Art Journals

Here are three examples of my latest Art Journals with hand painted covers and bright embellished spines.
After searching around for brightly colored and patterned spine cloth,  I finally decided to make my own. and found that it is not hard to do.  The process involves bonding fabric to tissue using a product called Heat and Bond Ultra, which is a very strong heat reactive adhesive.   This makes a strong and durable spine cloth, and allows me to choose my own fabrics to use.   So now, the possibilities are endless.

 The spines are also embellished with long strings of waxed linen and beads.  
If you choose to embellish the spines of your journals, be sure do so in a way that allows the beads to move out of the way when working in the book.

The beaded tassels on these journals can be flipped up and out of the way when working in the books.

These books are all 6x8 inches and have 3 signatures of heavy weight paper for mixed media.  Just right for painting, drawing, writing, and collage work.
The covers were hand painted with acrylic paint using masks and stencils that I cut myself.
They should make great Art Journals !

Raven

I've started to explore mixed media on canvas and find the larger format pretty exciting.  
The years of working mostly in my journals has helped me evolve to this different format.

In this work, much of the background is made from cut and applied papers, some of which are from old book pages.   All are applied with matte medium, and layers of thin paint give them the color variations.
The Raven is purely acrylic paint.

After finishing this piece, I'm ready to continue more work on canvas, in addition to the work in my journals.   It's good to set new challenges !

Elusive Muse Feature

I was recently asked to be featured on the Elusive Muse website which is run by artist Thomas LaBadia.
If you are not already familiar with this wonderful site, please spend some time discovering the rich offerings there.   It's a resource for inspiration and collaboration for artists, and such an honor to be asked to do this.   Thomas made everything so easy for me, and did a beautiful job of selecting and posting my work.

Click here for a link to my feature and then please enjoy exploring the many other artists and information you will find on this site.  

Thank you so much, Thomas, for including my work on your impressive website.  

eBrush / Fun With Backgrounds

   I recently purchased the new eBrush by Craftwell to use in my journal, and I am so glad I did.
It works great for creating backgrounds, so I have had fun with that!
On the above page, I used a variety of stencils and Spectrum Noir markers with the eBrush, then applied an altered image that I purchased from Mischief Circus.   When I work with purchased or found images, I use Adobe Photoshop to alter and resize them.   Then the images are saved onto a flashdrive which I take up to the local Copyworks to have laser printed on good quality paper.   Working with laser prints is far superior to working with inkjet prints if you intend to use any wet mediums on the pages.   Laser images are water resistant, whereas inkjet prints tend to bleed color into wet mediums.

Above is another example of pages with eBrushed backgrounds.   Here I cut my own masks out of card stock and worked in color layers.    Both of the above page spreads are ready for detail work and writing.

And here is a finished page spread.  Again, the backgrounds were done with the eBrush and markers. Collage elements were added and then the writing and some detail work with Prismacolor pencils.

It's nice having the backgrounds all ready to work on, especially when I want to take my journaling with me, and don't want to carry a lot of art supplies.   I can take a few pens and my journal and enjoy working almost anywhere.   And with so many ways to create backgrounds, the possibilities are endless !
Happy Journaling.

Book Binding and Gelli Printing

 Like many others who have discovered the joys of Gelli printing, I have accumulated a large collection of beautiful printed papers.   Lately I'm using them in combination with bookbinding to create unique covers and end papers.
I'm printing with acrylic on paper that is heavy and durable enough to make good book covers, and bonding them to book board.   Above is a recent example, and you can find more on my Etsy Shop.

The end papers are also Gelli printed using coordinating colors.   When you generate your own decorative papers, your artwork takes on a new level of originality.  In addition, the whole process of Gelli printing is so much fun !
Enjoy and explore different ways of using your prints.