Friendship Journal

I took part in a travelling friendship journal for a yahoo group I am in Blissfully Art Journaling. These are the three spreads I made for it. One was to be about me and the other two something about friendship.

The picture I painted was with gouache. The paint lifts very easily when it gets wet so I was going to spray it with fixative. I tried the fixative first on a different gouache page and it worked fine except the spray wouldn't quit spraying until the can was empty. So for this tea time painting I was goint to use some UV acrylic finishing spray from Krylon that I had. Hmmm, three big blobs hit my page before I could stop them. This time I got no spray; the stuff just bubbled out of the can till it was empty. I don't know if my cans were too old, too cold (the house was between 66 and 68 degrees) or what but I even went and found my spray bottle of hairspray I've had for a few years but couldn't get it to do anything but shoot a heave stream rather than a fine mist. So, the page is going to go as is, with three horrid blobs on it. Thank goodness they didn't blur the paint under them.

Do any of you ever seal a gouache or watercolor page in your journal? I have only done it as a trial effort and on a painted cover to a journal. I figure they don't usually get wet but when the journal is going to someone I don't know, I just wanted to be safe.

Teesha Moore Style

I've made a new page in my journal to fit a prompt over
at Blissfully Art Journaling a yahoo group I am in. I'd started a page to emulate Teesha Moore's style which I saw just recently. She has videos on her blog to show how she makes her pages and it sounded like so much fun I just had to try one! You can find her videos here and here. Look around as there are lots of videos taking you through the whole page.

My page follows a prompt as to whether we like to wear hats or not. I've had a few but the wind takes them away from me. I had one taken by the wind when I was in a gondola at the San Diego City Zoo. There was no way I was going to jump out in midair to try and catch it! Another time, I wore one to Sea World and away it went again! Now if I need a hat to block our extreme Arizona sun I wear a baseball style hat which doesn't look nice but I can make it small enough to stay on!

The "hat" on this page is a sculpture by Jennifer Maestre that I cut from a magazine. It looked perfect for a hat. I added a little make-up with Pan Pastels and some jewelry with a Sharpie Poster Paint Pen. This was lots of fun and I'll have to try Teesha's techniques again. Maybe in a different journal where the spiral binding won't interfere!