WooHoo, I've been published!

It's always a thrill to see your craft work in a magazine...any magazine, digital, paper, whatever.  To be published in a Stampington magazine for me is like winning the lottery, I love their magazines so much and admire many of their featured artists from all over the world.  As most of you know, when your work is published you receive a free issue in the mail.  This time I received two different magazines on the same day, now that doesn't happen very often.  I had a card published in The Stampers' Sampler and an article on a journaling technique in Art Journaling magazine.

Susan Pagnucci's interview in the Stampers' Sampler is fabulous.  She carves so many of her own stamps.

Both magazines are loaded with great content and fun ideas for Spring.  If you get a chance to check them out or purchase them you won't be disappointed.  The article in AJ mag. about Dina Wakley is amazing with 10 pages of her work.  I could go on and on about all the artists in the Art Journaling magazine but I don't want to spoil it for you!  I hope you get an opportunity to see both of them.  And I would like to express my gratitude to the two editors Gracy Wilkins and Devon Warren for sharing my work.  I hope everyone has a great weekend!  Hugs ~ Renee

Using Artistcellar Stencils in my Art Journal

It is Tuesday so it must be Artistcellar stenciling day!  Today I'm using my stencils in my art journal.

I always have my journal turned to two blank pages when I'm doing a lot of stenciling on other projects, this way I don't waste any of my inks.  These two pages were evidently test pages to see what color of Turquoise I had in the bottle and then a blast of Bubblegum Pink found its way there too.  I wiped a Balzer Silhouette Script stencil with Angel Pink irRESISTibles off on it at a later date.  At this point it doesn't look like much of anything to most people but when I look at it I see ball gowns.

After choosing my background in my journal  I went back to my Master Board stash and found a piece of paper that I worked on a couple of weeks ago.  I cut three tags out of this, smeared a glob of gesso in the center of each tag, stamped some of Dina Wakley's faces on it and a corset stamp that I got for free in the new Craft Stampers magazine and Voila! I was ready to play.

The lady tags were glued to the art journal pages and then I drew their dresses on with a black pen.

After their ball gowns were drawn on I added another lady tag to the mix.  I began just writing a little story randomly around the ladies, put crowns on them and gave one some flowers.  It didn't seem bold enough for my taste so I pulled out some more stencils, these are by Tamara Laporte and are called Tam's Inspiration. In this series of word stencils you'll find inspirational words written in Tam's lettering style.  I used Black StazOn ink with a sponge dauber to stencil these words onto my pages:  believe, stardust and you matter.

 Once the ink was dry I had my two pages done.  It is always fun to play in my art journal it gives me ideas to try on cards and mixed media canvases later.

My message on Tuesdays is always the same, get your stencils out and play with them in all sorts of different ways.  You'll be glad you did, I know I always am.  Take care, see you next Tuesday!  Hugs, Renee xx

I have an article published in Art Journaling Magazine!

I am excited to share with you that I was published in Art Journaling magazine for the very first time.

  I received my complimentary copy in the mail and couldn't be happier.  I shared with them some of my 100 Faces in 100 Days a few months back and the editor asked me to write an article about my artistic/journaling journey.  It was a lot of fun to write about it and even more fun to see it in print.  Here are the opening pages of the article.

In the Gallery section of the magazine they were kind enough to share a few more of my art journal pages.

So, if you are any where near a Barnes and Noble bookstore and have a few moments I'd be delighted if you stopped to take a look.  There are so many of my personal favorite artists in this particular magazine, I'm just thrilled to be mentioned in the same issue with them!  My thanks as always to Stampington, I wouldn't be doing any of this if it hadn't been for them.  Hugs ~ Renee

Art Journal Mermaid using Jane Davenport stencils

I'm supposed to be working but I keep getting distracted.  I moved my journal to clean the desk and next thing I knew I found a Jane Davenport face stencil that I had misplaced.  I thought before I put it away I'd just draw my one face for the day.  Just a little sketch, here's what I ended up with.

In all fairness the background was already done.  Just waiting for a mermaid to swim through it.

It has been sitting there for months now just waiting for something exciting to be written upon it.  I drew the face on some watercolor paper using the stencil as my guide.  Then I colored it in with Pan Pastels.  Just like real make up she started out with a base coat.

I just keep layering on the Pan Pastels until I get the right combination and then proceed to the hair.  Using a magic pencil (Aquarellable) I make the lines that I will smear later with my finger or a blending tool.  Then I start adding the colors to go with the background.  This is one of the places in the world where green hair is completely acceptable.

