicals – Aloha Avacado  (Not available in Limor’s store at this time)

Deep Red Cling Stamp Water Droplets

Kaisercraft “Arty” Background Stamp

Faber Castell Stamper’s Big Brush PITT pen – Black

Faber Castell Stamper’s Big Brush PITT pen – White

Stabilo All charcoal pencil  (Not available in Limor’s store at this time)

Pleasabt Poppies stamp from Stampin’ Up!

Found some canvas scrapbooking sheets…..yup, more atc’s!

I’ve had these three sheets of canvas scrapbook paper for a long time, and while I was watching the recording of Limor Webber on her Live With Prima Ustream class ‘Mixed Media ATC Cards’, I was on a mission to find those sheets so I could try my hand at some beautiful little canvas ATC cards.  Learned one very important lesson while working on the very first canvas atc…..make it bigger than what you need if you’re going to be using a wet medium on it as it shrinks when it dries…..ooppsss.  Nothing adding a narrow strip of canvas didn’t fix….lol.

For this one I spritzed the canvas with some water first, put some Lindy’s Stamp Gang spray onto my glass tray and painted on the colors to create the background.  I placed the canvas butterfly down on the atc and traced around it with one of my charcoal pencils.  I then added a little water to it to blend it out a bit in order to frame the butterfly.  I stamped the sentiment onto it with an alpha set I’ve had forever and then added the tip of the butterfly wing I’d cut off the one side, on the top corner of the atc.

For this atc, I didn’t want a repeat of the shrunk canvas, so I decided to stamp an image onto it along with a quote.  The quote ended up pretty pale so I took my XS Faber Castell Pitt pen and carefully wrote over top the letters to make them stand out more.  I then lightly spritzed the front with some Lindy’s sprays.

And for this one, we had a lady post a pic of a water color piece she did in our Limor 1278 Mixed Media Art Group,with what looked like random blotches of watercolor paint that were then traced around to make look like flowers.  As I didn’t want to do a water color on it so it wouldn’t shrink, I decided to try it with my Alcohol Inks.  I think it turned out pretty good!

 

That’s it for today!!  Thanks for checking in.  🙂

Huggsss,

Yvonne

…..more atc’s

Hello, my name is Yvonne and I’m an ATC addict.  Holy cow….I’m having a blast making these little pieces of art!!!  I REALLY should be in bed and here I am playing with 2.5″ x 3.5″ pieces of cardstock….LOL.  These ones were made using a background I’d created for one of my pages for the Facebook group called Journal 52 and I had an extra one…..sooooo, it ONLY made sense to cut it up into little rectangles…..right?!  These 4 were so quick and easy to put together.  I got my inspiration from one of my pins and a tutorial Nicole had on her blog……check it out here.  I took some dictionary pages and spritzed them with a couple of my Lindy’s Stamp Gang sprays and then loosely drew out the 4 hearts.  I cut them out and went to town playing with them.  Nicole also had a sheet of quotes she had available to download, so I did that and picked out 4 I liked and cut them out of the sheet to adhere to my atc’s.  These were fun and quick to put together.

I love the look of the sort of water color effect of the backgrounds.  The quotes are some of my favorites.  Here’s some individual pictures of each of the cards….

 

Okay, now I’m going to bed.  I may sleep till noon tomorrow….lol.

Thanks for sticking with me on this atc marathon I dragged you along on…..have a great day!

Huggss,

Yvonne

The Art of Whimsical Lettering

I always seem to go in spurts with my blog posts….lol.  I recently signed up on another Facebook group by Joanne Sharpe, as I had pre-ordered her book called “The Art of Whimsical Lettering” a few months ago and she was offering this page for anyone who’d purchased her book and she’s going to run a series of classes on it based on the book.  Allot of the people on the page haven’t received their books yet as there was problems getting them out from the distributors (mine included), but she started out with a simple challenge for everyone this week to simply create a page with the words “JUST BE” on it and anything else you wanted to incorporate.  I used a napkin I had on my desk and simply ripped it up and adhered it to the page using my Gel medium.  I love this napkin and love how it looks on this page.  The pages in this old notebook I’ve been using for a smaller art journal are actually a golden-yellow color and I usually Gesso over them before I work on them.  This time I was looking for some added color to the page as the napkin was black and with a bit of red on the border.  I love how it turned out and am really looking forward to this group.  I seem to have gotten myself into a few groups again, but I’ve decided I’ll work on what I can and if I don’t keep up to all the challenges and lessons on each page, it’s really no big deal.  What it does give me is some choices as far as a variety of things to work on depending on how the mood is striking me that particular week.  😉

Here’s the page I created for this weeks prompt:

I’m done for this evening.  I’m off to watch some TV with hubby before heading to bed.  Thanks for staying with me today…lol

Huggss,

Yvonne

Broken Fence…..

