Art Journal: In The Sun Round Up

We're a month in over at Natty Malik's In The Sun art journal course, so I figured I'd share all of the pages I've created for this course to date. I am impressed with myself for keeping up as well as I have! You should definitely check out the In The Sun flickr group to see what all of my classmates have been creating as well. We've got an amazing bunch of artists working together this summer, and I am thrilled to be a part of the fun.

Clicking each image will bring up flickr, where I describe my process and tell you more about the images. I put the images after a break because it's a very image-heavy post.

Art Journal: Beach Playlist

This page was a fun one! I started by gluing half a sheet of old music to the left side of the page. Dry-brushed on some neon green craft paint when it was dry, then used watered-down black craft paint to add lots of drips and splatters.

The image came from a glossy magazine that has long since lost its cover -- no idea which one! (Wish I did! I'd subscribe!) I used a white Sharpie poster paint pen to add text at bottom and a Uni-Ball Signo Gel pen to add white text on the girl. Text is bits and pieces from all of the songs. I used Copics to add color to her face, accented with a black Sharpie pen.

For the list, I tried writing over the background, but none of the colors showed up very well, so I covered it with a graph paper list instead. Luckily, I had the perfect colors in washi tape! (Love the lace one!)

List is:

redemption song - bob marley & the wailers
blue skies - tori amos
summertime - morcheeba
dancing queen - ABBA
summertime - janis joplin
good day sunshine - the beatles
love street - the beatles

Art Journal: Roadtrip

One of the recent prompts in Natty Malik's In The Sun art journaling class was to create your ultimate road trip playlist. I like all kinds of music, but love singing along the most, so I chose songs that are fun to sing with... You can listen for yourself:

Art Journal: Vacation-Inspired Page

Yesterday's vacation video prompt in Natty Malik's FREE online art journal course, In The Sun, inspired me to create this tutorial on making your own DIY mini polaroid prints. (No Polaroid camera required!) Today, I want to show you what I created using those mini prints. [Ironically, yesterday was my first day back to work after a three-week vacation!]

For the background, I wanted to do a blue similar to the blue used in the Young Veins video. As I was painting, I decided I didn't want to do the whole spread blue so I just did the edges on the left page, plus added some texture with sequin waste. I used orange and yellow homemade spray paints (just acrylic paint and water in a spray bottle) to brighten it up.

When I looked at the solid blue page, I decided I didn't like it all solid, so I wanted to do something to break that up. I suddenly imagined a palm tree there. I'd had a magazine earlier this week with a palm tree on the back cover, but I must have recycled it already, because I couldn't find it. I did, however, know exactly where my green tissue paper would be. I ripped the paper into shapes I hope would approximate a palm tree, then when I looked in the tissue paper box again, I realized I still had some brown tissue paper that my friend, Cherie, had given me years before. I made a trunk for my tree using that. I used gel medium on top and bottom of the tissue to add it to my page.

I played around with the DIY polaroid prints a bit until I found an arrangement I liked. I attached these using my Tombow, but I'm sure gel medium or double-sided tape would have worked well, too. When I came home from work and looked at my spread in progress, I thought of the Weezer song, An Island in the Sun. I decided to use the lyrics for the page, since it sure looks like the kids in the photos are having lots of fun: "On an island in the sun, we'll be playing and having fun."

I really love how the text turned out! I did the text in a blue Decocolor market. Then I outlined slightly inside the letters with a white Uniball signo pen (best pen ever!). After that, I traced around all the words to add brightness with a yellow Sharpie poster-paint marker. Finally, I outlined the letters with a black Sharpie poster-paint marker.

Here's the finished page:

Well... I think it's finished anyway. I might end up adding some detailing to the tree on the right side, but, really, I think it looks great as is, so I might just leave it alone. What do you think?

Tutorial: DIY Mini Polaroid Prints

When I watched the video for today's prompt this morning for Natalie Malik's free online art journaling class, In The Sun, I knew instantly what I wanted to do: polaroid pictures! I know that I have an actual old school polaroid camera under my desk, but I wanted to use my Polaroid POGO printer to make mini polaroids. So tiny! So cute! I haven't done my page for today yet, but I'm so excited by my mini-project that I wanted to share right away.

To make your own DIY polaroid prints without a polaroid camera, you will need:

• photo prints of images you like [Note: If you don't have a POGO like I do, you could get one-hour prints at your local photo shop very cheap. Or you could just use images from a magazine cut to size... why not?]
• 3x5 blank white index cards, or any white card stock {You could just plain white printer paper, sure, but using card stock gives the mini polaroids a bit of heft like a real polaroid would have.}
• glue (if you aren't using a POGO)
• ruler
• scissors or exacto knife

Choose the prints you want to use for your mini polaroids. Remember that you will be cropping the image into a square shape, so try to choose images based on what will look good in a square shape.

If you are using a POGO print, you just have to crop one-inch from the longest side of the print. You can see that for some images, I just cut an inch off the side; for others, I trimmed a little from each side. I have a metal ruler that is two inches wide, so I used that as a cutting guide. You could also draw guidelines with a pencil.