Looking at her I thought "this girl needs a tail" so I cut one out of watercolor paper and did my journaling on that before coloring it in with Pan Pastels.  I wrote all my daydreams down about getting out of this COLD weather and going to sunny warm waters where I might run into this mermaid while snorkeling off of a yacht.  Right before the crew makes me a fabulous gourmet lunch.  One last swim and there she is!

Well, a girl can dream can't she?  You know what they say you gotta dream big and in color!  Keep warm or at least keep thinking warm thoughts.  Thanks so much for stopping by, I'll get "back" to work now, I promise.  Take care ~ Renee

Dina Wakley is in the HOUSE this week! ~ Self Portraits

Well, Dina Wakley was in the house this week, not my house personally, though she is always welcome here, but she was at Ink About It in Westford, MA for a series of classes.  I was able to do two of her classes.  The first was her all day class called "In Your Image".  This class was all about exploring and playing with art journaling techniques.  One of the goals of the class was to help us learn techniques that include OUR personal image and journaling about our journey through life and other personal history things that we might be hesitant to write about.  You know that you've been out of the "picture" in a lot of family gatherings, etc. when you try to find 8 photos of yourself to use in the class and you are hard pressed to find even that many pictures.  Dina made a good point when she said "years from now your descendants/family members will never ask why there are so many photos of Grandma/you."  All of us wish we had more photos of loved ones or relatives we never met.  So seize the moment, get yourself in the photos as often as possible.  That being said, I forgot my camera that day (oh, the irony of it all) but I do have photos of my work from the class.  We used our own image as the base of each of these journaling pages.  I must admit the only one that really looks like me is the one where I glued my photo on to.  I will put a caption under each mentioning the method used to make the journal page.

We painted over our photo with acrylics, cut it out and glued it to our background.  I call this one "MAD MEN" because I ended up looking like a lady from the 1960's.

For this page we traced our image onto a piece of paper, in my case book paper, using carbon paper.  Then we tore it out, applied color with oil pastels and glued it onto a prepared background.

This technique required us to make a stencil using our own photograph.  First we prepared the background using acrylic paints on a large sheet of watercolor paper.  We trimmed out the photo "stencil" with an Exacto knife and pounced color on to make the face on the background with our stencil and some black permanent ink.  You can use your stencil over and over again.  I used mine here to make "Three Faces of Renee".

"This Girl is On Fire"

I just happened to have this photo of myself that I took in one of those photo booths at the Mall one day.  I had had my makeup done at a make up counter and swore they made me look like a vampire.  Just to prove to myself that it looked as bad as I thought it did I went into the photo booth and posed for a few pics.  I was right, the make up did look very Goth!  If you have to use the photo booth to get pics of yourself just do it, you never know when you can use a bad photo to make art.  Remember that no one has to see any of these pictures or works of art unless you allow them to!  I am not a frilly girl by nature but I've always secretly wanted to be.  That's why I put myself in this frilly ball gown made out of strips of paper that we made in the class.  This one is my favorite of all four.

If you ever get a chance to take a class with Dina I would tell you to GO FOR IT!  She is very relaxed and fun to be with.  Dina is a great teacher and I for one always learn something new and exciting from her classes.  Later this week I'll share some of the photos from her second class which was about Gelli Plate art.  Thanks for stopping by ~Renee

Art Journal Faces

I am working in my small, 5" by 8", art journal using the Jane Davenport petite face stencils.  I like the results and the size.  This is one that makes me think of Spring.  I began by outlining her face with my "magic" pencil better known as Stabilo Aquarellable pencil.  To blend it I used a water brush and then added color.

I used TCW stencils for the the flowers and IMAGINE Crafts Fireworks! Spray in the lovely Desert Sand, Bamboo Leaves and Summer Sky colors.  Then I used Pan Pastels for the face and the red and yellow flowers.  A few outlines with a Fude black permanent pen and Voila!  Spring.

Thanks for stopping by.  Take care ~ Renee

Art Journal pages using acrylic paints

Back again with more art journaling madness.  I can't seem to get enough of this.  These pages were inspired by Kate Crane's DVDs and are done with acrylic paints.  I haven't written on them yet, these are just backgrounds waiting to covered up with whatever.  The images that are cut out and pasted on to the pages are by Hidden Vintage Studios/Tangled Up and Almost Alice.

We're in for some cold weather today.  It just started snowing.  Have a great weekend, talk to you soon! 

