Art Journal Journey - Tik Tok

Another page inspired by my lovely friend, Jo Rice,  who is head of the Design Team at lavinia Stamps, and again featuring the playful little mice.  I think Jo has a soft spot for them as I do. They work for so many of the Lavinia designs that the team put out on social media for us all to see.  Many of them also do tutorials so you can join in with them.  (The Design Team not the mice)

Again I have used the top hat as well as the mice for my page and as it is for the theme at Art Journal Journey you will find there are some gears on it.  They make fabulous wheels for things and therefore provide some humorous pictures for cards and journal pages alike.

For this journal page (in my 8" x 8" journal) I first of all stamped the clock in the bottom left corner, just a tiny bit off the page.  Then I carefully stamped the compass on top of it, balancing the "S" for south as closely as I could to the edge of the clock.

Next came an assortment of cogs and wheels in the opposite corner.  Some of these are quite tiny and as there are three sets I have them all mounted on one piece of acrylic.  As you can imagine they are quite easy to lose so it is better to stamp, clean, and return to the carrier sheet straight away.

Then came the mice.  Tilly is the one on the left balancing on the "N" for north on the compass which in turn is balancing on Tick, the clock stamp.  Her friend, Minni, is doing her best to keep upright whilst balancing on two cogs which are in turn balancing on more cogs and wheels.  Oh what fun those two are having.  Somehow I think they are both 'in gear' today.  Apart from the mice who were stamped in Versafine Clair Nocturne everything else was stamped in Pinecone.

I just used Elements Lime Punch ink brushed lightly around the edge of my page, leaving the centre white where I  included the two sets of words (words of steam) stamped on cardstock and lightly brushed with Elements Truffle ink.

I hopw you have enjoyed seeing the little mice again. They are too cute not to include in my theme for Art Journal Journey.  If you would like to join in please be sure to read the dreaded rules here first of all.  

Jeudi Journal - Expert Opinion

'Of course I talk to myself ..... sometimes I need an expert opinion!' is the Tim Holtz quote for today to match up with the challenges for Art Journal Journey (In Gear) and a private one with my friend where we have to use Dylusion figures.

'Agatha and her friends meet up on a fairly frequent basis at the local Clockwork Cafe where they had pensioner's days with prices reduced (portions slightly too).  It was Tuesday, the day for 'pie and mash' which Agatha loved more than chocolate, well, maybe not chocolate but something else.  Aggy, as she was known to her friends, sat down in the cafe and waited patiently for Ethel, her bestie, arriving.  Ethel was running late and it was a good ten to fifteen minutes or so that Aggy had to sit there on her own.  

"Bet she is still trying to decide which purple hat she is putting on today" Aggy heard herself saying as she looked around sheepishly.  That had not meant to come out loud like that, was anyone looking?  "Oh dear", she thought to herself, "this is happening too much to me.  Wonder if it is an age thing?  I never used to do that but I find myself talking out loud at home, and there's nobody there to hear me." 

Hastily she began rummaging in her handbag, "I must occupy my mind so I don't say anything again" she said to herself, but silently in her head this time.  "Goodness, what a load of rubbish I have in here.  I never wear that lipstick these days, wonder if it is safe to still use it?  Guess not,  Think I will throw it out."  And so it went on, tickets, receipts for things she had bought, a few tissues and ...yuk ... a sticky toffee.  "Wonder how long that has been there?" she asked herself.  Just then Ethel arrived, as predicted, in a purple hat.  She was a great fan of Jenny joseph's rhyme and had lots of purple hats to choose from.  She didn't mind what colour of clothes she wore, she always had a purple hat on.

"Sorry I am late" shouted Ethel across from the door, "a courier arrived with a parcel just as I was about to set off, threw me all out of kilter, sorry." 

"No worries" said Aggy, "it gave me chance to tidy my handbag out.  How are you anyway?"

"I'm ok" answered Ethel, "apart from my hip.  It's giving me loads of trouble lately.  I think it's due to the cold damp weather we have around here.  If only we lived somewhere nice and sunny.  Think I might have a sore throat coming on" she went on to say.  "I had a bit of a tickle in it last night, so I had a drop of whisky, hoping it would soothe it" she carried on.  "My back's been terrible since I last saw you, I really must go to the doctor and see if I can go to that physio woman again.  She worked wonders on me last time I went" and so on and on Ethel went.  She was a bit of a, what's the word for someone who loves to talk about their ailments - a hypochondriac?

Ethel paused for a moment so Aggy jumped in "Do you ever find you are talking to yourself?" she asked, thinking about the moment she had had in the cafe.

"Oh yes," replied Ethel, "Of course I talk to myself ... sometimes I need an expert opinion."

Aggy just sat there, that wasn't what she had expected, or was it?  She knew Ethel better than Ethel knew herself in many ways.  "Perhaps the best thing to do is just leave it" she muttered to herself.  "Are you having a pudding?" she asked.'

