Happy Birthday Card

Inspiration

Tim Holtz Crazy Birds stamp and die. It's spring time, and my daughter's birthday is always a special ocassion! So I created this card for her in spring colors with a flower, her initial and one of those crazy bird ladies. I paper pieced few embellishments and made a grungy happy birthday sentiment. All very feminine touches for a young woman starting a new career at 28. We all went to dinner to celebrate and she loved this card made with love from her Mom.

Techniques

I used Tim Holtz Watercolor cardstock and Distressed inks that I diluted with water and applied with a watercolor brush to get the beautiful watercolor effect on the background. I had the center flower die in my stash and used the same colors on that before die cutting the center element. The green flower was embellished with a beautiful blue flower with pearls. I made this card in less than 30 minutes before taking the celebrant out to dinner! We had a marvelous time and she loved the card and the heartfelt sentiment that I wrote to her on the inside. A keepsake for years to come.

Shadow of His Wings

Inspiration

This layout is inspired by Psalm 91:4. I think the Psalms are so beautiful, there are many that inspire me and I am sure I'll make more layouts with them in the future. I found this image (to the left) in a Google search for "angel wings". In my mind's eye, I envisioned this big Angel's wing hovering over a person who needed protection. Thank you to the artist (unknown) who created this beautiful work.

Technique

In my layout I first used Ranger Postale tissue paper to get some texture on the page. I then used a was of Liquitex Gesso to push it to the background. When that dried, I used a combination of metalic acrylic paint in blue, green, white, and gold.

For the wing, I sculpted Liquitex Light Modeling Paste to get a three dimensional image of the wing and added white acrylic paint and glitter to make it glisten and sparkle. I used Tim Holtz Distressed Pint in Tea Dye to get the highlight on the wings and in the background.

My background is made with white, green, blue and Tea Dye. I cut the title with my Cricut machine and printed the verse with my printer and cut the strips after burnishing the edges with Ranger Distressed ink in the Twigs color. The white highlights were done with white acrylic paint.

Creating this layout was a meditative experience. When doing inspirational layouts, it is like being in the presence of Angels while making each little decision that makes up your design. It feels like co-creating with the Divine. It is wonderful and makes me happy.

With reflection on the practical and mundane level, I make note of the things I've learned and can improve upon for my next project.

It Was Then That I Carried You

Inspiration

I created a series called Faith Journaling. It is inspired by a poem written by Mary Stevenson (1922 - 1999). I've loved this poem since I was a child, it is so simple and speaks to my heart. For those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ, it is an expression of His love for us that he is there to carry us through difficult times. I think the poem is beautiful

Techniques

In this layout, I used several techniques. I wanted to include the poem, but I did not want to put so much text on my layout, so I devised a way to add it by attaching a fold-able flap. On the back of the flap is a personal note to my daughter, reminding her that difficult times don't last forever. One of the things I picked up from watching some of my favorite YouTube vloggers is to date my layouts. As you can see the date stamp slipped in my hand on the message, but the date on the actual layout is accurate. One of those accidents, that happen, but not to worry, it does not detract from the design.

I found an illustration on Graphicstock.com for the feet. The original image had the toes separate, but when I imported the image into Cricut Design Space, I edited the image to join the feet to make one cutable image. I could not see myself cutting and pasting ten toes for all of those steps! I wanted subtly, so I made the footsteps in craft paper and simply added shading to distinguish them from the tone on tone background that represents the sand. I also used some Ranger Glossy Accents to put down some real miniature sea shells I had in my stash. The flood of white represents the crashing waves from the water, and I used some Farber-Castel Light Modeling Paste to get the texture I was looking for, and topped that with some Recollections Extra Fine Glitter to give my crashing waves some sparkle. Using my Cricut machine again, I cut my title in black paper and laid it down with some Ranger Gel Matt Medium. The clouds are hand drawn and fussy cut out of white card stock. I did use my Wink of Stella Pen to add some sparkle. And as I love the technique of adding shadows with my Farber-Castel Big Brush Pens and highlights with my UniBall White Gel Pen, to give everything a finishing touch. As I am still learning, each one of my layouts brings joy and happiness, and education. I learn something new with each one.

