All posts in category Handmade Journals

Petr and his dreams…

Do you think polar bears dream? What do they dream about, I wonder… Could it be big, juicy salmon or the thrill of a chase? Or maybe they dream of finding a mate? Dreams are doorways into our subconscious, are they not?

The image is a transfer from a National Geographic magazine, into the dreaded Khadi-paper journal! I used 2 shades of Inktense pencils to colour the background, scrubbed with water and brush (or blended, if you prefer, though it was a lot quicker and less technical than that!!); I had to dry the page with my heat gun as I intended to write on it…

However, having taken a liking to hybrid art and being very protective of my transfers and backgrounds, I decided to scan it into Photoshop and play with Kim Klassen’s textures and layers, which I have just learnt to do!

I used Ugg love – changed the colour to blue to suit my palette – and the painted music texture from the Textures in Ten Class. Thank you so much Kim – you have opened my eyes and taught me to play again! ♥

For The Three Muses – Doorways – this week. And for Petr, and all the other polar bears out there, looking for love…

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by Rosie on September 21, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, challenges, Handmade Journals, How-tos, Other interests, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on September 21, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/petr-and-his-dreams/

Word Art…

More from Lessons in the Raw Art Journalling Class/Workshop from Quinn MacDonald. I chose to draw/illustrate “empty” and “shallow” this morning. It was such a strong urge, I had the images of both words in my mind, so I got them drawn straight into the Fabriano journal, where most of my faces are born. I roughed them out and went ahead and posted them to the RAJ gallery.

I’ve had a little time since breakfast to work them a bit more:

Nick and Team ROW are coming back to the UK today, hopefully crossing from France before the high winds really hit hard and prevent the ferry sailings. They’ll stay in Dover overnight to rest and then head home tomorow. Yay! I shall once again be whole… 😉

I do realise that given the date today and the significance to those who suffered losses on this day in 2001, my hope and happiness may seem shallow in comparison, but I have just read a really moving post by Quinn which is so profound. I’m sharing it all over and you can read it HERE.

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by Rosie on September 11, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, Handmade Journals, Illustrations, Original designs, Personal stuff, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on September 11, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/word-art/

And in the beginning there was Baby!

For fun, another image transfer – I fell in love with the cute baby face and transferred it to my Khadi journal, over the top of some watercolour splash-work, which might have otherwise ended up as flowers. Slightly enhanced with watercolour paint around the image and a little fun with the azalea brush on Photoshop, the journalling reads:

“And in the beginning there was Baby! Innocent. Beauty spot or Birthmark? Cherub’s smile… xo ♥”

I realise Baby looks a bit tatty and grubby, but I really like the flowery headband and the imperfect transfer effect!! Liberating is imperfection!! 😉

For the Three Muses – Words – this week!

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by Rosie on September 7, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, challenges, Handmade Journals, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on September 7, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/and-in-the-beginning-there-was-baby/

Story…

In Raw Art Journalling this week, we are encouraged to play with words – favourite words, fun words, words that have a deeper, darker meaning to us, but not the stuff that nightmares are made of (unless they happen to be your fave words, of course!)

One of mine is “story” – the possibilities are truly infinite, aren’t they? A “once upon a time” story? A news story? Horror story? Thriller, or an anecdote… or even a piece of gossip (oops, that’s another word I have to add to the list – gossip!).

So, no “art” as such, or nothing OTT, just a page about STORY – in the journalistic sense. It’s sort of half-poem and half prose. I was prompted by a memory of an old b/w film starring Doris Day and Cary Grant (I think?) about a hack who teaches a journalism class at nightschool. It might even have been Clark Gable… (wow, that is going back in time!). Anyway, he talked about the 6 questions you have to answer to write a newspaper story – just a paragraph, even!

I’m loving Quinn MacDonald’s RAJ workshop – it’s so thought-provoking. It’s liberating and refreshing to simply think about words for a week without having to be super-creative or artistic with them. Me? I can’t help but doodle round them – that’d just be rude, wouldn’t it?!  😉

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by Rosie on September 1, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, Handmade Journals, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on September 1, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/story/

Red+Blue=Purple

A little something inspired by Created by Hand this week. I receive the Quietfire Design newsletter – I love the calligraphy stamps and some of the lovely products too! The red+blue struck a chord with me because I use the colour purple quite a lot.

This is the first art journal (book), I ever made thanks to Julie Prichard!! The only thing wrong with it is the Khadi papers. Great texture, too absorbent for me though, but the edges are cool! I use red and blue a lot in this little journal!

The image is a transfer from a Boots the chemist free magazine. The woman was on one of the “agony aunt” pages, with the lead title of “We talked it out…”, etc. She’s a clean image so I decided to use her for a quickie transfer. I’m taking Quinn’s Workshop – Raw Art Journalling – and I have given myself permission to make RAW art – imperfect art, because I can get very hung up on perfection… No, really, really control-freakishly annoying to myself!!

You see how there are a few spots where I rubbed too much of the image away? Not perfect… I can live with that, because it sort of goes with how “smug” I find articles like that! The speech bubble says: “We talked it all out… we felt a lot better although nothing changed.”

I also enjoy writing around an image, just for fun, to see how the words flow, or not! I drew the little flowers with red and blue Inktense pencils and blended them with a waterbrush.  I also bought a very cheap pack of pens recently -2 black and 1 red – simple gel pens, for 99p, and surprisingly, they’ll write/sketch/doodle on almost any surface! They probably won’t last long because they are so handy!!!