I knew which character I wanted to use, she was just Ethel, so I found a page I had torn from a journal once and decided to use that.  I began with my background using a few different blue and green Distress Oxides, then I mixed in a bit of Picked Raspberry and Mustard Seed, didn't like them so I went back to the blues and greens.  I finished off with a few gears in the corners for the Clockwork Cafe using my little Tando stencil and Chipped Sapphire.

WOYWW 751

Another week has flown by and still the "C" cards remain a mystery to me but I am hoping to get started on them in a big way when I go on a workshop with Jo Rice early November.  I wonder how many will be showing "C" cards on WOYWW today.

In the meantime here is a card I made last week for my friend's daughter's 16th birthday.  I normally do 'horsey' ones for her but this time I wanted to do something and include pumpkins so I chose to use 'Bijou' again on his branch.  I was going to put Bijou on a broomstick but decided that that might make it a bit too Halloweeny for her and not suitable really for a birthday card.

The card looks a bit wonky but I must have put it in the scanner like that as I did mount the image part carefully.  I used Elements Della Blue for the background and Inktense pencils (watercolour) for the remainder.  You can hardly see on here but I grounded the pumpkins with a grey pastel pencil.  The window frames on the pumpkins were highlighted with sparkly gel pens as were the vines on the tree.

I've been doing some small things too but I'm leaving them until next week to show as I might change one or two of them but in the meantime here is my desk/desks.

This is my desk on the counter which runs along two sides of my craftroom.  It just shows my journal page for tomorrow which is a mish mash of Distress Oxides and some gears in the corners.  The page is now decorated and ready for tomorrow's post.

The one below just has one of my small pieces on top of some scrap papers that I am working on at the moment.  The best white inkpad I can find at the moment is my Brilliance,  Brilliant White one but I am wondering if the Hero Arts one is a better white.  That is just a strip I cut off a card I had made to the right and then a pencil and my towel.  The dirty white one above is what I used on my stamps (hence the colour) and a pad of kitchen roll with loads of colour on.

That's it for this week.  Hopefully see you next week with some new stash and some of those small pieces I have been making.

Art Journal Journey - Ruby Slippers

 No it is not the Wizard of Oz or Judy Garland that is dominating the page in my journal today but there are a pair of Ruby Slippers for Art Journal Journey where my theme is 'In Gear' and maybe ruby slippers are classed as 'gear' for the fashionable young lady about town.

Or what about a pair of 'green high heeled boots'?  Great gear again for the discerning steampunker.

I found these two images already stamped on a sheet of white cardstock in my box of stamps and thought how lucky I was as they were perfect for my theme "In Gear" at Art Journal Journey.

As my Promarkers are nearing the end of their life I decided that today I would use my Inktense watercolour pencils and so I sat and thoroughly enjoyed an hour or so of pencil colouring.  Of course the real joy comes when you have coloured everything in and you get the brush and water out to start bringing the colours more to life.  At least that is how I feel.

With the Ruby Slippers I decided that the toe caps and heel parts would be metal so I coloured them in two shades of grey, adding some brown and orange to the gears to represent rust.  I chose a different shade with the green boots for the metal parts and used a light mustard colour for the leather straps plus some Glossy Accents on the screw heads and the watch face.

The gears I had cut out ready to use were all white ones and so I decided to use a black page and rather than paint one and risk it becoming patchy I used black card which will then be stuck into my square journal.  I simply played about with the gears deciding where to put them and settled on three areas as you can see.

Art Journal Journey - Time Traveller

 Guess what I found yesterday?  I had no idea I had a stencil with gears on.  It is only a small square stencil with some tiny gears grouped together but I did not know I had it, it has 'Tando' written on the top of it in a black Sharpie.  I am going to have to do another page just to use it the one time.  Maybe I should go through my stamps and things and see just what I have hidden away that I have forgotten about.

I bet there are several of you who are as guilty as I am and do not really know all that you have.  It comes from having been stamping for quite a number of years where the style of stamping has changed for me.  I did tell you I used to be into Steampunk and I've also had phases on Asian, Victorian, Egyptian, Time and others as well as the usual flora and fauna.  I think some of them change and I am waiting for them to come back around so that I can start using them all again.

This is, again, a copy more or less of a canvas I did some years ago.  It used another of Tim Holtz type stamps, from Stampers Anonymous I think, which I was heavily into at one time.  

As you can see I have used only a few gears in this one.  I did stamp directly onto my 8" x 8" journal page those rather exciting looking gears in the bottom right and added a few, along with tickets etc that I had fussy or diecut, at the other side.

But before that I coloured my page using Broken China and Salvaged Patina Distress Inks and then stencilled some leaves to break up the background.  Next I stamped the rather stern looking gentleman in the top hat, I think he has a monocle when I look closely at him and then added the diecut gears and tickets I mentioned previously.  These were stamped and cut out on cardstock that had been coloured with various Distress Inks.

The next stage was to cut out a birdcage in gold mirror card and stick it down, covering the top of it with various leaves and flowers in varying shades of green coloured card.  I wanted to give the impression of the extra pieces flowing down the right hand side and across the base of my page.