I did another page this weekend while at the cabin as well.   I thought if I was doing one side I may as well do the other side too….lol.  I used a piece of paper from my BoBunny Back To Backs set and a page called Gabrielle Flight and adhered it to the page using my Golden Matte Medium.  I then took some of my Liquitex Basic’s Raw Siena acrylic paint and a dry brush and loosely painted around the edges and into the middle of the page to blend in the edges.  I then painted a sparse layer of the Lindy’s Stamp Gang Crow’s Nest Copper Color Shot that I’d mixed with my Windsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylic Matt UV Varnish to. I’d also used the back of my stencil I’d used for the previous coffee page and turned it over and wiped off the excess spray onto this page to add that pop of teal.  I decided I’d try out one of the goodies I’d received in a recent Prima blow out sale package and used the Flocked Rub-Ons that we a kind of yellow color.  They added great texture and I decided to paint them to make them darker to match the page better using my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Burnished Brass Moon Shadow Mist.  I added my quote using my Faber Castell PITT pen brush and colored in the open spaces using my Uni-Bal Signo white gel pen.  I like the colors on this page and especially like the flocked outline of the two vintage girls at the bottom of the page.

 

The bottom of the page has a flocked sentiment that says “The Best Moments”.

 

So, that’s it for what I created this past weekend.  I played with some new products that I love and had a blast.  Not sure if I’ll get anything accomplished this evening or not…..we’ll have to see.

Off to go make myself a cup of tea and relax for a bit.  Thanks for popping your heads in!

Huggss,

Yvonne.

Coffee friend.

I played along with another one of Sunday’s With Sandee while I was at the cabin.   I thought I’d be spending more time creating, but you know how that happens.  I used some of my Tim Holtz Composer Tissue wrap for the background on the page and adhered it with my Golden Matte Medium, I used one of my home-made stencils for the chevron shapes for my table using my Liquitex Basics Raw Umber acrylic paint and then painted over it and the rest of the page with some of my Crow’s Nest Copper Color Shot that I’d mixed up with some Winsor & Newton Matt UV Varnish.  Love the color with a slight touch of shimmer it added to the page.  I then took my Crafter’s Workshop Mini Circle Grid stencil that I got in my November 2013 Mixed Media kit at the Frosted Desgins on-line store and sprayed some of my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Time Travel Teal that is also available in the Frosted Design’s on-line store in their Industrial Chic set.  I drew out the coffee mug, painted it with my Liquitex Basics Cadmium Red Medium Hue acrylic paint and did some doodling on and added some of my Crow’s Nest Copper Color Shot at the top of the mug for the coffee.  I found the coffee quote on Pinterest and away I went with my Faber Castell Pitt Pen brush and my Uni-Bal Signo White Gel pen!

Here’s the completed page…..which I did for my friend Tamiko who is a coffee guru…..enjoy!!!

 

I don’t like my coffee mug…..but it’s glued down and I’m not changing it now. LOL.  I never have developed a taste for coffee and never drink it.  I’m a tea body all the way!!  I have my Grandmother’s old tea pot with metal insulated tea cozy and all……along with instructions on how to make the perfect cup of tea.  Not that I always make it that way…..but I do know how!

Thanks for popping in…..off to do a second post.  (Don’t want Sandee to have to read too much in one sitting….LOL)

Huggss,

Yvonne

 

Somewhere, someplace…

For our second week’s over on the Journal52 Facebook group, we were given the prompt “Somewhere, someplace”.  I chose to do a sort of outdoor theme as I truly feel the most relaxed when I’m enjoying the beauty of the outdoors….whether it be actually sitting outside or viewing it from the comfort and warmth of my front window.   My camera and files are full of pictures of wildlife, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, spiders, flowers, trees, water…..sunrises and sunsets.

