I love painting decorative papers. I use them in my art journal and collage work, and today I’m going to show you one way that you can use painted papers in a fun way.
For the July crusade I took a pile of papers out and tore some strips of paper. I followed exactly what the prompt said, tore papers into strips and glued them randomly into my Art Journal.
The result is a more wild looking pattern than what I got when I created Sewn Stripe Paper, but I love the look of both. I wanted a focal image and browsed through almost all of my clip archive without finding a suitable image… Probably because I’m going toward doing more personal stuff these days, trying to find favorite images to alter and not use as much magazine photos as I used to.
On my desk I found a photo copy of one of my drawings of two girls standing next to each other. I cut out the girls and moved them around to different places on the spread until I found the right spot.
I colored them with colored pencils, glued them down and made little speech bubbles so that they could have a conversation.
The first one is saying: I think I am going to fill this Art Journal with personal imagery and experiment with colors and happiness! This is the first spread I’m creating in this altered book. It’s a vintage children’s fact book about biology and nature, with extremely cute illustrations. I tore out two pages for every signature to make room for collage as I always do.
This is how the finished spread looks:
Through the strips of torn papers you can catch a glimpse of two of the crusaders, the crab and the shrimp, and listen in on their conversation;
I hope you join crusade number 42 called Strip Ease too. It was extremely fun using all of these favorite papers on one page like this! Please don’t be as boring as this one not so smooth crusin’ fella;
By the way, I promise no pun intended when I made “strip ease” into a “comic strip”, but hey, I love to play with words! Since I think this was fun, it’s now “comic strip ease” (already a word play by Michelle of course; on “strip tease”).
This is so great! I love the textures and your little comic strip- cracked me up!
Yay, so glad you like it! Thanks. Making my own speech bubbles seams to be a theme in my life lately. Everyone has something great to tell me these days…
It’s so colourful & full of life. Brilliant!
daisy xx
Such glorious color! Love the wild and random strips – fun to see your process photos. Love that you made a *comic* of your strips. Clever girl. Thanks so much for sharing this brilliant work with the team – sure to inspire your readers and the crusaders!!
What fun! One of the girls could become “you” and appear in some fashion on all your pages.
Quelle bonne id?e! Vibrantes couleurs… bravo :-)
love the colors and patterns on your torn paper. a great idea. so many things that could be done with the strips.
Hi Hanna!
You have just inspired me to use up my paints and glitter before they expire and harden to paint printer paper like these, cut them up in triangles and turn them into paper beads :)
Great job, love the colors!
Oh I do like the colours – and that bug paper is too cute! Cool idea using the fact book as the base. I’ve been eyeing off my husbands old text books from when he did his panel beating apprenticeship.
oh how beautiful! I love the little conversations throughout. You did the Crusade so quick!! Love it :)
So bright and witty – I love it. Seeing all those wild colours together made me feel happy :-)
I was fortunate enough to find your blog on a random search on the web.
I think your work in general is very inspiring and these pages were wonderful!
i love these! i love how you recycle the old books into your art journals. i’d like to try that. thanks for the inspiration!
What a fun page. I’m with you on using more personal images instead of magazine photos. Your girls are cute.
Sophie
I like your new header! This spread turned out so pretty- I’ll have to try this technique out!
Hanna, you’re awesome! I was ripping strips while laying around recovering from surgery. Your comic strip turned out fab!! I love your girls… happy creations, tj
Thanks for your sweet comments!
I love this!!! It reminds me so much of Violette’s colourful and whimsical style! The idea of using your own art to make more art is wonderful and the speech bubbles are perfect! I actually found some post-it notes in this shape! I will have to put some in the zine you inspired me to make!
I wrote a bit about Metta Zine and will be writing more as this is Zine Month on Craft Dinner!!! Your zine oozes charm and I delight in it! Thanks a million!
There is only one iHanna..that’s for sure! I can spot your lovely palette from a mile away..beautiful pages! xo
I absolutely LOVE your cartoon-y, colorful interpretation of Michelle’s challenge! So cool!!
WoW! Gorgeous work, I love the colors!
stripping is fun and your journal pages are pure fun!! love them. so colorful and bright.
I like the cartoon-like story on these colorful stripes. Mona
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous ! I love your strips backgrounds and your little chickies and their blurbs are so cute !
Beautiful work, Mistress Crusader !
Gorgeous colors! What fun pages you created. I love them.
love the colours and the energy in the pages! also the girls having a conversation…cut out – what a fab idea!!
This is whimsical and colorful….love it!
Fabulous pages, I can see why you are loving it. I love the vibrancy that the strips give to your pages and the great journalling on top to bring it all together.
Hello Hanna,
what a nice handmade papers you used to rip in strips !
I love the colors and designs on them : they remind me of the Dutch clothes factory ” Oilily” !
I also like that you used your own drawings to make your page in a comic page ! :)
greetings from Belgium
Inge
Beautiful spreads! Love the colours!Congrats to your drawings – it’s great that you can do so many things and use it all!
Lovely pages, I like that you use an old book to collage in.
Ahhhh, those colors! Wow!
Great pages. Loved your girls.
This spread rocks! So fun & love the color.
These are so much fun! What a great idea & wonderful colors.
Fantastic ! Love all the colorful pieces of paper and your cool drawings !
I love the vibrancy of these pages – there is such life in them. Thanks for all you share.
Hanna, your work is always such a delight, and this is no exception! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to catch up with the team, but I’m glad, because somehow I missed this post among your others. LOOK at those colors! I love it that you’re using some of your own images and working them up. This is a really appealing comic for kids. (I always wanted to draw comics as a youngster and now you’ve planted the seed in my mind again)
xo
This is so great! I love the textures!!
Great layout – LOVE the bright colours!
[…] while ago I read this post on Hanna’s blog and I knew I had to make something like it. I painted a page then I […]
This is a really great idea, thank you for sharing :)