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Happy to be the Featured Artist for The Documented Life

Don't you just love The Documented Life project? The artists behind the project, Rae, Lorraine, Roben-Marie, and Sandi, are brilliant and inspiring. I'm honored to be the featured artist this week.

My art challenge is tissue paper, and my journal prompt is "the disappearing trick."

I love using tissue paper in my art. It's great to stamp on, paint on, write on. When you glue it onto your work with gel medium, the tissue "disappears" and whatever you've put on it remains.

For these pages, I took tissue paper and put it on a stack on my table. I used my Dina Wakley Media acrylics and I started painting on it with my fingers and making marks with objects. I let the paint soak through from one layer to another.

I took Dina Wakley Media black paint and applied it to one of my Scribbly Birds in Flight stamps. Then I stamped it repeatedly on the tissue. I let the paint soak through to the next piece here, too.

When the painted tissue papers were dry, I started to tear them up and use Dina Wakley Media gel medium to glue them onto a journal page. I glued them on loosely and let them overlap. A flow started to become evident across the page.

I took some glassine paper that I bought AGES ago and drew some women on it with the Stabilo All pencil. I also glued some of the painted tissue. Glassine is different than deli paper in that it is coated on both sides and it is much thicker. Deli paper is great substitute, though.

As I glued and painted on the glassine, it started to wrinkle. At first I thought about trashing it, but then I decided to embrace the imperfection of it. The wrinkles give an interesting textural quality to the drawings. I firmly believe that art journaling is not supposed to be perfect. It is supposed to be expressive and emotive!

I added some color and some journaling and glued the women to the top of my journal page. To view the page, you can look at it as whole, and you can fold up each woman and look at what is underneath. I like how different parts of the page disappear and/or reappear depending how you arrange the glassine pieces.

Thanks so much to the Art to the 5th artists for having me as a guest!

Holiday birdie tags…tweet tweet!

Here are a couple of cute little Holiday Scribbly Birdie tags…aren't they cute? I love the little owl with the over-sized stocking hat. So cute.

I stamped the birds with black Archival ink on Ranger watercolor paper. Then I "watercolored" these with my Dina Wakley Media acrylic paint. Just water it down a bit and it gives you a watercolor look. Paint loosely and leave some areas white. So easy! I speckled with Night and with Sterling. Have you tried speckling with the metallic paint yet? Swooooon. As the speckles dry, the metallic really comes out and gives a great effect.

I thought I would explain what "this item is released" means…

1. A manufacturer announces an item. This is called a "release." It is simply an announcement that the item is going to be produced by the manufacturer.
2. A release date does not mean ship date (unfortunately). An item may be released but may not be shipping for a month. For mid-year releases, Ranger is generally pretty good about ship dates, though, and they are often not long after release dates. Ship dates are usually not advertised to consumers but are told to retailers.
3. Arrival date. This is when the product actually arrives at a retailer. Can be variable depending on everything from distance to Ranger, speed of shipping, and the weather.

New Ranger releases from October

Have you seen the Ranger blog? There are lots of awesome products in the October release! Tim's new color, Carved Pumpkin, is a beautiful orange. I'm excited for his splatter brush, too!

I am super proud of this holiday stamp set/stencil combo in my Dina Wakley Media line. Lookie, new scribbly birdies! Wheee! I think they are adorable. I can't wait to see the holiday projects that you make with them. Be sure to send me links so I can add what you do to my Dina Wakley Media Line pin board.

I will be back soon with a few samples made with the holiday set.

Brave Girls…

I am amazed at the offerings at Brave Girls University. Amazed. Holy cow. What classes have you taken so far? Right now my Art Journaling 101 class is there, and a few more will be added soon.

Click here for more info.

Ooooh, a background.

Did this quick background with my acrylic paints on my new Bold Journal Elements stamp set. I love, love, love to use my paints on stamps. To apply paint to the stamp evenly, I use the Tim Holtz mini blending tool. So easy! After you stamp, be sure to clean the acrylic off before it dries.

Now the fun part…what comes next?

Couple of samples from class…

These are two drawing samples I did while teaching…the magic of the "magic" pencil!

An apology…

Those of you signed up for classes with me in Montreal and St. Pete know by now that I have had to cancel.

I apologize. Truly.

If you look at my schedule, you will see that I have been working like a mad woman for a long time. I have kept up a similar pace for several years now.

It has caught up to me. It has caught up to my family. Right now I have to stay home and focus on what matters most. I will come back to Montreal and St. Pete, but I can never get time back with them. So we are hunkering down and weathering a storm. Prayers appreciated.

To all who are struggling with depression, I want you to know this.

Depression is a liar.

It lies to you and it isolates you. It tricks you into thinking you don't matter. But you do. Oh, how you do.

Hold on. You are needed. You are loved. There is help out there.

 

Happy to be part of Cloth Paper Scissors’ Art Lesson series…

I am happy to be part of Cloth Paper Scissors Art Lesson series. Woo hoo! The Art Lesson are short, downloadable lessons that have step by step tutorials and a short video of part of the technique included.This is my first lesson, Easy Layering with Analogous Colors.

You can see the other art lessons from the year, here.

Drawing over mop-up…

I drew this quick gal over a page where I was wiping all the extra paint from my palette. What do you do with your mop up pages?

Soooo excited about this….Signature Designer Accessory Bags!

I am so excited about this…accessory bags with art from all four Ranger Signature Designers–Tim Holtz, Dyan Reaveley, Wendy Vecchi, and moi! The bags are durable and BIG…they are long enough to hold my brushes and have so much room. You can hold and travel with lots of supplies in these bags. Here's mine:

Don't you want them all? *wink*