Return of the swallows art journal page

As part of my creative crew duties for Tangie and Co I write a blog post each month. My speciality is mixed media so it will always include paint or pastes, inks and crayons. This month I used the new kit released by Tangie and Co to celebrate International Scrapbooking day which was the first Saturday of May.   All of Tangie and Co's products are digital. I find digital products more flexible then buying papers etc as you can have them as many times as you wish in what ever size you want. They are not just for digital art. Here is my page for May -  

You can find my step by step tutorial on the Tangie and Co blog here -

 https://shoptangiebaxter.com/blogs/news/returning-of-swallows-mixed-media-art-journal-page

 

The Tangie and Co products I used can be found here as well as details of the wonderful Art Journal Emporium membership -

https://shoptangiebaxter.com/

 

Angels are near Art Journal page

 I have been an Art Journaler for about 10 years now and I think it is one of my favourite ways to craft. What I love so much about it is no one judges, you don't have to show it to anyone if you don't want to. Everyone has their own style so everyones journals will be different, which is a good thing. The best thing though is its all for you, which is very unusual in crafting.     Now if you are a keen crafter, which I am assuming you are, you would of noticed that art journaling has become trendy over the past couple of years. Every craft product producer has jumped on the band wagon and insist you need all the wonderful products to be a good art journaler. The truth is you don't need anything special, as long as you have a journal to work in and something to work with your good to go.        So I thought it would be nice start a series of art journaling pages for The Fruit Pixie to show you how I go about making my pages and so help people begin art journaling for themselves. I will start with an easy page aimed at the complete beginner and working my way through lots of different techniques I have learnt along the way.          To start with you need a journal. For these demonstrations I will be using the IndigoBlu Junk and disordley art journal

This is great for a beginner because it is bound together using book rings so you can take the pages out to work on them.

 

So lets start. The key to a beautiful art journal page is layers and layers and layers. Just keep layering until you like the look.

 

The way I like to work is choose a few paint colours to work with, don't choose too many colours, about 5 or 6 at the most and choose some light and dark colours in your set. I used the Cosmic Shimmer chalk paints. Pour out a little of each paint you have selected in front of you, I work on a glass mat but I have also use a glass chopping board you can get at the Pound shop or other high street shops.

 

I then just get some colour onto the page. I use all sorts for different things for this but my favourite is a wet wipe. These are great to paint with and there is no brush to wash at the end!!! If you are a bit nervous about painting with a paint brush then give the wet wipe technique a try, just scrunch it up and dip,it in the paint then wipe it onto your page. It's much quicker and easier than a brush and blends the colours beautifully.

 

Next I turned to some stamps. Visible Image has some great art journaling style stamps. To start with I used Visible Image Orbital stamp but instead of using ink with them I used paint. Just sponge the paint onto your stamp and stamp as usual. You must then wash the paint off straight away with soapy water. This wont hurt your stamp at all, as long as you wash the paint off immediately. I keep an old toothbrush to use for this.

 

I then used the Angels are near stamp set also from Visible image. I used paint again but this time I wanted them to stand out a bit more, so I used a dark pink paint.

 

I felt they were a bit too visible so I added a bit more paint by dry brushing it on top. To dry brush take some paint onto your brush

but then work almost all of it off by painting backwards and forwards on your glass mat. Then use what is left on your page. It gives you a lovely soft finish.

 

To finish off my page I stamped and heat embossed the feather and quote from the Visible image Angels are near set. I used the Cosmic shimmer pastel blue embossing powder for the feather and a black embossing powder of my own for the quote

 

Finishing with some paint splats. For these water down your paint with water and using a toothbrush pick up some paint and aiming at the page quickly stroke the brush part of the toothbrush with your finger. This is a bit hit and miss so if you need to, protect your work area.

 

Congratulations you have a finished are journal page. Of course you can build up the page more if you like but I thought this was enough for a complete beginner.

 

You can find all the things I used in The Fruit Pixie Shop.

 

You can find the IndigoBlu journal here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-junk-and-disorderly-art-journal-26811-p.asp

 

Cosmic shimmer paint -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-paints-644-c.asp

 

Visible Image stamps -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/visible-image-angels-are-near-25123-p.asp

 

Cosmic shimmer embossing powder-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-embossing-powders-313-c.asp

 

 

 

 

 

Art Deco card

  This week I have started playing with the Graphic 45 Vintage Hollywood papers and stamps. This is my idea of heaven! I love my old films, when films had a story, believable characters, beautiful gowns ( that were called gowns and even had a designer ) handsome leading men and wonderful music scores.  Of course I also know it was all make believe. Film stars lives made up for the sake of the fans and box office takings but what a beautiful lie it was. So you won't be surprised to hear I love this set!!!  For this project I have gone back to basics and made a simple stamped card.

The card base I made in the Silhouette design software but there are lots of shaped cards on the market. You could also do this on a square card too. This was made to fit a 5x5 inch envelope.

