Repeating Elements in Journaling

Here's my progression photos from the Worth Repeating challenge for Documented Life Art Journal 2015. I love flowers, and always seem to use them somewhere on my journal pages. It's hard to do just one flower.

This page is mostly collage, acrylic paint and a white signo pen.

It feels a little chaotic, and not much room for journaling, but I love the colors. Enjoy!

When art just happens

I always keep a piece of butcher paper covering my work space, and I'm embarrassed to admit, that until I did the Documented Life Challenge this year and was challenged to use my "under paper", I always just threw it away

Today, instead of throwing it way I cut up into pieces and was amazed by the results. I love some of the new color combos that turned up in my scraps-colors I would probably never intentionally put together. Each piece was like it's own individual mini artwork--and I didn't even try! Gotta love that!

I used a couple pieces in my journal entry today. It pushed my a bit out of my comfort zone to add theses to my pretty pastel pages, but I loved the results

Recycle your Magazines into Handmade Cards

I ran across a great post on Pintrest about how to recycle old magazines into hand-made paper. I won't repost the instructions because they are great in the original post-you can find them HERE.

I started off with seven magazines pages, a little gel medium and a roller. After the glue dried I added the stitching with my daughter's sewing machine (I don't sew). Then added a little gesso and my paper was done.

It turned out so awesome, I had to make something else out of it, so I decided a hand-made greeting card would be nice.

All the pieces I used were re-purposed.

I left the inside blank, but did add some color. Beats paying $5.99 for a card at the store-this one was basically FREE :)

Kid's Recycle Art Workshop

This week I just finished holding an amazing Recycled Art Workshop. And when I say amazing, I don't mean my workshop, but I'm referring to the amazing creative kids that attended. Using all "trash" and a little inspiration, they took the info I presented to them and ran with it. I was really amazed at the unique creativity of each piece of art.

Here's project one of three.  Thanks to Pinterest, I found this great idea for Recycled Picasso Portraits by United Art & Education. Just click the previous link and they have a wonderful tutorial to follow.

Using "trash" like cardboard boxes, phone book pages, paper and fabric scraps, old magazines, discarded buttons, and paper bags, along with some basic art supplies like glue, scissors, construction paper and oil pastels, students created these amazing portraits. 

I can't tell you how much they enjoyed coloring on the cardboard with the oil pastels! If you ever want to entertain a child, give them something textured to color on :)

Click Photo for details

Love these Crayola Oil Pastels for classes!

I also encouraged them to use a warm/cool color combo for the back ground verses the foreground.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Every Summer Has A Story

I love mixed media!

A little collage can add so much to a painting and give it a fun whimsical element.

Students simply cut out letters and used Mod Podge to apply them to their paintings.

Now all you need is a beach house to hang this masterpiece in!

Happy Summer Vacation!

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Mother's Day Family Tree Collages

I held a collage class a couple weeks ago to create a special Mother's Day work of art. Each student brought 3-4 pieces of coordinating scrapbook paper, so the papers would be something their mother liked.

First they painted a 16 x 20 stretched canvas with an acrylic paint that complemented their papers. Then, using a rubber texture tool they created their background designs.

While the background was drying, students used templates to trace and cut their shapes. Tracing was done on the back of scrapbook paper to minimize tracing lines.

I had pre-printed the text boxes ahead of time-Bible verse and family names.

After cutting out the shapes, students arranged the pieces on the canvas before glueing. Mod Podge was used to glue down the paper, layer by layer, being careful to remove bubbles. A coat of Mod Podge was applied over the top of everything when finished. This process took 2 hours.

At our next session students painted accents (scalloped edges, etc.) and outlined everything with a Sharpie marker. This process took about an hour.

Isn't it amazing how the designs are all the same, yet they are each are so unique.  Girls wrapped these up before taking them home so they surprise their mom on Mother's Day. Special thanks to Things With Wings for being our artist inspiration.

Paint + Collage Process-Let's Paint Friday

Here's a quick peek at how to do collage artwork like the Pig pictured above. This acrylic mixed media piece was done by one of my adult students, Dianna Huchingson, who is very talented, much more so than she gives herself credit. She did this piece in about 2 hours and used scrapbook paper, gloss medium, acrylic paint on a canvas panel.

She started out using a pig picture similar to this one as her reference/inspiration.

First she sketched out her basic shape, and then using gloss medium, she started glueing her torn papers into place.

Then using acrylic paint mixed with gloss medium, she filled in the white space.

A few more shadows and touches and she ended up with this cute little guy!