Let the Sunshine In...

Happy Friday, everyone! We're one week away from Thanksgiving, and then the Christmas season is upon us...time seems to be flying these days!

My crafty mojo seems to be on a seesaw lately - up and down - unpredictable.  And crafters know that holiday season isn't the ideal time of year for that to happen!

So I decided last week to take a step back, and make a quick and easy art journal page, drawing inspiration from the many pages I've seen online with houses...wonderfully drawn and creatively colored houses on pages brimming with fun ideas. But my page needed to be my own version of simple and fun and easy - I needed to be able to start and finish in the same short session - a chance to clean out the creative cobwebs and hopefully reset my mojo.

So here it is - a simple single page in my small (5-1/2" x 8") mixed media journal...

A little note about the background treatment - I made the sheet of background paper separately from the book and then glued it in before adding all the other details. The fact that I had this background already made was the motivation for me to use it on my quick and easy journal page.

I was adding the paints from Lindy's Stamp Gang Beauty School Dropout Flat Magicals set to my handmade color chart, and the background colors on this page are what I got when I "smooshed"  (not a very technical term, but crafters know what it means, right?) a piece of mixed media paper onto my craft sheet filled with the watery leftovers of all five colors of the set. Fun and easy!

For the "trees," I first used my 12x12 bubble stencil to outline with a Pitt Artist Pen, then fill the circles with gelato.  Once I blended the colors in each circle and highlighted with white gelato, I went back around the edges of each with a medium point Pitt pen and drew more freeform circles around each tree top...

The sidewalk is made with Prima's Stonewall 1 stencil and heavy gesso...once the stones were dried, I drew in the outline edges of the walkway, and shaded the stones with a Stabilo All pencil...

The sun was fun...it was experimental all the way. I started by using modeling/molding paste on a circle shape from a Puddles stencil...then added the "rays" using the edge of a palette knife and just scraping the paste rays on. 

Once the paste dried, I added gold and butterscotch gelatos to shade the rays at the bottom, and orange gelato around the top of the outside of the sun. Little white dots with a white paint pen and a thin coat of Rock Candy Distress Stickles, and the sun was complete. 

The final step was to shadow around the hand-drawn word tile pieces, the paper-pieced house, and the trees with black Stabilo pencil, and my little page was called "Done!"..

Supplies:

Background Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Beauty School Dropout Flat Magicals set

Stencils:   Memory Box Texture Rings and Puddles;   Prima Stonewall 1 (6x6);   Prima Bubbles (12x12)

Patterned papers:   Prima

Miscellaneous:   Ranger Rock Candy Distress Stickles;   Stabilo All black pencil;   Fabel Castell Gelatos;   Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens - black;   Uni Posca white paint pen;   Golden molding paste;   Liquitex heavy gesso

Thanks for visiting today...have a wonderful weekend!