The last thing was probably the most fiddly in that I cut out some small letters spelling 'time traveller' and sticking them down in as straight a line as I could.

I hope you like my latest page and it inspires you to look through your old stamps that you don't use as much now.  You never know, you might find you have something tucked away that you can start to use all over again.  It might even fit in with the theme at Art Journal Journey which is "In Gear".  (Remember you can do some machinery or a mode of transport as they contain gears as do lots of other things - my 'Time' box is being raided soon to see what I have in there as pocket watches have gears.  Or maybe you can think of something of your own?)

The moderators and I would love to see you join in with this theme over at Art Journal Journey.  You still have a week to enter a journal page.  Be sure to read the rules here first though.

Artful Journal Journey - Monocled Man

This morning I have another page for my theme over at Art Journal Journey.  Again featuring an old stamp - but one I have never used before.  I decided that this Monocled Man could fit well into the theme I am guest hosting at Artful Journal Journey.  I have no idea who makes this stamp, and the gears that you can see at the base of the page, as they came on the same sheet along with the words I used.

To begin with I used a stencil from Lavinia, using Vintage Photo Distress Ink and then I stamped the gears and things on the bottom of the page with Versafine Clair Nocturne ink.  The gears were diecuts.

I stamped the monocled man and the words on a piece of white cardstock and cut them both out but as the man had 'unruly hair' I also stamped him direct on the page so that I would get the strands of hair showing even though he was an overlay.  Lastly I decided to use some Glossy Accents for his monocle.  When dry his face was stuck over the stamped image.  You may notice his eyebrows are very wonky. I sat for a few seconds trying my best to get mine like that, I had the most peculiar expressions in doing so but never achieved his look.

I am glad I found this unused image as I think it can be used again, especially for a male card even though he is quite big.  He would probably work with a travel theme, using the suitcases as shown in one of my previous pages this month.

Have you any NBUS stamps (never before used stamps) as my friend, Darnell, often talks about?  I wonder if you could find one like I did and use it for this theme in some way?  Why not pop along to Art Journal Journey and join in.  Before you do you must read the dreaded rules here to make sure your entry is accepted (not cards, ATC's etc).  The moderators and I would love to see you and your journal page.

Jeudi Journal - Questionable Morals

Oh dear, the snarky comment from Tim Holtz this morning is "You drink too much, you have questionable morals.  You're everything I ever wanted in a friend." So now I need to think of a story to include this comment which I am not finding easy.  I have been stamping and fussy cutting some figures so hopefully I can use one or two of them as they will be the correct size for my square journal.

"Lolly had gone Downtown to Gear Alley where her friends all hung out.  They were known as 'GAG' which stood for the 'Gear Alley Gang'.  Jax and Alfreda, her two best buddies, were already there as was Eric, the boy she knew had a crush on her.  Lolly was not a particularly nice girl and could be bitchy to others making their lives a bit of a misery.  In fact she and Jax tried to make Naomi's life a misery whenever they could and poor Naomi, who had been elected leader of the gang, spent many a sleepless night because of the snide comments they made whenever the opportunity arose.  

It was Jax who had got there early that day and she had been speaking to Eric who had asked her to have a word with Lolly as he wanted so much to be her boyfriend.  Jax promised she would have a word with her friend as soon as she could.

Lolly arrived, wearing a new blue dress and some shiny new boots she had bought the day before.  Lolly was never short of money and spent spent spent whenever she could.  She had even been to the hairdressers that morning and had a new hairstyle to impress others with.

Jax wasted no time at all and whispered in Lolly's ear that Eric wanted to be her boyfriend.  Lolly was not too sure about it, to be honest he was too nice for her.

"Get your head in gear.  Why don't you tell him "You drink too much.  You have questionable morals.  You're everything I ever wanted in a friend." said Alfreda laughingly.

Lolly looked across at him, realised he was wearing quite new and fairly expensive clothes, and he had the latest fashion, a straw boater on his head.  Maybe he wasn't too bad a catch despite his bad habits.  Besides which she would be the first to have a boyfriend in GAG.  It might not be a bad idea.  It could be useful to have a boy in the little coven she had made.  Yes, she would have Eric dangling for a short while whilst she made her mind up; and she could use him to her advantage too with his questionable morals."

For some reason I found this comment a little difficult to use.  Maybe the 'nicer' comments of late did it.  However, I began by colouring my figures in and used colours from the cooler range as the leaves were falling outside the window and reminding me that autumn is here and soon the leaves will be in the lovely rich reds and oranges that I so enjoy.   I wanted my page to be autumnal but in order to join in with my theme at Art Journal Journey I had to include, not leaves, but gears in some way.  Despite managing to slip the words (in gear) into the conversation it wasn't enough so I decorated the top of the page with a selection of gears.  I just hope this is acceptable especially as it is my theme, 'In Gear', I am trying to show.  I and the Moderators at Art Journal Journey would love to see you join us with your rendition of the theme.  Go on, I know you can.