 

The backing paper is from the 8x8 paper pad. I mounted that onto gold paper I had in my scraps bag.

 

The image and word Glamour are from the Vintage Hollywood stamp set 3. I stamped them onto gold card and embossed them in black embossing powder.

 

I added 2 die cut stars to finish the card off.

 

You can find the Graphic 45 Vintage Hollywood papers and stamps in the Fruit Pixie shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/vintage-hollywood-703-c.asp

 

Embossing powder-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/embossing-powders--utee-18-c.asp

 

Versamark pad, I find this pad best for embossing with -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/versamark-watermark-pad-14963-p.asp

 

 

 

Voyage beneath the sea altered the part 2

Hi, here is the second part of my Beneath the Sea altered book I made for The Fruit Pixie online shop using the Graphic 45 Beneath the Sea papers and stamps The first part of the book can be found here -http://artyparrot.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/graphic-45-voyage-beneath-sea-altered.html So back to the altered book.

So the first page we are looking at in this post is the reverse of the folded page

 

 

On the left hand folded page I used one of the lovely mermaid stamps from the Graphic 45 papers Deep blue dreams. The quote is one of the Graphic 45 stamps and then I added some die cuts and highlighted it all using the Ranger distress crayons and a white pen.

 

As it was an Under the sea theme I wanted a port hole in my book. So I glued the pages of the next section together, left them to dry overnight and then drew round the right size circle I wanted, after searching through every cupboard in the house, and then slowly cut it out using a craft knife with a sharp blade in it.

 

I cut the two port holes out of scrap card using two circle dies and used Candies as rivets. I then covered the port hole with the same aluminium tape, you can buy at DIY stores, as I used for the cover. As this stretches I could use a ball tool to go around the Candies to make them look like rivets. I then coloured the porthole using alcohol ink in the same way as I did for the cover.

I glued acetate to the back of both of the portholes. Then I glued the first porthole to the page lining it up with the hole I cut in the book pages. Then I turned the page over and added some watch parts and coloured shell bits (I bought these from the Pound shop, they were in the beauty part as they are to stick to your nails) to the centre of the acetate. I then glued the second porthole to the page lining it up with the first one.

 

Now the difficult part...... wait for it to dry!! If you don't and tip it up it will all stick to the glue and won't be a shaker porthole, believe me I know from experience!

 

I then added a die cut seahorse and one of the stamped quotes finishing it off with distress crayons and white pen.

 

 

Then on the other side of the shaker porthole I added some of the paper parts and for the facing page I used one of the picture quotes from the Graphic 45 beneath the sea wild wild waves paper. I wanted to be able to see the divers helmet through the porthole and it worked too!

 

 

 

The next couple of pages I added some ink through stencils, some more of the beautiful picture quotes from this paper line together with die cuts and some distress crayon smudging. Also some white paint splatters as I did throughout the book.

 

Then we get to the final page!!!

 

It was the reason why I wanted to do the altered book to begin with. The beautiful mermaid picture. I wanted her in a deep frame.

 

 

The way you get this look is to use ruler and pencil to mark out the frame you want. I do that before I do any painting at all, right at the beginning as part of your prep work.

 

Hold all the pages for the depth of your frame together and glue around the outside of the pages, on all four sides. Clamp them together with pegs or clips if you can. If not then put some baking paper between the paper block and the next page to stop it sticking to the rest of the book and put something heavy on top. Let it dry completely over night.

 

Once its dry, using a craft knife with a new blade and a steel ruler, slowly cut around the frame. Cut through a few pages at a time removing the pages as you go, until you get the depth you want. Don't try to do it all in one go. Take this easy as its a lot of cutting, so take breaks and keep a sharp blade in you knife. One of the reasons we stuck the pages together just on the outside edge and didn't glue the complete page to each other was so you can remove the pages easier and you are not having to cut through all that glue as well as paper.

 

Once you have cut out your frame you can glue anything you think needs glueing together and then decorate. Using a paper frame around your cut frame will hide any rough edges. 

 

I used the panel from the Graphic 45 beneath the sea wild wild waves paper but cut the frame off to use as a frame of my cut frame.

 

The left hand page has been stencilled and then a panel and a couple of borders used to decorate the page. I also used a stamped quote and a couple of die cuts as well as my distress crayons and white pen to add some arty touches.

 

Well, thats it the whole book. Thank you for staying with me to the end. I really hope you enjoyed it and will have a go at an altered book yourself, they really are great fun to do. There are no rules just do what you like in your style, believe me you will love it.

 

The Graphic 45 papers can be found in the Fruit Pixie shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/voyage-beneath-the-sea-697-c.asp

 

White pen here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/inkssentials-white-opaque-pigment-ink-pen-5352-p.asp

 

Candi as part of a Craftwork Cards paper pack -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craftwork-cards-8-x-8-collection-pack-bohemian-dreams-25673-p.asp