Dare to be Different Art Journal page

Art journal page finished in my small journal using Dusty concord, Peeled paint and broken china Distress inks, stencils, white acrylic paint, drew image on watercolor paper and painted with watercolors, alphabet stamp set, tab punch, typewriter.

My teabag art for the day - inspired by our trip to Japan

My teabag art for today - inspired by our trip to Japan.  This was painted on an unused teabag and primed with gesso.  There is some paper piecing on this one.  After drawing the image (Used a jar cap for the circle) on the teabag, I traced the turquoise part of the image with tracing paper and then using carbon paper transferred it to patterned paper, then carefully glued those pieces in place.  The rest was painted with ShinHan watercolors and outlined with a black permanent ink pen.

My teabag art for today: Little Girl at the beach

My teabag art for today.  This was an unused teabag (I'm running out of used tea bags, LOL!  I should have started saving sooner!)

I primed it with gesso and then painted with watercolor and gouache and added some detail with Prisma watercolor pencils.

My teabag art for today - A cowboy on a horse

My tea bag art for the day.  This one was primed with gesso first then light washes of watercolor were applied over the top - I decided to do a cowboy on a horse.  I was born in Texas so I'm a Texan at heart and one of my favorite animals is the horse.  I miss having horses - they brought such joy and it was so nice to be able to ride whenever you wanted.

Today's tea bag art - Poppies

Today's Teabag art - Poppies.  I left the background tea stained but added some torn pieces of tissue paper with text to the bacground with Matte Medium and then painted the poppies with gouache.

Tea bag art for 24 May 2018

My tea bag art for today was inspired by a clothing tag I found in the yard when working in my front garden.  (I'm assuming it was from my Mother-in-law as it wasn't mine.)  I saved it thinking I would use it somehow, sometime and today I kept looking at it and thinking it would go well with a primitive folk art type of cottage so I painted this cottage with a combination of watercolor and gouache and then hung the clothing tag off of a piece of bamboo from an old bamboo placemat that had fallen apart.  I then glued it to the base of the tea bag.

Tea Bag art for the 21st of May

My tea bag art for the 21st of May.  I put a piece of a McCall's clothing pattern on my tea bag today using Liquitex Matte Medium and then went through my stamps to see what I had that might go with the dress pattern and found a stamp by Papermania called Bellisima Dress Mini Stamp.  I stamped a dress on a hanger, a hat on the coat rack (and shoes on the tea tag).  It was painted with watercolor and highlights and shadows added with watercolor pencil, and then I added pink rhinestones to the center of the flowers.

My teabag art for today - Bunny

This was the tea bag I did for today.  I left the tea bag unpainted in the background and just drew my bunny in black permanent ink.  I then went in with a combination of watercolor and gouache and added a little turquoise, pink and white and added splatters as well.

This time I also decided to paint the tea tag.  I put a layer of gesso on the background, stamped a bunny from an Art Impressions stamp set and then painted it with gouache.

My teabag art for the day - painted on a watercolor background and then doodling with White Uniball and black ink

Today's teabag art is a watercolor background with doodling on the top with black permanent ink and white uniball pen.

My tea bag art for the 15th of May of a Sea Turtle titled "Patience"

This is my tea bag art for the 15th of May of a Sea Turtle titled "Patience".

This one I painted in memory of a wonderful professor and friend to my son.  My son is getting his Master's Degree in Marine Biology and he and his sponsoring Professor went to Costa Rica to study the Sea Turtles as this is the project my son wanted to research and do his dissertation on (and would love to spend his career researching and saving these wonderful creatures).  His professor ended up getting a terrible infection in a cut on his foot while there and died several months later from complications from the infection.  He was only in his 40's and my son was devastated.  This painting is a tribute to this wonderful man.

May 13, 2018 Tea Bag art for the day

My Teabag art for the day - this tea bag had a hole in it so I decided to glue the tag behind the hole and then tried to figure out what I could paint on it to incorporate the tag.  

I decided to paint the tea plant and flower.  This was painted in watercolor and gouache.

Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland painted on a Used Tea Bag, Tea Bag Art

I had come across several people that had done artwork on used tea bags.  The most impressive to me is Ruby Silvious.  She does the most beautiful paintings on tea bags.

I have set myself a challenge to do a painting a day on a used tea bag.  This painting was done with gouache and watercolor and then outlined with a black permanent ink pen.  I did some shading with my prisma watercolor pencils and some highlights with my white Posca Pen.

Hope this gives you inspiration!!

"I love dogs" Art Journal Page using Art Impressions Stackable Stamp

Another Art Journal page completed.  The background was actually created using the distress oxide inks left on my stencils after I used them on another project. 

I really hate to waste product so I spray the stencil that has the leftover inks on it and press it against a blank journal page.  I liked this soft muted background so I didn't add anything else to it.

I stamped out the art impressions dog stackable stamp on watercolor paper and colored it with my watercolors.  I also stamped the bulldog, the little hot dog and the small dog at the top and fussy cut them and popped them up with foam dots.

I used chipboard elements and covered with decorative paper, some Heidi Swapp letters that I had leftover from a previous project, another stamp that I have that is a square block that has several different dogs, a fire hydrant and paw prints on it and also stamped them as additional elements to the page.  I added a white paper doily behind my letters, a piece of leftover acetate that had a graffiti design on it and then layered them all together for this finished layout.

Thank you for looking!

Be yourself Art Journal page with Teabag Art

My previous post showed some prints that I did on my gelli plate and then I decided I wanted to try to incorporate one of them into an Art Journal page.  This print I made I used as a tipin in front of a watercolor painting in my journal of geishas.

