Creative Jumpstart Jan 27 - Dina Walker: Repetition - The no fail recipe

In today’s video, Dina had us repeat the use of stamps, and in my case a couple of stencils, a couple of colors and a focal point. I didn’t splatter at the end because that is not a technique I’m fond of... and I liked this as is.

Creative Jumpstart Jan 26 - MaryBeth Shaw: Delicious Layers

Loved this video lesson! And while I didn’t layer as much and drip paint, I had fun using Modeling Gel, and Modeling Paste with stencils, and Naphaline Coarse Gel, and using baby wipes and my hands to apply color!

Creative Jumpstart Jan 25 - Sandra Evertson: Hot Glue Cooking

This was fun! Using hot glue and pressing a stamp into it, than when cooled the glue is peeled off the stamp, painted a couple of times; then burnished with a wax metallic finish paste. I would like to get a couple of “better” stamps, and also try it again not pressing into the glue so hard. I have two pastes - a gold and a cappuccino, and I think I like the cappucccino the best. I love the gelli plate background, and though they are hard to make out, there are two crowns, two compass, and a plane in the hot glue impressions.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 24 - Gina Lee Kim: watercolor mixed media art recipe

This video was sort of a double whammy - how to paint a starry night, and playing with texture mediums. I had fun with the starry night and will try it again. I really wasn’t feeling the teacups and teapot in the window, as shown on the video, so just used colored mediums in circles then spent a couple of days second guessing myself how I was going to finish the page (sigh). Decided to use washi tape for an outline and put the circles in a pattern on my page. The material used are listed on the back of my journal page if I want to reference them. I used Tri-Arr Nephaline Gel Coarse, Golden Coarse Molding Paste, Tri-Art Modeling Gel Clear, Tri-Art Modeling Paste, Liquitex Heavy Gel, and Art Basics 3D Matte Gel.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 23 - Katie Avery: Mixing the Ingredients

The video for Jan 23 Creative Jumpstart is by Katie Avery. She made mixing the paints look so easy... I found that by the time I had colors mixed with the trowel, it was spread too thin and hard to use; and I couldn’t get amounts right... guess that all comes with experience. At any rate, I learned a lot, know what I can work on, and had fun with this page. I added white gel pen and some patterns because I thought it needed it.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 22: Nathalie Kalbach

Nathalie’s secret ingredient is Love. This is my inspiration for her video on Creative Jumpstart. I didn’t draw or stamp the Village - it’s a page from a book; but I did outline the dragon from a picture onto deli paper. The pattern in the sky is a Zentangle pattern.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 21 - Marsha Valk: Sole Picasso

My sole hasn’t been caught or plated yet!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 20, Birgit Koopsen: a delicious little hours d’oeuvre

I’m not sure how I’m going to put this in my journal, but I couldn’t resist making this sweet little hors d’oeuvre! I had to photo in two parts.

Creative Jumpstart Jan 19, Andy Skinner: Faux Rust Effect Tag

This is my inspiration for Creative Jumpstart Jan 19, Andy Skinner’s video to create a faux rust effect tag. I didn’t have any of the same paints but I did have some pre made paper clay faces. The background is marbelled cotton. The writing says “ the ebb and flow of hearts desires.

Creative Jumpstart Jan 18: Joe Rotella: Let’s Get Cooking

I’m working on journal pages - each one inspired by something from each days video from Creative Jumpstart. This lesson from Joe Rotella: Let’s get Cooking involved making a book and decorating a box to hold it. For today’s journal page I was inspired to try the use of stamping tissue paper and applying it to an uneven surface. Love the idea, but I guess my ink isn’t permanent and started to smear when wet so I couldn’t add color to “age” it. I will have to investigate further. Meanwhile, it was fun to try and handy to know the technique!

Creative Jumpstart Jan 17 Jen Crossley: Metal Etched Book

This is my inspiration for Creative Jumpstart from the video by Jen Crossley: Metal Etched Book. I don’t have the materials she used but was inspired to use what I have; which is metal tape and a sheet of thin metal. I put these through my Big Kick using various embossing folders and stuck them to the journal cover. The Raven image was coated in India Ink with some rubbed off.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 16: Kae Pea: 3 Recipes for Collage Paper

I haven't kept much extra paper to cut into collage paper, but now I'm going to be more conscientious about creating and saving bits from extra paper and paint! I used strips from a Food and Drink magazine, and a poem from Judith Viorst that just seemed to fit. Both my husband and I made several other pieces for cards or tags using the process of strips of paper - I love this, and learned even more looking at what others had created!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 15 Julie Fei-Fan Balzer: 3 Ingredients

The video for Jan 15 Creative Jumpstart is by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and basically reduced the making of a page to 3 ingredients: colour, pattern and focus. Finding and bringing forward the focus was the biggest challenge to me. I love that she has broken it down like this though and I will definitely try harder to find a focal point on my pages!

Zentangle Challenge #347: String Theory - Traced Objects

This week's challenge from Laura at www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.ca is to trace found objects for our string. I used an oddly shaped coaster, scissors, a fridge magnet and a bottle cap. This was fun!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 14

The video for Creative Jumpstart for Jan 14 is by Rachel Greig: Layer it up. I totally enjoyed this one and felt that all the materials just fell into place. It's hard to see from the photo, but there is a tag tied into holes, with components from the main page. The two visible wordings are: "I love you just the way you are" (on the tag), and "Friendship is a sheltering tree" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (from a tea bag, and is located on the trunk of the tree).

