hand painted art journal

I tend to be very "uptight" when I paint. It took me a long time to get over my fear of having brushstrokes show and not have everything perfectly blended. I love the look of other people's "messy" work but it wasn't something I could get into for myself. I have been on a journey for about the last year to learn to embrace a more messy and loose style. It was a frustrating process in the beginning. A few months in I found a few artists online who I absolutely fell in love with and started to emulate their styles in bits of my own work. I found having someone's work to look at and study was a lot easier than trying to come up with my own completely original ideas. I think I'm now at a place where I have started to incorporate both styles into different areas of my art. I still like my perfectly blended areas but I'm also okay with splats and drips and brushstrokes too.

One of my absolute favourites is Alisa Burke. Check out her blog here: http://alisaburke.blogspot.ca/. I love her style of doodling and have taken quite of few of her online classes. One of the biggest things I have learned from both her blog and classes is to learn to let go and to allow the process to happen without being caught up in the final result, particularly when doodling. About a week ago she did a post on creating a hand painted art journal. I was all over this project because I have wanted to buy one from her online store but can't because she doesn't ship to Canada. Boo :(

I started with a Canson Mix Media sketchbook. The paper is a little thicker than a regular sketchbook so the paper doesn't buckle quite as much. Quick tip: you can iron the pages with an iron on low heat to get them to flatten out.

I painted all 60 pages of the book using acrylics and watercolours. I used different sized brushes, drips, splats and my fingers to create a variety of pages. Here a smattering of what I did in the book:

Finally I painted the cover.

I love my new art journal. I've started drawing in it and I must say it is far less intimidating to draw on a colourful messy page than trying to achieve perfection on a crisp white page.

messy bag (kid edition)

 Amelia (different one than before) wanted to make a gift for her mom's birthday. Having just finished all of my own messy bags, I thought this would be a great project for her to do especially because she loves to paint. It took about four hours to complete. Two for the painting one day and two to sew it another.

She painted a big piece of canvas with acrylic paint (and white house paint to make it spread and reduce the amount of coloured paint required). She also drizzled with the white house paint.

She printed on it using bubble wrap, toilet paper rolls and other recyclables. 

She also wrote on it with thinned out paint and used ink to create coloured drips.

Again I had a denim needle on my machine. Amelia added pockets to the inside of the bag with the left over fabric. She finds it difficult to sew without the pieces being pinned together but we discovered to painted fabric is too thick for pins. Instead we used the black bulldog (or binder) clips to hold everything together. They worked like magic. The fabric was also quite heavy so I held the fabric up while she sewed so it wouldn't drag and pull off the straight line.

She opted for plain canvas straps. 

All done.

fruit (kid edition)

Another piece by Amelia. She wanted it to look like a smilely face. See it?

flower vase (kid edition)

Amelia finished this piece a few months ago but I am just getting around to posting some of the stuff I have been working on with my students.

experimenting with abstracts (kid edition)

This is one of  my favourite ways to experiment with colour, texture, materials, etc. It is something I did in an experimental acrylic art class I took this year. I was doing it one day when M arrived for her art lesson. She liked what she saw and wanted to give it try too.

I cut up watercolour paper into small pieces (around 4x6). I use 4 or 5 pieces at a time so that I can work in layers without having to wait for a single piece to dry. I tape them to the table with masking tape to prevent the paper from buckling and to create a white border around the finished product.

I use watercolours, acrylics, ink, and chalk and oil pastel. I also use different tools to create pattern and texture such as Princeton Catalyst tools (my absolute favourites) and little bits of recycling and garbage I have rescued to use for printing.

These are M's.

 

 

water balloon painting

 The water balloons I bought came with a filling attachment for the sink. I used this to get the acrylic paint into the balloon (I just used cheap paint from the dollar store that is runny) before filling it with an air pump and tying it off. 

This was definitely an outside/old clothes activity. Paint went EVERYWHERE!!! 

The girls placed their balloons on a canvas.

Then they started popping them with a push pin.

All done. 

We didn't fill very many balloons but I think it would also look good with more layers of splattered paint.

popsicle stick house

I had P and M for craft/sewing camp for three summers. The first summer it was one week. The second I had P by herself for a week followed by a second week with both girls. The third summer I had both girls for three weeks.

One of the projects P wanted to tackle during her week alone was a dollhouse made out of popsicle sticks for her Playmobil. We spent almost a full day working on it. P did most of the gluing and I cut sticks down to size with an exacto knife when necessary. A task that left my hands quite sore by the end of the day. 

She created three walls out of tongue depressors. The back wall had two windows cut out.

The floor was made with coloured tongue depressors. The ones on the bottom were to make it sit level without wiggling.

A second floor and staircase were also added.

As well as a roof.

Inside.

Outside.

crayon bags

I love the internet. I really do. It has provided me with so many great ideas to use with the kids I teach. Without it I wouldn't have one of my go to basic sewing projects for kids just learning to sew. I had found a very small blurb on a random blog I happened across about five years ago. It talked about drawing on fabric with regular, boring old crayons.

This is one of the first times I tried it with kids. Sorry for the odd lighting. These were taken before I paid attention to such things.

After the girls drew on the fabric, I heat set the wax using a low heat setting on my iron. Place a piece of paper over the fabric to avoid getting wax all over your iron. There was a perfect print of the picture left on the paper which the girls wanted to keep.

Once the drawings were finished the girls learned to operate a sewing machine by sewing simple straight seams to assemble the body of the bag and its handle.

quilted bag

This is a purse I have made a few times with various kids I have done sewing camps with over the years. It was inspired by a quilt I made as a teenager. 

We started with a small square of fabric and added two inch strips onto each side with another fabric and then repeating this a second time with yet another fabric. Next came to the scariest part of the process, cutting the square apart. It was cut into quarters.

Next yet another fabric was inserted in two inch strips to reattach the quarters together. A piece of backing was sewn to the back and a lining inserted.

Before finally adding a strap and top stitching around the top of the bag.

messy bags part two

 I finally got them done. It took a while to get the detailed paintings on each one finished and to sew in the zippers. They are all different sizes and look completely different, which I love.

I learned a few things in this trial run of bags. First a denim needle on your sewing machine is a must, though I still had to sew fairly slow in order to make sure the thread didn't snap. Second, the medium to large size pouches were a lot easier to flip right side out once completed.