Last week end
I was lucky enough to attend a wonderful art week end in the Twin Cities. It was sponsored by Bella Crafts. I took six different classes. We may talk about some of them another day
but today I am going to talk about the class I took with Cindy Shepard. You can find a link to her information here.
Cindy brought all the junk we needed for our
Stash and Smash Junk journals. I imagine she collects this all the time and
also has friends and family collect junk for her. In our pile to create our journal was a manila (oops my pictures have manila spelled differently) mailing folder, a piece of copy paper, a piece of cardstock, a piece of music
paper, several envelopes in different sizes and a piece of brown paper
bag.
Our first
step was to paint the brown paper bag with gesso and lay it aside to dry. She gave us a pregessoed piece of paper bag
to practice our technique on. We used
gelatos to color our paper. If I
remember correctly, I stenciled a design on my page with acrylic paint and then
applied different gelato colors over the top, misted it and spread the
color. I imagine you could use many
different methods of coloring your brown paper bag.
The piece was
bigger than our book so you ended up with a page that had a fold out on
it.
She also
showed us how to make a pocket on one of our pages.
We also made
a small accordion fold out from patterned paper.
Cindy also
showed us how to sew our books together with waxed thread. I will not explain that to you but I am sure
there are many videos on the internet that show you how to do this.
My friend and
I are using our journals to record our fun for the week end. Here is one page where I wrote on ledger
paper which is added to a piece of the grocery bag. I wrote the name of the classes I took and
the instructors.
Here is
another page where I put my ticket and the print out of my classes.
I came up
with a name for a little fun my friend and I were having with some techniques
we learned in a background class. We
called it Bad Ass Stamping Art. I made
the background and added the lettering and coloring it in. Around the piece I wrote some of the
things/classes from the week end. My
name badge is also on this page.
In another
class Cindy taught us to draw these cute little birds and do some Zentangle. I know I will never be a Zentangle expert but
it was fun and I have been drawing birds since then.
I have
painted the outside and inside of the cover with Dylusion Paints. I believe I am going to decorate it with some
of the geli plate prints I made in another class. Pictures of the projects I completed will go
on other pages.
Here is another page - I had a happy accident with this page. The gesso on the cover rubbed on the patterned paper. Love how it turned out. Don't you like that cute little wine glass and saying.
So, start
saving your junk and make yourself a Stash and Smash Junk Journal. I think it would be a fun activity with
children also. I know have a box where I
am collecting good junk.
