Showing posts with label ink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ink. Show all posts

Monday, April 12, 2010

Plastic Bag Card Tutorial

Despite my best intentions of always having a reusable bag with me, there are times when I forget, and I end up with another pile of plastic bags.  Since I've made a cute little scrap fabric lint bag for the laundry (that tutorial next week), I don't need them as trash bags anymore. What's a girl to do? Make cards with them, of course!

You will need:
Ranger alcohol ink, blending solution,  plastic bag, cardstock, stamps, archival ink (or Staz-On)


Directions: Drop a few colors of alcohol ink on the plastic (note: regular ink will NOT work. Alcohol ink is made for non-porous serfaces such as plastic and metal).

  Fold plastic over to sandwhich ink and spread with your hand.

Open and let dry. You can crinkle the plastic before applying the ink for a more distressed look.



Now the real fun begins. You can use the plastic as a background for cards or scrapbook pages. The colored plastic is semi-translucent, so here I glued it over a piece of patterned scrapbook paper using gel medium. Alternatively, you could wrap it around a piece of cardstock and tape it securely on the back. Although you can melt plastic bags, I try to avoid using heat with plastic, as it releases those nasty toxins. I finished the card with two of my stamped figures cut from cardstock, a painted cardboard heart and a chipboard accent. You can stamp directly on the plastic using Archival ink or Staz-On. Several cards can be created from just one plastic bag! Junkmail art journals, plastic bag cards, and next week a bag made from sewing scraps... I think discards are becoming my favorite art supply!


Wednesday, March 25, 2009

full circle


I purchased The Creative Entrepreneur by Lisa Sonora Beam a couple of months ago, and I am now beginning to go through it. Basically, it seems like a business planning, goal setting program which utilizes the art journal instead of a word processing program. That approach appeals to me, of course, so I grabbed an old Somerset Studio Art Journal calendar (appropriate, don't you think?) that came with some back issues I ordered, and went to work. I've only completed the first activity, so I can't report on the book as yet, but an interesting thing happened when I worked on the first collage. After laying down some background papers, I drew a hand in pencil. And I didn't like it. Granted, I don't usually use a 3B, but I just wasn't happy with it. I didn't like the pencil. So I added color, and didn't like that, either. Scrapping it all, I added a layer of paper on top of it, then grabbed my trusty 01 Pigma Micron. Yes, ink. I sketched the hand again, just pen, and finally, I was satisfied. In less than a year, I have come full circle. Ink is now my tool of choice most often. Who would have thought?

(Ugh! I had to scan this because it's midnight, but I hate scanned art. The colors look all off and the page looks too transparent. Oh, well! It's just an art journal page, after all!)

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Excitement Builds!

I'm getting so excited about what's in store on Lavender Sky Studio! I can't wait to share more about it, but that will have to wait for at least a few more days...

I am keeping up pretty well in the Daily Drawing department. Some are good, some not, but it's the routine. Here are a few recent ones.







Madeline, my fever girl, is down with one again. Max is still on the tail end of his cold. How do you keep one child from catching what the other has? I sure haven't found a way yet. Quite possibly, because they won't stay away from each other, even when they are sick. I guess I shouldn't complain about that one. We are so fortunate that they are the best of friends.

I will leave you with one last image. As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm trying to make exercising a more creative endeavor. This is a picture from a walk on a foggy morning, taken with my iPhone. I can't believe how good the camera is on that thing!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Daily Drawings






So here is the first batch of daily drawings. Some better than others, but it's been a doable task so far.  As for the Dance Dance Revolution I mentioned in a previous post, well, maybe I won't be working out to that so much. I did just fine with the DJ tutorial, but they seduce you into this sense of accomplishment and then BAM! the real song starts. And then little people aren't on the dance pad anymore. And the DJ doesn't call out the steps. And those direction arrows come a lot faster, and you're trying to follow the dancers on the screen, and once second later, you're booed off and the game is over. Thank you Dance Dance Revolution, for crushing any dreams of dancing I may of had, and making me feel really, really old (although the kids thought it was HILARIOUS!)

