Art Journal Cover by Karen

For today's post I thought it was time I decorated the cover of my art journal. What to do if you want some texture but without things that will catch and tear? Tissue paper and different texture pastes was my answer.

Manila paper tends to suck the colour out of everything and I wanted to have a bit of white space so I started with a layer of white gesso, feathered out so there were no hard lines. Then I added a bit of light background stamping and stamped my title on to tissue paper.

I painted the back of the tissue paper white so that it would stand out against a coloured background...

and I added Turquoise acrylic paint to the cover, again feathering out to avoid hard edges.

For a pop of contrast and some texture, I mixed Magenta paint in to transparent relief paste (now called Design-It) and stenciled this over the other colours.

To take the title stand out more, I added a light touch of Cadium Yellow and used gel medium to stick down the tissue paper adding a coat under and over to be sure it was well adhered. I added a third lot of stenciling too.

Mixing Yellow and Scarlet paint for a bright orange, I added more stenciling and doodled round the stars and circles with black and white pens. I used Black Acrylic Paint to sponge round the edges of the cover.

For more texture and contrast, I stenciled Black Expand-IT paste on to the cover. I also added lines with the edge of a paint knife to the 'Art' letters, and heated the Expand-IT to puff it up for some volume.

I am sure I will continue to doodle or add to this over time but, for now, it makes me happy that my journal has a decorated cover in some of my favourite bright colours. It gives a hint of what is inside. More of that another day!

Bye for now
Karen
x

Soft Form Relief Paste	EXpandit 3D expanding medium	StazOn Jet Black	Plastic Painting Knives	Golden Matt medium
white gesso	Heat Gun	Golden haired nylon brushes	Eco Acrylic Paint

Sunset Collage

Where are you missing being able to go? I’ve been missing being able to go to the ocean, so this blog is about how I took myself there creatively. So I pictured a sunset over the ocean and made with a collage of monoprinted strips.

Monoprinting

All you need is a smooth flat surface: glass, laminated sheet, polythene pocket. You can use your tabletop but it can get messy!

You can watch this process in a short 14 minute film:

https://youtu.be/pOVYCeme9q4

I used eco acrylic paint: yellow ochre, vermillion, and also metallic acrylic paint: orange, red, pink.

Spread some paint out on your surface. A brayer roller helps to spread the paint into a thin layer, but you can improvise with an old store card.

You can make marks in the paint, and can use the end of a paintbrush, or how about you look around at home to see what you have to produce a pattern. I tried a fork, a bottle top, and a whisk.

Lay a sheet of paper over the painted surface, press down, and then pull off. You can repeat without adding any more paint and get a “second generation” print off.

I love this organic printing process, as you can relax and enjoy seeing what you get! You can quickly get lots of pages to use in projects.

I already had some pages I had printed in sea colours (viridian, turquoise, metallic aquamarine …). I also had some painted newspaper and some glittery wallpaper sample. Torn tissue paper is also great for this too.

Repeat the printing process above to create pages for the ocean.

Collage

One the paint has dried, tear the printed pages into strips. Irregular works best.

I like to loosely audition the strips to get the arrangement I want.

Take a piece of cardboard and apply glue to the top half. A sponge brush is great for this. Then lay the torn, painted strips down on the glue, pressing and smoothing with the foam bush. So some glue will end up on the top surface, but it will dry clear and help to seal the collage. It is also nice to have some slightly curling edges, as this adds depth to the scene.

You can then fill in any gaps you don’t like with other small pieces of the printing or some tissue paper.

Apply glue as you work downwards, completing the ocean. Leave the collage flat to dry.

Art journaling 'Dream Tomorrow' by Karen James

I've returned to my art journal and ColourCraft Acrylic Inks for another double page spread.

I used warm tones - Golden Yellow, Orange, Scarlet and Deep Crimson - for the background and then contrasting Turquoise, Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue for the focal points with Copper Design-It paste giving more texture and a lovely sheen.
I filmed the process so you can see how all the layers are built up. It is edited to keep it short and I've given a voice over with lots of art journaling tips and tricks: Hope you enjoy it!

