More pages from "I am my Art" Journal

I love Lynne Hoppe's work and it has inspired this portrait. I used my non dominant hand to draw the face. The background was from a paper towel that was used as a clean up rag, then I ripped it into squares and glued it down with matte medium, painted it with gesso and then sanded it. I drew the face with an ochre pen then watercoloured it. I also added pencil crayons and water soluble oil pastels. I love the textures.
On the right side the background is watercolours and water soluble oil pastels. The heart is stamped with a love poem by Kahlil Gibran and stitched around and cut out and layered on top. The words are added with rubber stamps.

home is where the heART is


Happy Halloween Everyone!

A journaling Fool

A misty fall view out my art studio door this morning, the Honey Locust tree has turned golden and the lighting is quite amazing.

This is where I want to be right now. :)

I love working on backgrounds in my journals. This one is done with gesso and a paper towel, then fluid acrylics on top.

I was playing around with my fan brush and Sumi ink, adding it to many pages. This next one started off with Sumi ink, which isn't permanent so to avoid smearing it I was tried using Portfolio Oil pastels over top and had a lot of fun with it.

This next one too is with Sumi ink and oil pastels. I love how the fan brush leaves lots of white spaces in the brush strokes.

I have just fallen in love with all things teal. Here is a background with 3 layers of different teals (or turquoise).

Teal and mauve, why not!

Kell and I got together last weekend and the word of the day was Funky.

May I present ThE FUnKy GyPsy

I was inspired to work with stencils after getting the second issue of Art Journaling from Stampington. Love this new Journaling magazine!

It also inspired me to use my sewing machine. I used text pages from my Russian text book to create this star spread. The star is fabric sandwiched in the paper then stitched.

Here is more text pages stitched and then ripped to create the frame.

The next piece was started with a wash of Sumi ink and then I used a gold gel pen and doodled all over it around the stencils and frame. I painted with Quinachridone Crimson as the main accent colour on this spread.

More doodleing

I got some new music. One of my favorites is Herbie Hancock, The Joni Letters. It is wonderful! He has a lot of guest singers, Nora Jones, Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell and my favorite of all is River with Corrine Bailey Rae. Oh so beautiful!!!

I am my art

Working again in my "I am my art" journal . . .


I painted a whole set of coasters in green, gold and red. I did them really quickly and spontaneously with my palette knife. In this one I clearly saw a horse and rider jumping and outlined it so you can see it too. ;) then it found a place in my journal.

I love this red page spread that I created with bubble wrap. This weekend I created the heart and thought it belonged on this page. For the heart I used about 6 pages from a German bible and stitched it to a piece of cardstock that already had some textured paint on it. then I stitched the heart shape and then carefully ripped all the layers over the heart till I got down to the textured cardstock and then I painted it gold and red.

You can see in this closeup all the ripped layers. I like it.

The Freshest Red. An afternoon snack, fresh picked off the tree. This is my coffee table in my studio. Are these apples red and shinny or what!

Outdoors in the sunshine. The red colour is actually truer on the shot from inside the house with the flash, but that sunshine was just so welcome and hard to resist.

Happy Creating everyone!

Chinese Zodiac Going Postal Journal

It took 12 years but I now have all 12 in the collection of Chinese Zodiac postage stamps by Canada Post. I don't have it absolutely complete. Each year they issue two First Day Covers, A regular local stamp and an international stamp and a souvenir sheet, but I have at least 2 items for every symbol. I reserved this journal I made with my most favorite Japanese paper just for this purpose. Its funny Once I had the whole collection I was getting overwhelmed at the thought of starting in it. Well I am finally over that now and working away in it.

The first issue stamp was Year of the Ox. Here is the souvenir sheet and a regular stamp. I copied the background colours for my background too. Somewhere I found a rubber stamp of it and the Buddha is my own photo from my garden.

I got inspired to do a portrait. What can I say I am still learning! The red maple is also my photo from my garden and at the bottom the Year of the Tiger stamp.

Then follows the 2 First Day covers for Year of the Tiger.

Year of the bunny is next. I had fun with paint on this spread. It is very rich in person and this one particularly doesn't translate to the screen at all.

That's all so far but I will be working more in this journal now. Stay tuned. :)