A Lesson Learned

A funny story, when I first started art journaling, I tried to make a layout from one of my favorite artists on YouTube. Things were going well, until I thought my layout was dry and it was not. I closed the book, and the pages stuck together. I opened it the next day and it was sticky some of the elements lifted from the page, and I was so embarrassed to myself. I cut the page out of the book and started over. It was a good lesson. First, make sure it is dry before closing, if using a heat tool, then still leave it open over night. Second, I ended up fixing that boo-boo, and the layout was fine. However, I had already torn it out of the book, so it did not get a chance to live with its "friends" (other pages created by me). Bottom line, accidents and boo-boos are learning opportunities and should not be discarded, but kept as reminders of the lesson. So my friends, jump in, have fun, and create something you love.

 

First Miracle

According to the New Testament in the Bible, Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine. This story always struck me as to how special Jesus must have been to change barrels and barrels of water into wine. I found these images online and paper pieced them into my layout. I drew the wine vats freehand and colored them with Tim Holtz Distressed Inks. I really enjoyed creating the shadows and shading with my Farber-Castell Big Brush Pens. Highlights were done with a UniBall white gel pen. This layout has Tim Holtz' Postale tissue paper in the background for texture. With the way the light is shinning, when I took the picture, it gives the sense that it is a stain glass window. I especially like juxtaposing this miracle with the quote by Jesus telling his disciples that "greater things than these shall you do".

Your Calling

Here again I am using Tim Holtz Crazy Birds. I fussy cut the flowers as I did not have any die cut flowers to use. The inspiration for this page was a technique I watched Vicky Papaioannou do in one of her videos where she used 4 pages and glued them together. The black and white border is actually created on a separate page and the two inside pages are trimmed on the inside. Love it! I like the way the flowers are off of the page like the birds tail.

"The quote: The things you are passionate about are not random they are your calling." There are a lot of techniques going on here, splatters, stamps, Crazy Birds by Tim Holtz, White embossing powder, and white gel pen. I drew the branch the bird is sitting on using my Farber-Castell Big Brush Pens. I don't have them all, but a few collections were enough for me to get the shading that I wanted. Overall, I am happy with the way this layout turned out, a little grunge mixed with the feminine ...it puts a smile on my face.

Stand Out from the Crowd

I just loved using these owls. I subscribed to graphicstock.com and printed them on my printer. I sealed them with Gel Matt Medium so they would not bleed when pasting them down. I fussy cut them and drew the branch freehand on across the page. This is in the 6 x 7.5 Chipboard journal that I've been loving lately to do my journal pages. The houses were also found in the same collection on graphicstock. I explored adding texture paste on this layout. I just happened to have some blue in the tube by Delta (texture magic) and I painted it green to match my background. I had fun creating this layout. It feels like I'm in the jungle someplace with all of these cute owls. I got the inspiration from

Rach0113. She is another very talented and gifted artist that I follow on Youtube. So a big shout out to her for being an inspiration for my page.

Spring Bee Happy

This page was done in a 6 x 7.5 Journal I purchased at Michaels Craft store. It has white pages and brown craft pages in the center. I have not used those yet. The process I used here was to use Gel Matt Medium to lay down some texture with Tim Holtz Postale Tissue Paper in the background. I then used Gesso to push that background further back and paper pieced the flowers, sun, and bumble bee. I think the bee is so cute. The sun and flower die cut is from one of Tim Holtz' Scribbles and Splat collection. I created the titles on my Cricut machine. It was fun exploring this technique and I will use it again with more compositions.

Project Title: Successful Women

Here is one of my first projects. After watching Vicky Papaioannou on Youtube for hours, I finally took the plunge. The Crazy Birds are stamps and die cuts from Tim Holtz. I fell in love with them when I watched Vicky do a journal page with them. Since I got them, I've made this page, used them in other pages, and cards. I think they are just hilarious. And one thing I like is to have fun images on my pages. While I did not copy this layout element for element, I did use the quote as the starting point for my inspiration.

What I did use from Vicky's design is the border. I thought that the black and white border on my mixed media backgrounds with the rich orange and yellow colors worked well. I had so much fun coloring those Crazy Birds! I used metalic water colors and Tim Holtz Distressed inks.  What I learned in this layout is the importance of working in layers, making sure each layer is sealed and dry to create a non porous surface to do shading and highlights. It was very satisfying to see all that I learned really worked!