It has been a while since I posted. I have an Investigative Art Journal for you today. Today we are seeing how many half pans can you get from one tube of watercolors.
For this experiment I used Reeves Watercolors that I picked up at Michael’s. The affiliate link is listed here:
I found this a very interesting experiment, how much is actually in a watercolor tube? I was pleasantly surprised.
There are four and half, half pans in a tube!
This is a great if you want to invest in higher quality watercolors, but you don’t think you can go through that many pans, so sharing with a friend or 2 is now a viable option.
There is plenty of product to go around to everyone!
Check out the video to see more on the experiment and there are links to my other Investigative Art Journals.
What other experiments do you want me to do with watercolors?
It is that time of year when all the junk mail comes to your house. I recycle what I can, but sometimes it is just too pretty to throw away. So I save it.
And that is were the problem comes in, I have a stack of junk mail that needs to be dealt with, so I turned a few pieces into art journals.
This is just the tutorial on how I created the art journal, if you want to see what I did to the inside let me know in the comments and I will show you the art (when I am finished with it, lol)
Here is the video tutorial:
So what you do is start with really great junk mail. I had one from Capital One and Tiffany’s. Side note: I have only been to Tiffany’s once and I bought the cheapest pair of earrings there about 10 years ago and I still get their mailers, lol. And their mailers are beautiful!
Once you decided on what you want to alter grab some gesso. I used white, black and clear. The black is fun so I can use some light colors, it breaks up the book. I also added clear gesso over some of the images, that way I keep the image but the page is prepped to take all sorts of mediums.
The cover of the Tiffany book is so pretty and festive! This will be my holiday 2017 art journal. When looking for junk mail to make into an art journal look for mailers that have slightly thicker paper. If it is too thin then the pages will buckle and it won’t hold up.
The white gesso didn’t cover all the images completely, but that is ok, I will fill the page with other art and it won’t get in the way. But if you want the image to be completely gone, the add a few layers.
I left some words uncovered, I thought they we fun and it will help me start the page.
The Capital One mailer was a great size and it will be fun to do more landscape journal pages. I kept the images and some words, and it makes for a great starting point.
It was a lot of fun to prep my new art journals. What piece of junk mail do you have that is too beautiful to recycle? And did you just keep it or did you re purpose it?
Lately I have been getting back to my Art Journal and I have been in love! It is so great to get back to painting and creating without worrying about selling it (I have been doing a lot of craft fairs lately).
If you follow me on You Tube you probably have already seen my time lapse video of my journal page, but in case you didn’t here is the video:
I used a lot of material that I had on hand, which is fun to use what I have.
I started with my Dylusions Creative Journal from Ranger. I love this journal it is big and the paper is thick and doesn’t warp when I add a lot of paint and mediums on it.
I painted light blue all over and while it was still wet I painted dark blue on then layered the champagne color on top. I didn’t blend it all together, but kept the colors a little separate with a little blending.
Completly dry that layer before going on to the next step. The back ground was nice but it needed more texture, so I stenciled in some circles using the dark blue and a teal color.
Once that was dry I stamped swirls on top with archival in . They don’t have to be perfect, in fact I think it all looks better when things are not exactly perfect.
While that is all drying I cut out some hot air balloons I found in a magazine and adhered them down with matt medium.
The journal page was starting to look better but it needed a little bling, so I added some resin dots I found at the dollar store and I added some great quotes from Tim Holtz Big Chat stickers. (I love these stickers!)
Then I splashed white acrylic paint on the page and then went around the edges of the balloons with a black gelato.
For the final touch I outlined major elements with a white gel pen.
