Wish

for Wish Prompt at year in the life of an art journal.

duct tape, paint, my first cut letters from my new cricut!

a couple of art journal pages

a couple of art journal pages from the weekend-ish:

november gauche alchemy circle journal

page(s) for the november gauche alchemy circle journal. the theme is "vintage feminist"

this really is more of a mod podge collage than i'm used to doing, but i was just curious to see what a bunch of scraps i had looked like all applied to a page.
The journal itself was made from a book who's spine was cut off and pages glued together to be thicker and stronger. In the collage you can still see some of the original page and text shown through.

The bird was in a bag of a bunch of goodies passed from person to person to pick and choose and use. A massive part of the background is a zipper holder, a plastic bag (orange lined) and screen.

There's a lot of text on the page - the upper page has text cut out from a children's story about a little plane learning how to fly in the sky with the beautiful sun. The bottom page, over the woman, is one of my favorite quotes from Howard Thurman about coming alive and following your dreams. I wanted to kind of juxtapose the notion of freedom and growth against the traditional looking woman and the old zipper for sewing. So, there's a loose story going on here :)

TXT post from Gauche Alchemy

Hello, my name is lara, and i'm a font addict.



When hunting for fonts my first stops are usually Font Space or Abstract Fonts. Both let you search by category then sub category then sub category etc to really narrow things down. Font Space has some wicked descriptive categories (tags) since users upload their homemade fonts there and anyone can add a tag:



I mean, how cool is it that if you want to find something with magical butterflies and killer whales all in the same font set you can? (Although there were no gauche tags...hmmm)

Both sites let you type in a couple of custom words and see what they look like in that font. Abstract Fonts has a downloadable catalog but i've noticed it becomes out of date fast since so many new fonts get added so quick.

Another must go to font site specializes in handwriting fonts - Font for Peas. Yup, I'm one of those journallers that HATE my handwriting, although i'm beginning to at least accept it as i have been doing so much art journalling lately. This site has hundreds of REAL handwriting fonts and for a charge you can get your handwriting turned into a font and posted!

Lastly, a site that has saved my butt MANY MANY times in my dayjob is What the Font? You upload a sample of the font you like, or are searching for, and their database gives you matches! And probably 75% of the time i have found the font or something so close to it only a design professional could tell the difference! The only problem with whatthefont i have found, which isn't really a problem *wink wink* is most of the fonts it finds are "foundry fonts" which means you have to pay to use them.

Listen to me ... i could go on for hours about finding fonts. But what do you do when you find them and you're not into digital scrapbooking? Well, i'm sure there are some amazing things out there, but since i don't hold the copyright to them, i'll just show a few from my own gallery, if you don't mind:


Obviously, this is the easiest to do - print an easy to read font out (don't forget to spellcheck :D ), crumple or ink and glue on!



I love the look of sentences cut a part and placed in different angles - adds an extra interest to what's being read, IMHO

As a caveat, I prefer to use laser print outs - that's tonor based. But i also have the luxury of having a laser printer in my office. But tonor isn't water soluable, so if you want to do something with the print that involves water (like some transfers, paint on) you can't use an inkjet who's ink is water based.


Image transfer is pretty easy with packing tape and you don't need to worry about mirror imaging


Lastly, painting over print outs is a easy way to add custom color and make it look "digital." I prefer acrylic paints with lots of water, but water color works well too. If I know i'm going to be painting I use a higher quality paper, one that isn't as pourous as regular office paper. Actually paper made specifically for color copying and laser printers works the best.

So, go and download and create and mix and match! Please leave comments and post to the Gauche Alchemy flickr group any other ways you use fonts - i can't wait to experiment in new and exciting ways!

Thank You Art Journal Page - Gutter Girlz

For this month's Gutter Girlz challenge I did kind of a "lift" of an idea i've been enamored with for awhile now. I have this printed out at work and at home - something about it really feeds my soul:

Inspiration

Actually all her stuff is AWWWW-MAZING and completely INSPIRING!

I like how my "version" turned out - I used different materials and related it to the song prompt.

This month prompts are:

THE PROMPT: My Glass
THE SONG: Thank You by Alanis Morissette
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE: Newspaper clipping



For the background I tore up bits of newspaper and glued them down with modge podge - didn't be super neat about it so i'd have edges sticking up and stuff. I then went over it with a very light coat of white gesso to obscure the text a little but keep the texture. The fun part was dripping the acrylic paint which i cut with water to make it more drippy - man it was exciting to see the color spread in front of my eyes!

