The Land of Lost Luggage

Less is more.

10x7 journal page: spray paint through cross stitch grid, hand cut stencil, paint, vintage sheet music, pen.

Happy Earth day! Don't just stop at today- make it Earth year or Earth LIFE. Re-use...stop buying those huge slabs of pattern paper.. make your own. Buy less. Spend less. Reduce waste. Ask questions.

Time for a quick tutorial? How about making a custom "brush" in photoshop using your signature? Here's how:

1. Write your signature onto a sheet of white paper (scrap paper will do; how about the junk mail?)
2. Scan your signature into your computer and then open using photoshop. (I am using CS3..someone try this with elements, I am pretty sure it will work.)
3. Once the signature is open in your photo editing program, use the magic wand to erase the white background (click the wand and then press the delete key to delete the highlighted areas you want to erase):



4. After you have erased the background, use the rectangular marquee tool to highlight the signature.
5. Click edit, then "define brush preset".



6. Viola! Your signature will now be in your brush palette! Ready to add to all of your art work.

Have fun!

More quick projects... (& the famous transfer tutorial)

 

fronts: gel medium and/or acrylic ground for pastels transfers embellished with paint. backs: hand cut stencil + spray paint, acrylic, pen

Several of you asked for transfer tips yesterday convincing me that I could really host a 24 hour cable access television show regarding the subject! Behold, the most requested Lost Luggage tutorial of all time- Transfer How to - over on my "old" blog. Look around while you're over there...I divulge all of my most favorite tips and tricks. There are two "old blogs"...one for reviews and tutorials and one for art before Typepad.

If you have questions regarding the transfer process, please post them in the comments here. That way, I can answer for everyone to see!

By the way....have you checked out the GPP Street Team Crusade this month? It's all about cutting stencils like I have above and inhaling spray paint fumes. What are you waiting for? You know you want to.....

Thank you so much for stopping by today!! Have a great weekend!

For the French

Laurence traduit le cours d'instruction de page de journal en langue française. Clic ici.

Merci, Laurence !

The Egg!

A few years ago, my dear friend Michael presented me with the most unbelieveable egg I have ever seen. When I saw the egg, my mouth dropped open and I was in a state of shock. He mentioned that he had been making these eggs with his family since he was 4 years old. He went on to tell me that the process was relatively simple and it only took a few minutes to make each egg. I did not believe him. This is the egg he gave me that I treasure year round:

Unbelieveable, right? I look at it all the time and I still can't belive it! Here is how you can make your own wax egg! Try it this weekend!

Start by hollowing out raw eggs: Using a pin, poke small holes in each end of the egg, wiggle the pin around inside the hole to make it a little bit larger. Blow out the insides of the egg: Use the pin to wiggle around and break up the yoke or you’ll blow your cheeks out. Clean out the egg by running hot water through it. Leave it standing upright to dry out.

Dye you eggs. I found dye recipes on this website that are very easy.

Stick a flat topped pin into a pencil eraser to use as your wax writing implement. It is important that the pin head is flat, not round.

For this technique, you need really hot wax. I melted a red crayon in my melting pot. Michael uses the stove and says he heats the wax until the wax is almost on fire. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you should never leave melting wax unattended...it is highly flammable. Use caution during this step! I set my melting pot to the hottest setting and let the wax melt- I never took my eyes off the pot.

Being the crafty types that you are, you probably also realize you can use beeswax on white eggs, then dye the eggs, then heat the eggs to remove the wax: 'resist technique'.

You can test how hot your wax is by trying a few test strokes on an extra egg. If you are able to produce nice long strokes of wax, then you are ready to go. If your wax is not hot enough, it will harden on the pin before you are able to draw the line on the egg.

In the picture above, the wax was not hot enough. Notice how I was only able to make short lines. Let the wax heat up some more and try again. Here is my next test run:

Towards the end of this practice run, I was able to get a few longer strokes of color. I was ready to try it for real. Working pretty quick, dip the pin head into the wax and draw onto your egg. It takes a steady hand, so I recommend holding your egg in your non-dominant hand on the counter top. Once the egg is steady, bring in the wax strokes.

I spoke with Michael this morning and asked about the wax he uses. He told me that he usually just chops up whatever candle he may have on hand (birthday or taper stump) and then adds color via crayon and/or food coloring. I was frustrated that my pin was not delivering as much wax per line as Michael's candle and came to the conclusion that the difference may lay in the type of wax used. You can notice in his egg photos, the beads of wax are much heavier than on my egg. We used the same pin.

I had the idea to make an ornament out of my egg using string. In order to string the egg, I needed to enlarge the holes in the egg. During this process, I chipped one whole larger than I would have liked to, so I tied a button onto the string to hold it in place. Voila!