The first thing I did was prime a used tea bag, then I stamped a dragonfly on the tea bag and colored it with my watercolors and gouache.  After the watercolor was applied I did some doodling of flowers on it, mounted it to a piece of watercolor paper and then put them on my background.

...Chanel, ...her favorite pair of jeans What a girl wants Art journal page

I belong to a facebook group called Maremi's Creative Cafe and there was a lady on there who took one of her paintings and traced it onto fabric, added stitching on her sewing machine and then colored them in and added to purses.

I was so totally impressed with her work I asked her if I could use her idea of putting an original painting of mine to fabric and she said she was fine.  Check out the beautiful purses, pin cushions, and eyeglass cases that she makes.  They are truly lovely.  You can find her in the Cafe under Lupe Catts.

I used one of my paintings and traced it onto muslin (the female torso in jeans, flower, chanel bag and ugg boot) (a thickness of three pieces of muslin)  I stitched around the pieces and added details with my sewing machine and then colored the fabric pieces with watercolor.  After the fabric pieces had dried, I then heat set them with an iron.

I have a tutorial on my blog (under the tutorial heading for a fanny pack that I made using the same technique.

Here is my art journal page using this tecnique:

Mini Cooper and Cooper Clubman Wish list journal page

The first time I really got a good look at the Mini Cooper was on my first trip to London and I was in love.  I have always wanted a mini cooper but it really wasn't a practical car for us because you really cannot carry any passengers.

I created this journal page in pen and ink with a watercolor wash as sort of a wish upon a star kinda thing, LOL!  We have a honda accord which I love, nothing wrong with it except this model is sooooo big and I hate parking it especially if it is parallel parking.

Much to my surprise and delight, my husband surprised me with this little beauty and to say I am in love is an understatement!!

A new Art Journal page for the Jane Davenport's Washi Tape challenge and giveaway

I belong to the Jane Davenport facbook group and she is having a giveaway and the only rules are you have to do some sort of mermaid and you have to incorporate one or some of her washi tapes on the page.  On my page her washi tape is used in the hair of the large mermaid and the face of the small mermaid is from her washi tape.  Here is my entry into the giveaway:

Cyclamen pen and Ink watercolor times 2

I decided that I wanted to do a pen and ink watercolor of a fuchsia colored Cyclamen.  I had never seen one before and on our first trip to London, I saw them in window boxes everywhere.  At first I thought they were fake flowers because it was so cold and they were so stunning and perfect.  I saw some in window boxes outside of a pub and finally went in and asked them what type of flower they were because, spending most of my youth and adulthood in Virginia, for some reason, I had never seen any grown there.  

Anyway, I wanted to try my hand at painting them.  The above photo does not do the painting justice as I scanned it and the scanner did not seem to pick up the beautiful fuchsia color well.  The framed photo below is what it actually looks like.  This is a 5X7 and fits in an 8X10 frame with a mat.  It is painted on 90lb/190gsm premium watercolor paper.

Ok, so now I have a fuchsia colored Cyclamen and I wasn't sure if I was happy with it or not, so I decided to do something different with the same drawing - I'm not sure this would be considered an abstract, but it is definitely different.  I decided to put a triangle in the center and only paint what was inside the triangle.  The rest I just left my pen and ink drawing.  I'm not sure what I think about it, the jury is still out!  And again the scan of it does not show the true color of the fuchsia I used but the framed photo does.  This also is a 5X7 and fits in an 8X10 frame with a mat.  It is painted on 90lb/190gsm premium watercolor paper.  All of my paintings are for sale on my facebook page DKJartoriginals.

Thank you for looking!

Mixed Media Canvas Fanny Pack

I had an old fanny pack just gathering dust - I think it was probably 20 years ago that I might have bought this.  Back when I was doing tole painting.  I decided to do something with it.  I had drawn and painted some faces following Jane Davenport's Beautiful Faces Book in my journal.

I decided that I wanted to do a mixed media piece with it so this is what I ended up doing.  I traced the paintings of the "ladies", scanned them and then reduced their size.  I then traced them onto Muslin and went to my sewing machine to sew in all of the details.

Here I show what they looked like and then I applied watercolor paints to give them life!

I then trimmed around each one and placed them between two sheets of baking paper and heat set them.

This is what all three looked like after heat setting:

This is the canvas fanny pack that I had.  It was not pre-primed so I primed it with gesso, added some Liquitex modeling paste through a stencil that I have from Decoart Americana ASMM39-K Short Circuit stencil and added some Indigo and some green watercolor for the background.  I also added some Ranger Jet Black archival ink through my mini "Art Is" stencil from Crafter's workshop.  There are some touches of Mango oxide inks from Tim Holtz as well.  I thought these colors would compliment my ladies!

 I then decided I needed a pop of black so I stitched on some black twine. 

 After I had added the black twine, I decided I need to add some beading and I wanted vines/leaves and flowers so I found a video on youtube showing how to make these flowers and this long winding leafy vine here by Jill Wiseman called Ramblin' Roses and I thought it was stunning so decided to give it a try - here is an image of the vine so far:    

Once the length of the vine was established and I had an idea of the placement on the bag, I decided to finish the vine and add the leaves.  Once I had completed the vine and roses, I layed them on my bag with the Ladies and took a photo so that I could remember the placement when I stitched everything on.  Here is an image of the placement I decided on:

After I was happy with the placement, I lightly traced around the ladies and took everything off.  I put fabric glue on the back of the muslin keeping away from the edges because I knew I would be reinforcing them with stitching.  Then I added some organza and netting bits behind each image, stitched on the vines and flowers and tacked down the images around the edges.  

These are images of the finished design:

Thank you so much for taking a look!