Finally after drying time i got super down and dirty and took paper napkin, dipped it in white gesso and ran it over my hand to cause the reverse print.

Here are some background shots before I gesso'd my hand on:

You can totally see how yummy the texture is - i love this effect! I will definitely be using newspaper and acrylic in the future!

Vicarious Art Journal Page

Art journal page for Year in the life of an art journal.

Word is Vicarious

close up:



Duct Tape, Gesso and acrylic Paint.

Two art journal pages about ... ummmm ... bono :)

I've had this photo since 2001, someone sent it to me in gratitude of me sending them a U2-inspired holiday card way back when. Instead of it continuing to gather dust in a box, thought i'd pop it on a journal page so I can see it more often :)




The background of this page was a list i made in NYC when waiting for U2 to either enter or exit the NBC Studios for their SNL gig in September. I was just passing time listing all the ways to stalk a rock star - apparently they don't always work (but sometimes they do). I then covered the list with some used wax paper and did a tape transfer of Bono from a photo I took at the 2nd night at New Jersey's show. The lyrics are from "City of Blinding Lights" which is a song i never cared for whatsoever (hell when they played it at Obama's inaugauration party i was baffled and disappointed) but after seeing their treatment of it during the tour and Bono repeating those lyrics over and over, well i must say it's become a pretty powerful song in my life these days.

oh hello gauche alchemy!

my first post for gauche alchemy is up!
no cut and paste - go here to see:

http://gauchealchemy.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/oh-hello/

Weekend Art Journal Pages

inspired by the "u for underneath" prompt at A Year in the life of an art journal and my love for colored duct tape and paint and screen and zippers.

and from underneath
the colorless place i have been inhabiting
came a new energy
a renewal of life
i see color,
i dream in color,
i feel color.



In my "art Journal #2" - i found these photos from when i was shining and skinny and healthy and happy - i thought i'd put one on the page since i tend to look at my art journals more these days than shoeboxes of photos :)

More duct tape and some "punch waste" from a gauche alchemy kit.

Gauche Alchemy Art Journal - October

The future needs a big kiss



...not a fan of the song, but love this line in it. I've been wanting to do something with it since the first U2 show in New York.

Here's this months layout for the gauche alchemy circle journal.
The theme of this one is "vintage bling" and i have to admit i was stumped almost all month! But with the deadline of Nov 1 looming i pulled it together and tried some new techniques. I'm pretty happy with the outcome! And it's something i would normally not do, but it still has me in it :) The size of each page is 8"x 8"



OK, one of the cool things I've discovered is wax paper will adhere to other paper and I've been using sheets of wax paper i've used under and between projects - when glued over the top of something it makes a cool almost beeswaxy but with muted paint effect. For this I put it over a thin children's book page that otherwise tears too easy because it's so old - YAY! It preserves and looks cool!



To add some additional color and texture and lines i adhered some sewing pattern pieces on to the pages too. And then the title is a package tape transfer! Don't ask me the font ... can't remember ;)



The flower is made from ribbon odds and ends, mesh fabric, gold punch waste and vintage buttons. I didn't have any thread so i used wire :)



I super like this page - it's just something different for me. As i said i was having difficulty being inspired by "vintage bling" and i knew i wanted to use the u2 lyric - somehow by great fortune my supervisor at work wanted to show me where all of our archived clip art cd's are (along with print samples) and i saw this CD called "Adobe Image Library - Yesterday's Lifestyles" and went through it and found a couple of kitchsy images mixed in with mostly the scary "nuclear family" images. Four pieces of packaging tape later - and voila! The bitch is on the page!

Tasty Art Journal

Did a spread for A Year in the Life of an Art Journal "T" Prompt. T was supposed to stand for "Tasty" but since that is semi-related to food, and seeing how horrible a time lately i've been having with my relationship with food, i just journalled about my emotional eating then found a quote, i believe from Buddha, about it.

I discovered something SO COOL i could do with wax paper on this one!!!!!
I use wax paper to paint on so my table doesn't get dirty. I also put it between pages when i'm working so nothing drips on the pages i don't want it too - so i had a couple of sheets of wax paper with some paint on it - i took gel medium and put a thin coat over the journalling then pressed the wax paper over it and let it dry - and voila! a Semi-obscured page with some paint.

Also i used packing tape transfers - i've given up on trying to use gel medium to create a transfer, which would be much cooler than tape, but whatever i do it never ever works. So, tape it is!

