Snowy Day Art Journalling

Hey there!

We got hit on the East coast this weekend with a blizzard!  So on Saturday we were stuck inside all day.  I love not having places to be and just do want I want.  The kids got to play, I got to play and we watched Netflix!

One of my plans for 2016 is to play more in my art journal.  I love Dylusions journals and have a few but I wanted a different one.  I have used simple inexpensive journals from Jerry's Artarama but the pages are thin and meant to be more of a sketchbook.  I would gesso every page first which gave it stability.  That worked fine but this time I wanted to avoid always using gesso.  I have the Strathmore Mixed Media hard back journal which was recommended by Joanne Sharpe. (I'm currently taking her awesome year long class called The Artfully Inspired Life. )  So far I have only used Tombow markers for watercoloring in it but it's a great journal.  However it's a bit expensive.  I snagged mine from Michael's at 1/2 off.

So for this new journal I didn't want to spend a whole lot as I want this journal to be something to play in, experiment and make mistakes etc.  While at Michael's last week I picked up this journal by Artist's Loft.  This is considered a sketchbook as well with a weight of 75lb paper.  So yes it's somewhat thin like my other one but the paper felt a bit better.  I figured with a coupon and only about $5.00 why not try it.

While stuck on Saturday I just played around with it using Dylusions paints!  Right now Dylusions are the only paints I grab to play with.   The above is a pic of my collection.  Dyan has also just released 6 more colors at CHA this month so I can't wait to get those.

Here are some pages I created.  Now remember I was just playing and messing around with the original intention of not sharing this journal but that's silly right?

 On this page I used a circle stencil to create the colored circles.  Then while watching TV I grabbed a micron pen and add the shapes and doodles.  I'm sure I'll mess around more here but this is what I have right now.

 Yeah I am kind of liking circles and circle stencils.  so here we have more colored circles like above.  Then I thought I can fill in the white with Dylusions black paint.  Well, I did around all the empty spots and then thought it was too annoying to get in between the circles etc.  I supposed I can mask them but just went with it.  Used a white Signo pen to doodle.

On this page (which is the 2nd page in the book because I skip the first page :-) ) I used my fingers to paint.  I was inspired by a youtube video by Maremi.  The circles here are from using some punchenella which is the waste sheets after sequins are punched out.

As you can see these are all pretty simple and basic but just fun to create with no real goal in mind. I'm excited to just keep playing, try out some new ideas and techniques etc. Next up I was checking out some Gelli Plate videos and pulled out my 6x6 plate to create with.  I'll share some pages soon.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you will come and play along with us in our current WINTER themed challenge!