Red and blue...did you think I would make it any other colors? This is a really fun project that I am going to continue to try every year! I don't know if I will ever be able to make an egg as beautiful as Michael's, but I am going to have a fun time trying! For kicks, check out the eggs on this website! Amazing!

My friend doesn't blog, but would love it if you make some eggs and post a link here so he can see the egg love too!

Happy Easter!

Look!

Zorana finished the journaling tutorial!

Kim finished her journaling tutorial too!

And here's a link to Seth's page too!

Jill got in on the fun too!!

Look what Pat came up with!

Lisa made a page too!

Here's Cindy's great pair of pages!

Martha added her pages to the growing list of pages here!

Dymphie used the tutorial to make a great collection of ATC's!

Lisa Renea made a really dreamy skinny page!! and then she went on to make 4 ATC's using the tutorial!

Did I miss your page?? Leave me a comment and link to it so I can share it here!

Let's Journal! Part V {end}

There really isn't any right or wrong way to journal. Did you guess I was going to say that? I hope that by reading these last 4 days of lessons, you have come to the realization that in journaling, anything goes. There are no specific techniques to collage or paint. There are only things you can interpret to make your own. Making your journal "your own" is my favorite part of journaling.

In the Color Binge (Did you name your journal? For some reason I sat idle for a few days until I came up with a name for my journal. Color Binge seemed to fit as this volume was intended for exploration with paint.), I experimented with journaling daily occurences, poetry, song lyrics and me talking to myself when times got tough. I felt most comfortable writing inspirational messages and advice to myself and as I look back through what is an almost 120 page journal now, I find myself really enjoying reading those pages.

The most common denominator in my journal is that I like to make lines to write upon and I mostly print. No particular reason why, I just like the look of that combination. On some of my pages, the text takes up the entire page, and on other, there are only a few words. Some of the pages do not feature any writing at all; they merely feature printed text cut out from a book or printed on the computer. On a couple of pages, I stamped the text, another favorite that is growing on me.

click to enlarge photo (for Paula)

So, after all of the steps and all of the photos, this is my finished page. I hesitate to say 'finished' because a few weeks from now when I flip through the book again, I may add some more of something somewhere. I love the liberating feeling I get from working in this book. No rules to follow, nobody to listen to...only my heart.

How did you make out? I hope you enjoyed these tutorials! I had a great time (although time consuming and pressure ridden) writing them! I would love to hear about your experience with any of the steps and journaling in general! As I write the final post in this series, the Color Binge is nearing its full capacity and I am on the hunt for journal #2!

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank Seth for giving me this award. Seth is the blog owner/author of the most fantastic and supportive altered art blog around! If you have not visited The Altered Page yet, do yourself a favor and click over and say hello today!

Furthermore, thank you to my friends Zorana, Kathy, Karen, Kim and Tami for linking to the tutorials from your blog. You guys are the best ever, and get the "Excellent Award" too!

Finally to all of the new friends I met during the tutorials (this is starting to sound like the Academy Awards...I hear the walk-off music playing now), I am so happy that you came by to visit! When you finish with your journal pages, please be sure to let me know! Post your pages on your blog so I can feature them over here for everyone to see! And by the way, I think you're ALL Excellent!

Thanks for coming along for the ride! I hope to see you again soon!

Let's Journal! Pt IV

Here we are at day 4 of our 5 day tutorial. I hope that my pages have inspired you to pick up a notebook and get to work! Today we're going to add some things to the top of our page that will stand out pretty well on the finished page. These "embellishments" may include photographs, die cuts, chipboard, magazine pages, printed text, etc. Here's what I did:

I used my favorite pen to add some black doodle junk at the top and bottom of the page. I prefer these pens by Sharpie. It is hard to find a pen that continues to have great ink flow over all of these surface types. I gave up using Pitt artist pens. The tips do not hold up well to these textured pages.

In the picture above, you can see I also added text from my computer. Before printing the text, I sprayed a piece of cardstock with water and then followed with a few quick squirts of Walnut Ink. Once the paper was dry, I fed it through my computer. Instant aged text. Once the text was on the page, I outlined each piece with my black colored pencil and smudged away.

When I am gluing small pieces of cut out text to my pages, I like to use this glue pen. It's a lot easier to control the glue placement. If I were to use glue stick or gel medium, and if any of the glue stick or gel medium "missed its mark", then the pencil lines and charcoal smudges would stick to the glue and look sloppy. With this pen, I can assure that glue will only go where it needs to be.

You can see I also added some stamped script to the page. To ink the stamps, I lay the stamps down on the table, rubber side up, and gently rub the corner of a stazon ink pad to the center of the rubber. This way, the stamp will not look like a block of text, it will appear as some of the writing has weathering and worn away.