Some Birthday cards

I made a couple of cards this week for my brother's birthday and a friend's baby shower:



This is for a baby shower! They are super into pirates and their baby is going to be named Nigel, thus the "ahoy nigel" on the front :)

**************************************************************



My brother is obsessed with raven's for a variety of reasons. I couldn't afford to buy him a real taxidermied one, so i tried to make him one out of mixed media. My feelings about the outcome are mixed as well, but for the most i'm please and it was just plain fun to make.



3 different kinds of black paper i ripped up and screendoor and felt ribbon. Eye are washers and a button. Beak is newspaper with Gesso and ink on it.

Read Me - Art Journal

This is the "R = Read" page for the Year in the Life of An Art Journal Project.





It is the cover of the journal! I thought it appropro since art journals aren't meant to sit unlooked at after they're done! And this journal is extra special to me (even though we still have 6 more weeks to go!)



Close up of the cover - from my last art journal cover i learned not to apply to many things to the cover that could fall off or be knocked off by mistake. So i used pretty low profile felt thickers. Underneath that is what I've been using as my paint palette off and on and then covered with burgundy netting.

Ugh - I can not wait until it is done!!!!!!! It looks so cool as it is right now and I am constantly looking at it! It's so cool to have a visual summary of this topsy turvy year!

The goal is ... Art Journal

Art Journal Entry inspired by challenge blog Gutter Girlz and U2 lyrics and TONS of found objects from my scrap drawer.

The topic of this challenge is "Tender. Human."
For some reason I was having so much trouble coming up with a layout idea because every time i thought of the word "human" i thought of the word "soul" which in turn made me think of U2 (ok, fine what doesn't make me think of U2 these days?) which in turn made me think of the song "Elevation" and how every time i get to experience that song live (which is 7 times now, I guess?) it catapults my soul out of my body and i don't feel like i am in a physical human body anymore. Jumping and singing "ooohhh hoooo" with 60,000+ people is absolutely electrifying! At this point I'm thinking I should rename my art journal "u2 lyric journal" but.... yeah... heh.

So, i went with the lyric and gathered some found objects since i've been cleaning out all my art stuff in preparation of purging for the move.



• The green background is this canvas that the creative team at my work used for a presentation recently and i said "don't throw those scraps away!!!!" so they gave them to me.
• The caution tape comes from the meadowlands parking lot in new jersey (what trash?),
• the screen is still yet more screen from my old back porch,
• there's a sticker under there you can barely see that has two red arrows and says "this way up" that a friend of mine who works in a warehouse gave me a roll of,
• the dragonfly came from some swap or kit that i never thought i would use cause i thought it was kinda cheesy AND
• the text comes from an old old old children's story book i've been holding onto to scared to cut into but i finally dove into it last night and was tickled pink to find this story about a little airplane afraid to fly and the paper is so fragile and smells so ... old.
• Oh and my handwriting is on electrical tape!

Art Journal : S = Sound

Art Journal entry for A Year in the Life of an Art Journal --- S = Song (although i took it to Sound :) )

Love love love this lyric from "Breathe" = it truly does lift me up.

Letters are chipboard so they stand off the page a little and the background started out as a paint palette :)
Background journalling is how U2's songs have changed, really SAVED, my life.

Gauche Alchemy Art Journal - September

An art journal page for the gauche alchemy circle journal, September.
The topic is collections and quotes (something i collect as well :D ):

Love this quote - forgot where i found it now!

Gauche Alchemy Represent!

HOW COOL IS THIS?!!!

I got props from one of my favorite "scrapbooking" sites!!!

Did you know Gauche Alchemy has a Flickr group? We do! It’s a marvelous place to get ideas and inspiration. Lara is a gifted artist I had the immense pleasure of “meeting” though that group. She deftly mixes Gauche Alchemy kits and her own personal style into Art Journals, layouts and cards that defy all the typical gushy adjectives like stunning, jaw-dropping and amazing.

Here’s Lara, in her own words......

More here

giddiness ensues...

a card.

Here's a birthday card i made for my friend April:



And the back in detail cause i think it's yummy:

Huh? Me?

12x12 traditional scrapbook page.
Who, me, traditional?
image from gauche alchemy.
there's a little note to myself in the blue envelope :)

Art Journal Page - Point Blank Period

Art Journal page inspired by Point Blank Period challenge blog

yummy macro shot since the yumminess is always in the details with me :)