Monday, January 5, 2009

Day One


Day one. I walked the dog for almost an hour, in the rain, and I've had no sugar today. Yay for me! But it is only Day One. This is the cover I did for the binder we are keeping for the class. I have a lofty goal of an illustration a day. A small illustration, mind you. Now, I know I probably won't do 365 illustrations this year, but I figure if I set the goal at one a day, I'll at least do a few a week, which will still add up to a lot. So there you have it. Day one.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Disney on the brain




First off, I'd like to give a big shout out to the fabulous ladies who came to my art journal class on Saturday. I sure had a great time, and I hope you did, too. I'd love to make this into an on-going class, with a focus next time on quick ink backgrounds and composing pages. Tell me what you think. Also, if any questions have come up as you have been working on your pages (please tell me you are working on pages!), feel free to leave a comment or email me from my web page link on the right. This is an on-going process, and we are all in it together! I have been working on four pages, although only one is complete. Those who were in the class may recognize the background; it was one of the unfinished ones in the journal I brought. After a series of layers of ink, gesso and old rub-ons, I found a small photo left over from a previous art project, and taped that on. I wasn't quite sure where to go from there, when I noticed the shadow of my hand on the paper. I grabbed a pencil and voila, done!

But what really has me occupied this week is thoughts of Disneyland. I can't wait. I decided this year to try an 8x8 three ring album. It was a present from Matt several Christmases ago, and it came with black pages. I added patterned paper dividers and some watercolor pages for sketching. I figured I'd take a hole punch with me and just stick ephemera in as we go. I also finished a page about a little incident during our first Disney trip. The plastic bucket did not make for great photography, so I decided to sketch it, instead. I liked it so much, I think I'll do more scrapbook pages with sketches (and look, it's in ink!)

Monday, September 1, 2008

Finally finished!









Whew! (that starts with a "w", right?) I have finally finished my 20 ATCs for this month's exchange. The theme, as I mentioned previously, is "w", which has now morphed from "whatever" to "whatever the hell I want." (You'd feel the same way, too after making 20 different ATCs.)  I can say that I'm very proud of the lot. Mixed Media Monday's theme this week is nature, and I'm sneaking it in here with the sunrise and tiger because I do want to mention again the rusty paper technique I learned on their forum. I really loved illustrating over it - it has such a unique, beautiful tonal range. Thanks, Diane!

Creative Therapy's catalyst this week is fear, and as I've stated before, drawing in ink was a huge fear of mine. HUGE. That may sound silly, but I've spent the years working in looser mediums - pencil, paint, pastels, and the thought of that ink line just scared the shit out of me. Pardon the language, but it's true. So I've been filling my ink journal, drawing ATCs, sketching in pen right in my copy of The Creative License, by Danny Gregory (LOVE it!) and I can now say, I am no longer afraid of ink. In fact, I find I am reaching for a pen more often then a pencil when I sketch. I'm even liking some of the people I've drawn. In ink. No pencil. It still kinda amazes me. I have a long way to go, but lesson learned. Just do it. and do it. and do it...

p.s. - You still have time to post for the Ugly Paper challenge on the MDW blog! I'll be giving away the RAK on Sept. 7. Check it out here!

Monday, July 21, 2008

Art Journal Pages





As you know, I'll be teaching the art journal class in September, and since my gallery isn't playing nice on mac.com (they have just revamped it with the whole mobile me, iphone thing and I need to mess with it some more, I guess), I decided to post a few here. The link on the left, "My Gallery" seems t work for me, but maybe that's because it's my account. Could someone let me know if it doesn't work for them?)

I am currently keeping four journals - one for paint/mixed media, one for pencil, a process book for techniques/class info, and a new one for ink. I've always admired ink illustration, but I'm a pencil girl by nature. So, I bound some scraps of cardstock and even a few printed papers, and am trying to teach myself how to sketch in ink. And it's HARD, for me at least. Trying to keep a simple line and not use sketch lines has been the biggest challenge. I love sketch lines - that's how I "feel" a shape when I draw. I am so used to reworking a sketch in pencil until it's to my liking, but you can't do that in ink. The more I "work" it, the worse it looks. The Danny Gregory books I ordered arrived on Saturday, and I've finished Everyday Matters and am on to The Creative Life, so I hope my technique might improve a bit. These are definitely not the best drawings I've ever done, but I believe it is important to post them. Art journals are for exploration, not perfection. Lots of my pages look like crap, but that's part of the process. I sometimes fear that people might get scared away from trying an art journal when they read books about it, because all of the pages look like beautiful finished artwork, not an exploration. Yes, I love some of my pages, and laugh at others. It's all part of the process...
I had to upload one of the pages Madeline did in my art journal. She decided she wanted one, too, so I pulled out the Bind It All and now she has her own purple journal. :)