So I think I am just about finished here...time to add some journaling. How is your page coming along? When I look back at this page and remember some of the things I mentioned on day 1 of the tutorial, I can see that I am sort of a liar. Ha! I wanted my pattern paper to show through, but my paint color mishap required additional paint layers, so most of the floral is covered up. All of that extra paint also covers up a lot of the text I hoped would peek through. Oh well. It's still a nice page even though it didn't finish in the direction that I hoped for at the beginning. Like I said, there is no wrong way to make a page. All pages are great! They're your pages and when you look back at them a long time from now, you'll have forgotten the floral pattern and the text you wanted to come through.

See you tomorrow!

Let's Journal! Pt III

Well, thankfully I was able to get rid of the "pepto pink" I gave myself...I'll tell you how!

God's gift to the dirty journal page lover is "walnut ink". Walnut ink spray in a spray pump is fantastic. I use it everywhere. If I could touch up my roots with it, I probably would! The spray will take to old papers really strongly. Before I use the spray, I always spray water all over the page first. This will dilute the walnut color and allow it to move around a bit instead of looking like a harsh brown mess. After I spray the ink on, I blot it with my rag. Not dark enough? I repeat the process until I am happy. Blotting with the rag gives you different results every time.

If you don't have any walnut ink, you can replicate a similar result with any of the Distress Inks (Ranger).  Rub your ink pad face down onto a non-stick craft sheet or wax paper. Spray on water to make the ink bead up and then blot the wax paper to the journal or the journal to the craft sheet. Repeat the process until your ink gives you the color you desire, allowing the layers to dry in between each round.

My next step to darken the bright pink was to add some white spray paint. You can mimic the look of spray paint through a stencil by using the dry brushing technique I mentioned in Lesson II or with chalk ink. (Tip: When you're using things other than spray paint with stencils, they can bleed a lot easier. Make sure you tape the stencils down really well or have your friend put their hands in harms way by holding the stencil in place while you ink.) When I pulled my sequin scrap out of my bin, two of them were stuck together as shown above. I just went with it! Out to the garage...under the car for the spray session.

Here's how we look after the spray paint. Nice? I like it. But alas, I am fickle. More walnut ink to simmer that pink down still...you get where I am going with this? You can go back and repeat, skip, repeat whatever you want. You don't have to follow directions at all! Do what you feel.

(Were going to move on to focusing on some little details in the aging process now...I've switched over to my macro lens and a flash. There is no sheen on the pages, just flash reflection.)

I used my scallop punch to make a little border out of some vintage paper I have. Using a black colored pencil (not charcoal this time), I used short strokes to make the page border and then the border on the scallop. I like to outline the elements to give them more definition.

I don't like clean lines, so I use my finger to rub rub rub the lines. I love to smudge! At this point, I also gingerly outline the torn paper to make it look like there is a slight shadow. Smudge these lines too. Rub hard.

Even though that scallop paper is from 1895, it's still too "white" for my taste. You guessed it, more walnut ink. (Be carful when your watering vintage paper like this. Make sure the glue stick has thoroughly dried before you add the water spray..otherwise, it will buckle and bubble. It's also a good idea to work very fast with the walnut ink and blot up the moisture as quickly as possible!)

Here's where we ended up after today's steps:

Get your pens ready! Tomorrow we're going to doodle away!

How's it going so far?

Let's Journal! Pt II

How did you make out with your scraps and glue stick yesterday? I hope you're having a fun time making your page...remember there is no right or wrong way to make the page, and these instructions should be used for your inspiration purposes. Enough said...let's get on with step 2; paint.

A lot of people tell me they can't paint. I don't think I can paint either. Ha! When I make these pages, they are filled with layers and layers of paint, with a lot of water and a lot of wiping off paint here and there to reveal paint colors underneath the top layer. I never know where I am going to end up...sometimes I start with a specific idea in mind and get it...most of the time I change my mind half way through!

A couple of terms to start:

Wash: paint with water added. This essentially makes your acrylic paints watercolors. It provides lighter saturation to the page. I start with a wash in order to make all of the scraps tie in together.

Dry Brush: Using a dry paint brush, dry brushing involves taking a little bit of paint, brushing it off the brush onto your pallet and then applying it to the page. This provides a worn paint look. (See below)

In the picture above, I used a yellow ochre wash and then started to add in heavier saturated streaks of pinks. (Editor's note: This page made me sick when I started. The colors were awful and I considered starting with a fresh page. I am not sure what I was thinking. It happens.)

As I continued to paint, I added dry brush strokes of white paint (not gesso- gesso is difficult to write over in my opinion. I like the texture of paint better.) and then went back in with more pink. If I applied too much paint, I used my rag to wipe it off. It the paint was still too heavy, I used my spray bottle of water to lighten it up. Just keep painting, and rubbing until you like the look of your page.