March 2013 Calendar Pages/#Sizzix

I'll be teaching my March and April 2013 Art Journal Calendar pages at Ink About It in Westford, MA on January 5th.  When I was creating the March calendar page I kept thinking of an old quilt pattern called "Grandmother's Flower Garden" which uses hexagon shapes.  This idea morphed into just flowers with 6 petals and a center to equal one week.  The background is done with gesso, Dylusions London Blue spray ink, Dyan Reaveley's diamond stencil, Pearlescent Embossing Paste by Dreamweaver spread through a chevron stencil with a credit card.  The letters, rosette and hearts were cut using Sizzix dies.

Nice bright colors!  I'm hoping for a nice, bright winter, with just a little bit of snow.  We'll see how it all works out.  Have a great weekend, talk to you soon~Renee

Art Journal Cafe Challenge

The ladies at Art Journal Cafe have a wonderful color challenge going on this week.  This is the suggested color palette:

The colors are to be used any way you like on a journaling page.

First I used gesso to unify the background and give the paper some tooth.  After that I applied acrylic paints that fit into the palette.  I used a lot of inks and some modeling paste along with stencils, stamps, etc.  The clip art is from Hidden Vintage Studio at DeviantScrap.com.  A quick spritz of Dyan Reaveley's red spray ink, blotted with a kitchen roll and blended with a baby wipe.  It looks very urban IRL.

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend!  We are.....the sun is shining.....yay!!  I'm going out to catch a few rays.  Talk to you soon.

2013 Art Journal Calendar Pages

I'm preparing for my new classes at Ink About It my LSS in Westford, MA.  I'll be teaching Calendar Pages using Dyan's art journal.  There will be one class a month with two calendar pages to complete.  Here is my first installment for Jan/Feb 2013. 

I wanted to have an icy blue effect on this page with a little twinkle of snowflakes in the background.
For February I wanted more of an orange sherbert kind of an effect.

I hope people find them interesting enough to sign up for the classes.  I had a lot of fun developing the pages.

Have you tried art journaling yet?  Have you tried making your own calendars?    There are some great tutorials on YouTube that can inspire you and help you to overcome that fear of a blank page staring back at you.  Throw some gesso on it first and let it dry.  Now it's not blank any more.  Just let your imagination soar and have some fun with it.  You don't have to share your pages with anyone unless you want to.  Become fearless and try something new this week.  Go for it.

I'm Dylusional again

I've been playing around in my DR Journal again.  This time I used orange paints, acrylic and spray paints.  Just making a mess as usual.  In my rainbow colored bathroom, of course.  Gesso was applied first combined with some red and yellow Claudine Hellmuth paints.  The color came out really peachy.  I covered most of the 2 pages leaving the edges a little bare.  I stenciled across the bottom with Dyan Reaveley's star stencil.  I used Reeves Crayons for the stenciling in the crimson color and then stippled a little of Mementos Pear Green ink over the area.  The balloons were stamped on water color paper and colored with Distress Marker inks.  I trimmed them out and glued them to the page.  The girl is pure Stampotique, her name is Top Knot.  The word "FLY" is also Stampotique.  The phrase is TH Stampers Anonymous collection.  The hand is cut from G45 paper and glued down with Glossy Accents.  Dyan Reaveley's leaves were colored in with Distress Markers.  The hand is tossing down leaves that were punched out of Inkssentials Foil Tape Sheet scraps and colored with alcohol inks.  I wrote in loopy handwriting my feelings about fall.  The leaves are falling so fast here it looks like it's raining LEAVES!

We are preparing for that big storm that is supposed to hit tomorrow.  Joe has been outside battening down the hatches.  Hope all of you in the path of  it will be safe and sound.  I just hope we don't lose power again!

Art Journal Pages

I just purchased my Dyan Reaveley art journal recently and it has been so much fun to play in.  The paper in the journal is nice and smooth.  I can honestly say it also loves gesso, paint, ink, water.....you name it, this book can take it.  I am very new to art journaling so at this stage I am just preparing background pages and then I'll do more on them later.  Here is what I've come up with thus far:

If you haven't tried Art Journaling yet you might want to give it a go.  The new Somerset Studio magazine Art Journaling has some really great ideas.  The articles help to lower my anxiety about trying to draw or write.  Two things I'm not entirely comfortable with.  Oh well, if I don't like the looks of something I can always cover it.  I believe that is why God created gesso.  If only that worked in all aspects of life.