Brown paper bag April Community Thrive Art journaling challenge {video}

Brown paper bag April Community Thrive Art journaling challenge {video}

I've been inspired by Heather Santos to create this brown paper bag video where I've used the brown paper bag to create art envelopes. Heather created five cute & sweet hearts! Yay! How cool is that? I've always wanted to use my brown paper to create some art, so I thought now it's the moment to try my hand.

Want to see how I've made these envelopes? Here is the video I've created. Enjoy!

Now I'm curious what's ahead for May art journaling challenge!



See you soon,

Cristina

Creating with unconventional materials

For an art journal maker like I am, it's great to have all the materials you need to create at your finger. But that's not always the case, because where I live, they are hard to find.

Only in the past few months I have come to discover several online stores with art supplies that I can actually use for art journaling. Of course, I had paints and colored pencils, watercolor pencils, oil and soft pastels, etc., but so little few stamps and stencils! And when i did find some interesting stamps in physic stores, they were sooo expensive that I wonder if somebody ever buys them! Not to mention the ink pads!

Even worse when it comes to stencils. I could barely manage to find 2 or 3 a year ago at a local store when I was looking for something totally different. I'm glad that I can now say that stencils are very much getting on the shelves and many of them can serve perfect for creating art journal pages! 

But even if I have about 20 stencils or so, I always want more. And I found this sink plastic protection when I was just "browsing" a dollar store shelf. I thought I would be a great stencil and I was right! Look at the result:

Gorgeous, isn/t it?

What's on your art table?

Following the example of Roben Marie, here is what's on my table today:

I've started with a simple drawing...

Intended to use only watercolor, but I cannot help adding acrylics...

And working on the background with stencils...

Here is the final result ;) 

Her torso as well as the other page will serve as space for journaling!

See you soon!

Getting messy is great for the soul

I haven't posted around here in a while, but I was around! I did some painting and drawing and sketching! And it;s hard sometimes to balance between creating and writing. I love both, but many times I run out of time while I try to make them both.

I can't do them all AND that iS OK. One thing at a time, please :) 

Now here is my latest painting using mixed media. I wanted to create something free of any judgements and here is what I came up with. And to tell you the truth, the inner critique spoke to me at some point saying: "what's that craziness over there, girl?" But then I said: WAIT, at first it will look crazy and meaningless until it gets better and....better. And Nicer.  If I could paint like a child, I would. BUT I can paint like a child IF I let go. And I believe you can, too!

With no further introduction, here is the result. NOT final. I don't know what's missing, maybe more work on the background...who knows?! Maybe one day I'm gonna go back and add to this piece.

Turn an "old" journal page into a beautiful new one!

I know you all are anxious to see the final result of the girl I've posted the other day on Instagram. The truth is that I've been waiting to draw on that journal page, as I'm waiting to paint on the rest of the pages that are not blank. I think the color splash, stencils, stamps or just cleaning the brayer makes the page more interesting and gives depth to the drawing, painting or whatever you add on. And when you work with watercolor, the colors behind show, altering the result.

Here is the page where I started to draw some flowers with a black permanent micro pen:

And I continued with a larger flower that I didn't liked so much at first, but then it started to look amazing when I added the face:

And look at it! The page already looking pretty good, isn't it?
But wait, I had to continue adding more color until I could add water to it, so here is how I did it:

Here is when I started to really really love it! Her hair growing longer and the combination with the flower on her neck and face give her a mysterious look. And the locks of hair - just a suggestion to how her hair looks like and how long is it.

But the fun is only now about to start, because this is the moment when I added water and all the colors turned to magnificent creations! Oh, how I love these ink pencils! Inktense pencils from Derwent are delicious to try. Chocolate of art supplies or maybe a chocolate cake. But to define this drawing/painting I had to make use of my neocolor 2 watersoluble crayons for the white of the eyes...

And after more layers of color on her face, I came with this result. I'm not really sure if this is it, because her hair looks a little bit incomplete, but hey, I don't want to add too much color on her hair and make it look too busy to the eye. I shall see! But for now, I just LOVE LOVE her look! 

As I said, I've used neocolor2 for the white of the eyes, which is not really white, but a light cream called light lemon yellow. In my opinion, this color has nothing to do with what you think when reading lemon yellow, it's rather a very light cream - like vanilla white - than a lemon yellow.

Well, that's is it. I'll leave you enjoy it. 

See you soon!

Much love,

Cristina

Handmade paper stencils

 The leaves you see on the left page are handmade stencils I made.

This girl you see here was painted on my A4 art journaling, a journal with sketching paper from Derwent, who still takes water very well. 110lbs/ 165grm is more than OK for me, because I gesson my pages most of the time, and even if I don't it's still OK. And when you build layer after layer, even better!

And after using the paper stencils once or twice, you can create collages in your art journal. Imagine this stencil on a complementary color background! Just lovely!

I've also used this stencil to draw with my Inktense pencils. And look how gorgeous it came out!