Art Journal play: Braving the elements

This is where I’ve been sitting all day. On the floor with all my paints out. I’ve been working on my batch of postcards for the DIY Postcard swap I’m hosting (There is still some room, feel free to join! For inspiration Daisy Yellow has some great links to mail art on her blog!) but also a few spreads in my art journal just for fun. This is one of them:

First spread: Braving the elements! My page turned out messy, but it’s an experiment. The most fun was finally using a spray bottle of water on wet paint and then blotting away the water with a tissue. This creates a very cool pattern with the gesso peaking through.

Also experimented a bit with indoor spray paint, since I had the prepared for a mess today. I bought this bottle of Memories Mists from a scrapbook shop in Stockholm. The color is called Strawberry Daiquiri and it was surprisingly bold red that I really like. The bottle bleed a bit but I would recommend this if you want to try Spray Painting in winter time or in a smaller scale.

A second page, with lots of polka dot silk papers and another one of these paper cuts I did from a dictionary:

My paper cuts before using them. I used these shapes as stencils on the art journal page and then glued it in for extra fun. I didn’t feel like painting another deep blue page and didn’t want to cut snowflakes, so I did mine like this. Just fun shapes. iHanna shapes.

January’s crusade is called Braving the elements and it’s about playing with simple materials and using those elements in your art. The assignment is to Make your own tools, use them and to combine several previous techniques from past crusades to make a richly layered two page journal spread. Some techniques used on this spread is dry brushing, layers of gesso, water bottle spraying on acrylic paint (first time I tried this – love it!) and cutting out a quick stencil (snowflake or other free form).

I’m off to work on the summer issue of the Embroidery magazine today, but will have to surf a bit more on other crusaders posts and you should too. They are all in the sidebar of Michelle Ward’s crusade page. Don’t miss the cool crusade video for example over at illustrating stories. ♥ inspiration!

More photos just because I loooove the colors:

XOXO /iHanna