10 26 10

Its late (or early depending on how you want to look at it) and I'm tired but I can't sleep. So here are pictures from one of my recent journal pages. The poem is by Mary Oliver and is called Wild Geese.

This is the finished page. Ooo, pretty colors. I use a camera and it doesn't catch them as well as it should but trust me, they're pretty.

A random Chloe in the Clothes.

Rain! and Asian food.

Its raining again and I'm all giddy and excited. Its got a Christmas feel to it for me - if that makes any sense. I want to run around in my sandals splashing in puddles. :-)

Rain aside, I have been experimenting with cooking asian cusine. So far I've made: Spinach Mushrooms and Tofu in Clear Broth , Cashew Chicken , and Miso Soup with Kombu and Katsuo Dashi mmmm, so yummy!

If you're going to make any of these and have cats I would suggest guarding your fish flakes and or wearing metal pants because little Macaroni just about crawled up my leg when I opened them.

For some reason there is no asian (aside from Japanese and indian) food out where I live and mine never tasted like what it should when I made it until now. The Dashi broth and the oyster sauce is so worth it. It gives it that yummy authentic taste. Go get some, you wont be sorry!

I have some mixed media cards I want to share. Literal playing cards. They're some of my favorite work. Will upload sneak peak soon!

:)

Fire on the Hills of Los Angeles

I made this post earlier and it mysteriously vanished, so here it is again. Condensed.

If you've been in Southern California over the summer you know what I'm talking about. LA goes up in smoke at least once, but usually more. While this journal page wasn't initially dedicated to that little useless bit of information, it sort of turned into that. I didn't like how it looked when I was working on it (some time around 3 AM when J was still on the night shift) but after some sleep and sunlight I took another look. Its my favorite for now. We'll see what time brings :)


I used Oil pastels, printed papers, embossing powder, ink, gold and sharpie marker, and lots of other stuff I'm probably not remembering right now. Here are pictures. Please enjoy. :D

Here its almost finished, I just added some writing on the sides for the last version.

If I coul do this over I'd take more time with the writing. Ah well, eh?

Yummy embossing!

Chloe helps keep my journal weighted down.

And the final product! See the red roads running up the sides and the orange flame leaping up from behind the mountains? Mmm, pretty colors. I want to roll around in them.

To Emboss or not to Emboss

that is the question...

and this is the answer: YES!

 Do you like pretty? Shiny? Touchable? Cheap? (I promise this is not a hair care commercial!) Then you would probably love embossing. I use it on almost every page and it makes me happy - like icecream happy, happy. (that's pretty happy!)   There are some good examples on my Fire on the Hills of Los Angeles page, but here's another if you're too lazy to go back - I would be. :)

This has already been embossed. See the texture? I love it!

How do you do this wonderous thing! You may ask. Its not hard, you can do it too. All you need is a paper to emboss on, a heat gun, an ink pad, and some embossing powder. An extra piece of scrap paper or two doesn't hurt to make sure the powder gets back into the bottle.

This is the embossing powder I'm currently using. I think I got it for 3 bucks at the local craft store.

Using a stamp or some other means (my favorite includes direct to paper from pad) apply ink. Before the ink dries pour your powder over it. Make sure you have another paper beneath your art piece to catch anything that spills... or maybe you don't need one and I'm just clumsy. :)

After you've tapped off the excess you'll have a thin line of pretty gold (or whatever color you choose) powder. Don't get all excited and touch it yet you still need to heat it. Fire up your gun and get to heating! I hear that you can use a blow dryer but I've never tried. I've also heard that you could hold it over the stove but something about fire and paper and..me.. doesn't sound right. So I use my heat gun. I start about 6 inches away and get closer if I need to. Be careful because it can make the page curl. I haven't noticed anything that a little uncurling doesn't fix, but I thought I should warn you.

And there you have it! Your own shiny happy touchable pretties. Enjoy! :-)

Fire On The Hills of Los Angeles album art?!

Guess what dudes! A friend of mine was looking at some of my art and fell in love with Fire On The Hills of Los Angeles and said he'd like to buy the copyright to use it for his band's album art!

*gaspshockexcitedsquealing*

That's awesome! "Fine", I said, but I aint seen no money so here it stays until further notice! Congratulations to me *pats back* All right, I just wanted to share! I'm off now lovies.

First Art Journal Page: Soul Sparrow

I remember the long drive to my grandma's house when I was little. As the city gave way to open desert hawks soared the pale blue sky. They always looked so at peace, separate from the world. Somehow I got it into my head that they were messengers carrying words from our hearts through the heavens. Little do they know the inspiration they planted in the heart of a child.

So, with that in mind here is the first page of my art journal. I don't have a full shot yet because I couldn't get the lighting right and it was washing out the colors. I'll try again with natural light but until then here are some details. Enjoy! :)

Soul Sparrow

I used water colors, gold metallic marker, wrapping paper, ribbon, stamps, colored tissue paper, markers, inks, glue, and embossing  powder on this page. All in all it took me a good three solid hours to put what was in my head down on paper. I love how bright and vibrant the colors are and how they blend into one another.

This is my Soul Sparrow.

:)

Can you feel the twilight sky in this image? The gold detail is from heated embossing powder which I outlinned with markers.

I used ribbon and tissue paper to make the cloud. I like to add touchy feely to my art.

So, now that I've put this up I have to go take a picture of the complete page because all these little pieces just aren't cutting it. I hope you got a good glimpse of some of the details. If you have any questions or comments please feel free. I think I'll put a few notes up about some of the techniques I used because as I surf different blogs I notice that a lot of art journals are missing embossing which is awesome! I mean, its metal, its shiny (okay, that's the main reason) it adds depth, and sparkle, and texture, to pages and its relatively inexpensive. *end nerd excitement*