If you are using a larger size print, you can make a square by cropping the long size to the same length as the shortest side. (I know, duh, right?) Or you could make a square viewfinder in a plain piece of card stock (just cut with an exacto knife) and use that to find the best part of your image to crop. This would work well for finding an image in a magazine, too.

For the POGO, you'll affix your square using the sticker back. For another print or magazine, use a glue stick or your choose of adhesive. After making this first two prints, I realized I'd have less cutting if I placed the image in the corner instead of towards the middle. I was able to make two mini prints from each index card. Trim to size. I just eyeballed this. Basically, the bottom is about a third the height of the image, give or take. Then you'll have a thinner border at the sides and top. If you wanted this really precise, I'm sure you could find the exact dimensions online, but I didn't care if it was exactly right.

Enjoy your cute DIY polaroid prints! You'll be seeing mine soon in an art journal spread. I'll link it here whenever it's done. Have fun!

Art Journals: New Journal Cover

I have been wanting to make myself a hard cover art journal for a while now. A week or two before we moved, I finally did it! I used 2 8x10 canvas panels, three sheets of Fabriano Artistico HP watercolor paper (140lb), some book cloth tape sent to me by Nancy Rafi, and some heavy duty black cord. I decided not to start working in it until after the move, though I was unable to resist painting some backgrounds. I would have started working in it on June 6th when the FABULOUS In The Sun art journal course started... but, um, I couldn't find it until Tuesday. Doh!

I used my favorite homemade spray paints to create the background, then did an image transfer using the cover of the newest Free People catalog. I used a paint marker to make the word "art" then embellished it by tracing the letters with a Sharpie Poster-Paint marker and uni-ball signo pens in gold, white, and silver.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I started, but I ended up doing the spiral around her eye with the uniball then decided to embellish her eyes more. I used a neon green Sharpie poster-paint marker to draw the vines all over the cover. I love how it turned out. I'm not entirely sure if it's finished or not, but it's definitely a great start. I've already done some very summery backgrounds inside, so expect to see more from this journal as the summer progresses. Yay for art!

I know it's probably pretty dorky to write "art" on the cover of my art journal, but I wanted to make sure there was no mistaking it. Haha!

Art Journal: Summer of Love

Ah, summer, I have a love-hate relationship with the summer. I spend much of the year wanting summer to get here.... then when it does, I'm too damn hot and sticky to do much of anything except hang out in the air conditioning. I do love Rhode Island thought because we get lots of nice sea breezes which helps break up the heat... plus it's always cooler near the water.

I had fun making this page on an art date with my boyfriend, Nick, tonight at Panera. Panera is a fantastic place to art journal because you can get free refills on coffee and tea, the food is fabulous (when you aren't being gluten-free that is, sigh!), and they have nice big tables. This started as a prompt from the In The Sun online art journal class. I wanted to work with the color blue for the Summer of Color class that I just discovered... two birds, one journal page. (Psst... both classes are FREE!)

I glued a vintage dictionary page and a paint splattered paper towel with gel medium to make the background. I added blue with Portfolio watersoluble oil pastels (love these!). When Nick was cutting stuff out of a magazine, I saw the white-framed blue image so I asked him to cut it out for me. I drew the flower on top with paint markers. I journaled on graph paper (my new favorite-- thanks, Natty!) and cut a scallop shape on one side to show off the lovely washi tape better. At first I put down the yellow, then decided to pull it up and put down the black&white so the yellow would pop better. When I pulled it up, part of the dictionary page came with it & I think it looks so cool! Might try that on purpose for another page!

I used a Dymo label marker, old school, for the "summer of love" text. Put that on washi tape to bring everything together. I decided to do a dashed line down through the middle of text, then decided to extend it the whole way around for an off-center rectangle. The left side needed something after that so I started drawing the half circle shapes. At first I thought, "Oh crap, I messed this up" but then I kept going and decided I loved it. (Art is awesome, isn't it?) I then decided that I needed to cut the side of the page into the scallop shape. I totally didn't realize until after I was done that I had continued that scallop shape subconsciously. Very cool.

I adore this page. I am pretty sure it's my all time favorite that I've made... Yay!

The text reads:
Summer makes me feel:
* sticky
* like taking lots of showers
* happy when the skies are blue
* up for an adventure
* young @ heart
* creative
* melancholy for summer's past
* glad it's not winter
* cranky, if there's no shade
* athletic (almost!)
* night owl - I want to take siestas!

Art Journal Pages: The Inner Heart

I would have blogged about the fabulous free art journal course currently being offered by Natty Malik, one of my favorite bloggers, sooner, but I am still (STILL!!!) without internet in my new apartment, so my time online is infrequent at best. The course is called In The Sun and runs all summer long. You should definitely check it out!

Here are the pictures of the pages I've made since the course started on June 6th:











You can see close ups of all of the pages plus details about each page by visiting my flickr page.