One of my ideas is to create a digital library of designs of things that interest me and that may be useful in my journal making, card making, or just other kinds of art.
For some reason, I decided on dragonflies. So, I sketched out some ideas and then inked the drawings in digitally. I also added details and patterns ot the designs that weren’t present in the sketches. The dragonflies are in my signature entangled style for sure.
I still have a few sketches to work on, and some alternatives of the wing shapes and body designs. I also want to do them as silhouettes. I like silhouettes on coloured backgrounds, like the one I’ve used today.
I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to ink in the designs. I also used it to add the background, shadows and typography.
The background is one of my own made using Distress Oxide inks and water. I love that I can recolour the image digitally; the original was in shades of pink and purple, but I thought that blues and greens would suit the dragonflies much more.
I’ve left the dragonflies uncoloured, for now, though adding colour will bring the designs to life and add some dimension to them.
I don’t have a colour printer anymore, just a black and white laser printer. I may consider getting a colour printer in the future, however, as I think being able to print my own digital art would be useful, especially for using in journal making. An inkjet printer would be the most useful; it would allow me to print on many different kinds of paper and lightweight card.
I’m also thinking of putting together digital collections of backgrounds and ephemera and/or digi stamps for sale via my Etsy shop. Let me know if you think that’s a good idea by dropping a comment.
This morning, I woke early-ish and thought I’d spend a little time on my journal.
On page 2 I’ve added one of my silhouette irises backed onto some pearlescent card that i coloured with Chameleon Color Top marker pens. I’ll be adding a quote beside the flower, when I find the perfect quote to go there!
Above the flower you can see a little tag with a semi-circular bottom that has a little pocket in it. The tag will flip up so I can hide some journaling or quote or something pretty and surprising behind it.
On both pages you can see paperclips that have inchies embellishing them. This is a fab way for me to use my inchies in a practical way.
Finally, you can see three mini paintings – two floral, one abstract – that I can use in future pages.
Unusually for me I started by painting the basic shapes of flowers and leaves. Then, I added stems and details using various colours of fineliner pens as well as a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen. I added some sparkly dot details with Sakura Stardust and Uniball Signo glitter gel pens.
For the abstract pattern, I painted arcs on the watercolour paper and when they were dried I added curved lines using a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen and a gold glitter Uniball Signo pen.
I’m not at all sure how I’ll use these, other than the colours of the three cards go really well together so they’ll help me with the colour scheme for another pair of pages further on in the journal, as well as making other ephemera and so on for it.
I do like relatively straight edges, neatly regimented bits and bobs in my journal. I’m not one for lace and frills and frothy additions. It’s not completely clean and simple; I do like old book paper that’s been torn. It’s like I need to control shapes and positions and arrange things ‘just so’, neat and tidy like. That may very well be my way with journal creation, which is in juxtaposition with those I see on youtube.
Being confident with something new, like making my own journal, is something that takes time, perseverance and patience – the patience mostly being with myself until I gain enough confidence.
It’s also the confidence that doing something different to others is perfectly fine.
Yesterday
I was missing in action yesterday. I was unsettled, dissatisfied with anything I tried to do, and needing a lot of sleep it seems. I kept away from the ‘puter and social media. So, no art was done (other than a couple of templates for Entangled Gardens) and no blog post was written (nor any other social media).
One lesson I have learned from my time in counselling/therapy was the importance of knowing when to exercise self-care. I try my best to do this, though sometimes it’s difficult as I know there are expectations and pressures I place on myself.
However, I have learned that if I try to push myself to do things when I’m just not in the right place to do them, I just get more and more frustrated and fed up. If I give myself the time and space to do what I need to do to take care of my emotional and mental health, when I settle down to work, the work flows more easily and I’m more satisfied with what I create.
Although I did draw two templates yesterday, I started three or four others and just threw them as I really wasn’t at all happy with them, and they really were nonredeemable.
Once those two were complete, I felt better about my deadline for the book, a bit more settled in myself. However, any other artistic things I tried I was just frustrated with. So, a complete break away was needed. So, it was crochet while binge watching American Gods on Amazon Prime Video.
I don’t know if I’m feeling any better today as far as art goes, I do know I need breakfast before I consider doing any!
I woke this morning with the desire to make a little box to store ephemera in. So I did.
I used a video from PootlesPaperCraft to help me make the box, which is 4″ square with a depth of 2″, so sizeable enough for some of my smaller ephemera such as inchies and little shrink plastic charms (you can just see them peeking out from under the envelopes to the left of the photo).
I used plain, white card for the box base, which I coloured with Tea Dye, Rusty Hinge and Vintage Photo Distress Inks. For the top, I used a piece of Tim Holtz card from my stash that I’ve had for a number of years. This I grunged up with Vintage Photo and Rusty Hinge Distress Inks.