This process took several minutes. In between paint layers, I used my heat gun to speed up the drying process. If your layers are not dry before you add the next layer, you will not have layers; you will have a solid colored page. Make sure your layers are dry before you add your next layer. Here is what my finished painted page looks like:

I am looking at the page now and it already looks like nothing compared to the picture above! Tomorrow we'll add some more layers and age it up. (Somehow we need to get rid of that pink!)

Please don't forget to let me know how you're doing! See you tomorrow!

Let's Journal! Part I

Welcome to my journal page class! I am so happy to see that you’ve joined us. Throughout the next 5 days I’ll be writing about how I make my journal pages. I would love it if you left a comment with tips and tricks you’ve learned in your journal making processes or of course if you have any questions, post away!

Disclaimer: I think that making a journal should be a personal experience. Certainly, you can apply these techniques to other art projects on any medium, but your page should come from your heart. After much frustration, I finally found a look that I am happy with. Why am I happy? I am happy because I stopped trying to have pages that look like someone else’s and I noticed that I like to do my own thing. I think about this all of the time…for a long time I thought to myself that I couldn’t draw. I finally realized the reason was because I was trying to draw things realistically…if I close my eyes and imagine what a cat would look like in my imagination for instance, I can draw it much easier than a cat I see on the steet. Same thing applies to the pages. Make each page your own.

Another point to note: The Color Binge has what I think are horrible pages in the beginning (They are all posted to the left, in the album), but more pleasing and complex pages towards the end. Why? Practice. I’ve been hitting the “Binge” every day since last summer trying to master paint and journaling. Am I a master? No…I don’t think so. But I am really happy with my pages these days! Let’s get underway!

To start, since most of you can’t see the book in person, I thought I would point out a few of the things I like to use on my pages. Sometimes I mention these things casually, and I realize some of you may not know what I am talking about, so here we go:

A: I love my pages to look imperfect and messy. This pointer shows some underlying paper that was not glued down perfectly. It came up and bucked after paint. Love it.

B:  I like to add borders around everything to finish them off and make things more defined. The smudgy-er the better.

C: The look of torn paper makes me happy. When I tear paper, I try and tear it so that the rough edge is on top. Tear a sheet of pattern paper- if you notice, depending on which direction you tear it in, one side is clean and the other is rough and torn. I’m sure there are probably technical terms for all these things, but I didn’t go to school for art…only gemology.

D:  Some torn text under the paint, peeking through adds interest. I have printed text of some sort on almost every page.

E:  Spray paint. I just started using spray paint and even though I like the look of black paint, it is a little too harsh and graphic on these pages. Solution? Apply it first, so it is under the paint., peeking through. Always think about the order of each layer and what can happen when the next layer is added.

F: Stamping. Another way to add a layer to your page. For these underlying background images, I never ink the entire image surface. I ink by holding the ink pad over the middle of the stamp and gently brushing the ink onto the rubber. To me, a stamp that is inked “all the way” is too dark and perfect for my style. (Notice for the stamped frames I did in fact ink the entire stamp..they are in the foreground and needed to be heavier.) Rough edges=good.

G:  Vintage paper. Your paper does not need to be vintage to add to this look. You can simply age paper to make it look vintage with walnut ink or distress ink. Something that bothers me personally is the mixture of new and old papers on the same page. If I am taking the time to age and mess everything up, a new paper would look out of place. I like things to match.

H: Scribble border. Use charcoal or black colored pencil (or regular pencil for that matter!) in short, uneven strokes. If your dominant hand is too obedient, then use your other hand to make these scribbles. I love it messy!

For the first part of our journaling today, we'll glue on some interesting base paper. We'll be painting over a lot of this paper, so the look of the page will change dramatically. You can use any paper you want for this step! The thought is that there will be some interesting texture and images coming up through the paint when we're finished.

On an old catalogue, spread glue stick over the scraps. Make sure the glue goes all the way to the edges of the scraps- that's what the catalogue pages are for; to catch the extra glue. When one page is sticky, turn to the next and start again. No mess!

Here's what my page looks like after the scraps have been added. Do you see where the camera focus is? I hope that word remains visible after we make a mess with the paint and ink... In my mind, I have an idea to write around the edges of this page, so I pushed the scraps towards the center. That's pretty much all I have thought of so far for this page, the other elements will pop into my head once I start adding them!

Are your wheels turning? I hope so! Tomorrow we're going to be adding paint. I love Golden fluid acrylics, but you can use any craft paint you want! I think working with acrylics is the easiest...the paint will allow you time to change your mind before anything becomes too permanent.

See you tomorrow, bring your paintbrush!

Edit: I use this book for my journal. The paper is just right for water and glue!