Please don't forget to subscribe to the ColourCraft channel while you are there.
With thanks for spending your time with us.
Karen
x

Acrylic Inks	Soft Form Relief Paste	Clear Spray Bottle	Plastic Painting Knives	Eco Acrylic Paint
Heat Gun	Golden haired nylon brushes

Rainbow Cards - Simple Mixed Media Project

Hello and welcome back to the Colourcraft blog. 

Rainbows have become the universal symbol of support for our NHS and other Key Workers here in the UK at this time of crisis.

My easy mixed media cards would be the perfect way to offer a few comforting words to those around you.

I began by mixing up some Brusho and water in my travel palette:

I took a piece of watercolour paper and blended the three colours of Brusho to create a rainbow.

I repeated this on another piece of watercolour paper and allowed to dry.

I stamped my sentiments using Versafine Onyx Black ink.

I put some acrylic paint into a palette and found a scrap of bubble wrap.

Using a brush, I applied a small amount of paint to the bubble wrap and 'stamped' the pattern onto the card blanks.

Next I used an old bottle top to stamp circles using the paint.

Once the paint was dry, I matted the sentiment panels onto black card and attached them to the card fronts. I finished with a few sequins.

I hope that you enjoyed today's tutorial - you can make fun backgrounds using household 'junk'!!

#stayathome #staysafe 

15g brusho

Eco Acrylic Paint

Acrylic Paint

Clear Spray Bottle

Air tight colour mixing water pots in tray

Marbling with Manutex

Recently I was teaching a workshop in paper decoration and one of the techniques we tried out was traditional marbling.
Basically, traditional marbling is where thinned, water based paints, are dropped onto a prepared "size", manipulated with sticks, combs and/or brushes and then applied to paper or fabric which is prepared to accept the paints.
Sounds complex, doesn't it? It doesn't need to be!

There are different types of materials which can be used as the size in marbling. It basically is something which creates a surface you can float your paints on and manipulate them before applying to the fabric. I've used a couple of the traditional ones, Carageenan is one- it can go bad pretty quickly, takes 24 hours to set and is extremely expensive. Methocel is another option- but it needs to be blended with ammonia to work and is a bit trickier. Then I remembered MANUTEX. Manutex is a Colourcraft product, often used with Procion dyes to thicken them for different techniques. I had used some the previous summer and wondered if it could work as a marbling size. It can!!

Basic instructions for fabric marbling with Manutex:

• Mix 2 heaping teaspoons of Manutex with one litre of warm water and let sit for 2 hours
• pour into a shallow container larger than your fabric
• Mix 2 teaspoons of Alum (used for pickling as well as other things) in 4 liters of warm water for treating your fabric.
• Soak your fabric in the Alum mixture and hang dry or dry flat. NB! Ironing fabric while it is treated with the alum could cause it to burn.
• Blend Colourcraft acrylic paints with water until they can be picked up easily with a dropper, you might also need to add Ox Gall (usually used with watercolour paints)- a few drops can help your paints to float better.
• Drop your colors onto the shallow container of Manutex- use combs, toothpicks etc to make designs.
• Lay your dry, treated fabric gently on the top of the bath and pull off (the paint should stick to the fabric)
• Immediately rinse your fabric gently under cool running water. The object here is to get the size and any extra paints off- the design should stay on the fabric!
• Let your fabrics dry, and then heat set.

Dropping and combing color on the manutex

Lay the fabric onto the size, gently pat and pull off.

You can also just let the colors spread without combing to get a different effect.

Here are all the fabrics dried and heat set:

One thing I'm using these fabrics for are some miniature crazy quilt blocks for my #tamarama2020sal, Twenty art/crazy quilt blocks sewn in 2020. The mini blocks are for my "light" version. More info can be found here.

If you want to see another method of marbling check out these blogs :

here and here

MANUTEX

Eco Acrylic Paint