Once I made the box up, I used Aged Mahogany to distress the edges of the box.
I coloured a square piece of white card with Aged Mahogany and Rusty Hinge Distress Inks and then used a light brown pen to draw a zentangle design on it. This panel was layered on a piece of the same Tim Holtz card I used to make the lid, and then I adhered it to the box.
The box really needed a label to identify it’s contents. Now, I could’ve printed the label out, but I thought this would be an opportunity to practice my hand lettering, which I did.
Then, I aged the label with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink, applied lightly over the face and a bit darker around the edges. Next, I layered the label on another piece of the Tim Holtz paper. Before adhering the label to the box lid, I edged the panel with some Rich Gold Starlights paint from Imagination Crafts.
It’s been a long time since I made any boxes, but they really are easy enough to do. I need to make a longer, thinner box to store tags and other bits and bobs in, once I work out the size I need to make.
I had an idea that I can use the little drawings I like to do as ephemera and embellishments and focal points in my art journal, rather than using ephemera from other sources like books, printables, and so on. I’m sure I’ll find more uses for them if I persevere with this project.
So, back to the tri-fold tag. It was my plan to make such a tag for my art journal. However, as usual, my plans often take a slightly different route!
I started by working out the size of tri-fold tag I wanted to make – to fit an A5 sized art journal.
I settled on a piece of mixed media paper cut down to 11.5″ x 7″, which I scored at 3.75″, 4″, 7.75″ and 8″ to create the three tags joined by hinges. I cut the top corners off each tag panel.
I coloured the front and back of the paper using Distress Oxide inks and sprayed water to distress the surface more. Then, I used vintage photo Distress ink to edge all the sides and folds to frame the panels .
I’d chosen colours that would go with some ATC s I was drawing last night while attending a webinair and listening to the speakers. However, the Distress Oxide inks resulted in a much brighter colour and I really wasn’t happy with the result. I will use this panel to use as a reference in future, not so much for sizes but for ideas for pockets and panels and envelopes and so on.
So, I started again. I used Distress Oxide inks, but this time I used tea dye and vintage photo, applying them as lightly as I could. I also coloured some copier paper using the same colours in Distress Inks, with a hint of rusty hinge added to the mix.
I was much happier with the colours this time around.
I liked the idea of using a ‘belly band’ with little envelopes tucked into it. So, I used 5″ square pieces of the coloured copier paper to make some little envelopes (2.5″ x 3″). Two of these would fit neatly on one of the panels. So, I made a 0.75″ x 7″ belly band, and coloured it with the same inks as the panels. I applied thin beads of glue to the ends and centre of the belly band and then adhered it to the panel, off-set to the right of the centre line.
When the glue dried, I had two sections that would hold one envelope each.
My next job was to rummage through my stash of coloured papers to find ones that would go together and were sympathetic with the background.
I drew some panels to add to the envelopes and also the space between them. I backed the panels with vintage book paper. Then, I hand lettered some words on a piece of coloured copier paper. I chose ‘Journal’ and ‘Reflect’ from the selection, cut them out. I used both vintage book paper and a piece of coloured paper behind them to make labels that I attached to the belly band above each envelope.
Finally, for now, I used a gold glitter Signo gel pen by Uniball to add dots and highlights.
It was then that I realised I really wasn’t happy with the tri-fold tag as I’d made it. So, I set about cutting the tags apart so I had three individual tags. I want to join them together in a different way, using hinges of some kind.
But for now, tiredness has caught up with me, as well as the need for some breakfast. So, I will put my project to one side for now and return to it later.
Reflections
I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, not yet anyway. I kind of like what I’ve seen other people do as far as ideas go for pockets, tags, labels, envelopes, pouches and all kinds of ephemera for art journals. However, they’re also not really ‘me’. I’d like to find a way of expressing ‘me’ in an art journal.
The one I have, in an A4 sketchbook is fine, and a perfect place to try things out. But, I’d like to do a smaller art journal that has sturdier, mixed media paper in it.
I do know I want to make use of my own artwork. Today, I drew the designs onto the coloured card. However, I quite like the idea of building up a digital library of my own drawings and designs that I could print out on paper and colour accordingly.
Although I hand lettered the words I used today, part of me isn’t happy with them and wants to create them in Affinity Publisher.
All the paper I start with is bright white in colour. Perhaps I could look at using different papers and colours of paper for future projects.
One other thing I’m doing, is keeping notes and diagrams showing templates and dimensions for various ephemera.
I’m babbling here, now. The early morning and lack of enough sleep last night is really catching up with me now. Time to post this then go get breakfast and more tea!
Angela Porter 