Just one little tip for people who struggle to get rid of the white “fuzzies” of paper left over when you have rubbed to the image on your transfer: Using your finger, apply a very small amount of mineral, vegetable or baby oil to the image transfer and watch the image shine out. It’s “magic” and I must give credit to Bev Wauer and Lesley Riley of the Inkjet Transfers Yahoo Group. I’ve been a member for about 4 years and they are so helpful and friendly! 🙂

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by Rosie on August 27, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, challenges, Handmade Journals, Hints & Tips, Personal stuff, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on August 27, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/redbluepurple/

Cornish Trees

There are many trees in the UK, but I have never seen so many that resemble Donald Trump’s bad hair days… (Look at him, and tell me I’m wrong, lol!). I don’t suppose anyone would tell Mr Trump that his hair looks… silly, but these trees here on the Atlantic coast are all so windswept, that I have always called them “trees with funny haircuts”, ever since we moved to the West Country.

Nick and I were out and about today and I was again struck by the trees, had some time, pens and my sketching journal to hand, so here are my impressions of the Cornish landscape when there’s a stiff south-westerly breeze blowing:

Truly, before we move out of the region, I shall have to “borrow” Nick’s camera and shoot loads of trees. These were sketched in the car on the way home, parked up outside a small parade of shops in Northam, near Bideford. I don’t tend to take any notice of people watching me now, while I sketch. I have come a long way this year!!! 😉

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by Rosie on August 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Handmade Journals, Inspiration, Personal stuff
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Posted by Rosie on August 10, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/cornish-trees/

Raw Art Journalling – Found Poetry

I received a very precious gift recently from my BBFF – Barbara Hagerty – a signed copy of Quinn MacDonald‘s book – Raw Art Journalling. I am taking Quinn’s FREE workshop (for which the only requirements are to buy her book and to join the A.R.T Yahoo Group)…

I used two large promo books – one on the 2012 Olympics and one advertising Worthing, West Sussex. By cutting random, appealing words and phrases from these two tomes, I was able to make my own “found poetry” in the small Khadi paper journal. I really dislike the texture of these papers and find them so difficult to paint on!

The disgraceful rioting, looting and mindless (though very well organised) violence of the past few nights is much on my mind, especially after viewing the news in depth this morning. My heart goes out to all the innocent victims who have lost their homes, businesses, livelihoods. I grew up in the suburbs of London, in a multi-cultural society, where we learned to get along, tolerate each other and live peaceably enough as neighbours, sometimes as friends. I knew Ealing well; I lived in Clapham North for a couple of years; I had friends in Enfield, lived near Nottingham… and I still can’t believe what’s happening there – never mind make sense of it.

I admit to also being very shocked by the vitriol and hatred spewed out in the comments under some of the video footage on Youtube… I think my journalling will be quite dark in the days ahead, as I try to process all these emotions.

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by Rosie on August 9, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, Handmade Journals, Inspiration, Life in general, Personal stuff, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on August 9, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/raw-art-journalling-found-poetry/

Toots & The Maytals

They’re my “Stars” for Take a Word this week! A lot of dimensional paint went onto the page!! The image is cut from a postcard advertising tour dates locally last year… I know, right? I am such a hoarder of postcards!! 😉

Toots and the Maytals… Stars of the 1970s and the Reggae movement. I was a teenager growing up in those days and I remember the youth club discos – Mungo Jerry, Toots, etc. Good times…

I realised when I’d finished the page that the colours are also representative of the whole Rastafarian faith… Red, yellow, black and green!!

14 Comments
by Rosie on June 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, challenges, collage, Handmade Journals, Personal stuff, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on June 5, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/toots-the-maytals/

Faith…

Musical Musings May 30th

Thanks so much to GLENDA for hosting this prompt!
The Prompt: Faith
The Song: Heaven help me by Gretchen Wilson
Product/Technique: Wings
I have rambled a bit and was trying a new technique to create this page – journalling in the journalled word… if that makes sense? It’s a “summer camp” thing! I’m trying to describe how I feel about Faith…
I must explain that this is a handmade watercolour papers, art journal. I made the journal on the Supernova AJ Class with Julie Prichard in 2009. It has pages bound to tapes which are stitched into a fabric cover… I know, right? It is a really lovely AJ. However, I don’t like the papers much although they take media very well. They’re just hard to collage onto and write on.
When I took Kelly Kilmer’s Memories and Reflections class, a lot of emphasis was on page layout and composition for collage. I used Kelly’s templates with paint in this journal, instead of paper. The paints are a little bright/loud but the concept is good… So I have 5 or 6 layouts painted up in the journal, onto which I can collage, doodle, journal, etc.
The text-tape is something I picked up from Julie FFB recently!! Very quick and very cool – oh and really cheap! 😉
3 Comments
by Rosie on June 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, challenges, collage, Handmade Journals, Personal stuff
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Posted by Rosie on June 5, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/faith-2/

Listen to what the man said…

When Paul McCartney and his wife Linda formed Wings in 1971, I wasn’t too impressed, but there are a couple of songs that I have always liked. One of them is “Listen to what the man said…” and the other is “Band on the Run”.

“Wings” is the Take a Word challenge this week, and this one’s also for Penny at Songs in my HeART! Peace out, man!

This page is the first one in my fabric-covered art journal that I made during Julie Prichard’s Art Journalling Supernova class. I love this journal and the Khadi papers are so roughly textured. They absorb colour and ink extremely well!

My BBFF, Barbara Hagerty, wrote a really interesting post recently – all about the joy of journalling, and opening your eyes. If you are an art journalist/journaller, you might just find it provocative! It’s certainly food for thought… 😉

Meantime, I am looking forward to starting Summer Camp with Marit tomorrow… yay!!!!! 🙂

7 Comments
by Rosie on May 30, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Art Journal, collage, Handmade Journals, Personal stuff, recycling
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Posted by Rosie on May 30, 2011

https://alteredartandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/listen-to-what-the-man-said/

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