I fussy cut out the corner piece from one of my BoBunny Gabrielle Flight sheets of paper.  It’s one of my many lines of paper in my hoard…..I mean stash, that I’ve had for a long time and have never used.  I also fussy cut out three more butterflies from a second sheet.  Yup, that’s right….I cut into TWO pieces of that paper line!  I know I’ll recover soon…..it may just take a little bit of time.

I painted the background very loosely with some of my new Liquitex Basic’s acrylic paints.  I used the Bright Aqua Green, some Raw Siena, Ivory Black and Mars Black.  I used one of my Crafters Workshop stencils called  Mini Well Rounded that I purchased from the Frosted Designs on-line store  I edged the three smaller butterflies with some black Gelato as well as put some around the border of the page.  I also added some white Gelato around those same three butterflies to give them a sort of halo effect to help them pop off the page a bit.  My did my journalling in the circle in the corner piece and it says, “and I think to myself….what a wonderful world”.  Around the edge of the circle there is a phrase repeated over and over which also says, “There is beauty all around”.

 

Nothing like leaving this page to the last minute…..our next prompt comes out tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by…..till next time!

Huggss,

Yvonne

Whimsical birds and white space

I know!!!  ANOTHER blog post?!  It’s been such a great weekend in my studio and I spent some much-needed ‘therapy’ time down there till the wee hours of the morning.  This room is feeling like my refuge once again and it feels great.

It’s another Sunday’s with Sandee over on the Frosted Designs blog!  This weeks page is awesome and she challenges us to leave some white space!  Gasp!!  Sandee and I were just talking the other day about how we each struggle with white space on our pages and the urge to fill it all in.  As I honestly couldn’t think of a thing to do on my own, I pretty much just followed along with what Sandee created…..just different colors and I added a few Zendangles.  I did have a lot of fun creating this page though and I think I may continue to challenge myself to continue to incorporate more white space into my projects…..maybe….it could happen!!!  I colored in my bird and my leaves and circles with some watered down Lindy’s Stamp Gang Magicals.  I love the shimmer these mica powders leave…..soooo yummy!!  Here’s my page for the challenge:

 

This was a fun page to do.  Head on over to the FD blog to read about this technique.  Check out her YouTube video as well!

Thanks so much for sticking it out with me all weekend!!  I luv you guys.  ❤

Huggss,

Yvonne

 

I Wish You Enough…….I Am Enough…..

I will apologize in advance as this will likely be a longer blog post than most of the ones I do.  (Sandee…..you may want to just scroll down to the pictures….lol.)  😉

Each year I choose a word that I try to identify with for the year.  This year I chose the word “Enough”.  This word brings everything together for me at this time…..I’m good enough…..I’m enough of a wife……..I’m enough of a mother……..I’m enough of a grandmother………..I’m enough of a friend………I’m enough of an artist.   The word can mean so much depending on what is in front of me at any particular time.   I want more than anything to be enough.  So, this is my word.

I came across a couple of poems that pretty much sums up why this word is SOOO important to me this year.  This is the first one I stumbled across while reading one of those stories that make their way through Facebook every once in a while and it just struck home with me:

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough “Hellos” to get you through the final “Good-bye.”

So, over on one of my mixed media groups, Mixed Media Mondays With Tracy Weinzapfel, we’re to do a page with our word on it.  I decided to incorporate it with another challenge my crafting friend Sandee posted at the Frosted Designs group as well where we were to silence our inner critic.  This page is the opposite page to the one I did about silencing my inner critic and as Sandee mentioned last night…..it’s like the Ying and Yang of art journal pages:

 

I honestly have to say I love this page allot.  I included some doodled stem toppers…..and some dangled hearts from the tree branches.  I love what this tree represents for me and I think it does a very good job of squashing the critic page that sits opposite of it.  The page on the left is where Sandee challenged us during one of her Sunday’s With Sandee to put a face to our critic and I chose to put him into the trunk of a tree and the branches have all the negative things he says to me written out in black so they’re obscure.  The magazine cut out words are the positive affirmations for some of the negative branches.    Check out my double page spread:

 

So, that’s it!  I kinda feel like I’m getting into the creative groove again.  I’ve been home with the achy flu today so didn’t get much in the form of creating done…..hopefully, tomorrow is another day.

Thanks for stopping by once again.  I love it when you do!!

Huggss,

Yvonne