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 13

January 13ths video for Creative Jumpstart is by Gwen Lafleur: Collage Papers. I'm trying to do as much as I can each day with materials I have. I did several layers on a base journal page I had already started and added more layers to a piece of deli paper I had been layering… This page is a collection of a number of ephemeral papers, and that deli paper (darker flowers). In general, I'm not a collector of bits and pieces that I might someday use, but I can certainly see the value in keeping some pieces around that have been worked and worked and worked. I'm learning more each time a do a page for these videos!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 12

I was out of town at an art retreat for 4 days and didn't get a chance to work on each day's video. So, yesterday and today I've been a machine - play, play, play! The video for Creative Jumpstart, January 12 is by Jessica Sporn: Canvas with a story. My story is simple: I'm proud to be Canadian! Since I'm doing each of these "prompts" in a journal, I used my journal page, not canvas, but I did use some of the techniques Jessica showed. Instead of writing in the gesso, I wrote over it in two directions - words from the Canadian Charter of Rights. The maple leaf and sides are torn from a copy of the Charter of Rights that has multiple layers of paint. Fun project!.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 11

Today's video for Creative Jumpstart is by Catherine Scanlon: Traced Flower Painting. She used canvas paper, and traced a bouquet of flowers… I used my mixed media journal page (gesso'd) and traced a stained glass pattern. I found this difficult and wasn't liking my end result until I added graphite shading which really made a huge difference.

Zentangle Challenge #346 - Duo tangle, Phicops and Huggins

It's been a while since I did and posted a piece for Laura's I am the Diva Challenge (iamthedivaczt.blogspot.ca), but I'm planning on doing them regularly again, and have started a hand sewn journal to do them in. This week's challenge was a duo tangle to use Phicops and Huggins. I kept it simple but added a bit of colour with my beloved Graphitints.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 10

Today's video for Creative Jumpstart is from Annie O'Brien: Monoprint Collage. I did a number of layers of prints, and quit when I was mostly satisfied. I would have liked to add in a red or bright colour somewhere and might at a later date, probably by hand. I'm loving the second ghost print (the third and palest of the three).

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 9

Today's video for Creative Jumpstart is by Andrea Gomoll: Recipe for Funky and Colorful Watercolor Mixed Media Projects. I took her advice and used what I had on hand rather than going out to buy… so, my choice of water-colour was the palate shown, a metallic palate. And since I'm doing this in a mixed media journal, the paper reacted differently than a water-colour paper would. And, I don't do faces, so this is the Zentangle tangle called Phicops. No spray paint, no moulding paste… I concentrated on the background. I may try this "recipe" on a piece of water-colour paper sometime with better paints, and more steps...

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 8

When I saw today's video for Creative Jumpstart by Diane Trout: Spice of Life, I thought I might just skip this one… not because I didn't like her work and the project (I do!), but that demon self criticism jumped in and said "Way too hard - you can't do that!" I don't have the ground she prepped the paper with, and I have little or no experience with watercolors and realistic drawing. Well, I have moulding paste I wanted to try, so I gave that a go and followed her video though in my own way. The moulding paste bubbled and peeled a bit when it got wet, and I obviously didn't cover the whole page with it… but in the end, (after adding some graphite shading/accent), I'm not displeased with the result. Tomorrow I might add lettering to the spice jars or I might just leave it as is. I wouldn't hang it on the wall, but it's great for my journal - it represents a couple of firsts for me.!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 7

Today's video demo is from Rae Missigman: A Recipe for Color and Resist. Rae makes lots of gelli prints using this method of drawing with a resist (crayon) then gelli plating, pulling 2 or more prints from her plate. She adds glazing medium and white paint after the first pull. Who would have thought I'd have so much trouble getting crayons? None at the dollar store, none at the corner or grocery store, and neither neighbour (who have kids) had any… Finally found a package today a fair distance away. I didn't want to scribble with the crayon so I did a few tries with Zentangle patterns. The first was done with white and didn't turn out well. After that I used coloured crayons and could at least see what I was doing. This is really the only set of pulls I was a bit happy with… I don't mind the ghost print. I think this isn't quite as easy as it looks, or, I'm being too critical...

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 6

Today's video lesson for Creative Jumpstart is from Andrew Borloz: Hodge Podge Soup This was an interesting exercise for me, something very new, using a full page mask that had been cut into sections on a painted page, stencilling, then further embellishing. In his video he also briefly showed a sheet where he had tested sample colours, which I liked almost as much as his work, so I did one of those too. Andrew cut and laminated bookmarks from his sheet which I'm not going to do because this is going into my journal as a full page.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 5

The video today for Creative Jumpstart is by Michelle Rydell: 7 step journal recipe. I LOVE this technique - 7 steps… it gives structure yet leaves lots of room for interpretation. For this journal page I followed very closely to what Michelle did, including striping the background paints, choosing three magazine (in my case, old diary) pictures, used circles for the background, and followed mostly her examples for "doodles". (note: the black arc at the bottom of the page is not part of the page - it has curled and this is a deep shadow off page…). I'm sure the next time I follow this "recipe", I will use a bit more of my own creativity, but I'm very happy with the way this turned out, and, I learned a lot!

Creative Jumpstart - Jan. 4

Today's video was from Michelle Ward - Let's Have Take-Out. Very cool background sheets! Basically, cover your page with Gesso and let dry. Apply a thin not too wet layer of paint colours (smudge or brayer to even out and blend edges), then, using a (sturdy) stencil, remove some of the paint with baby wipes. The first picture is a sheet I did, probably not waiting long enough for the Gesso to dry. Next time I would choose different (better) colours. The second page is an inspiration combination from today's exercise and from a post on the Show and Tell from yesterday (#38). I LOVE marshavalk's use of a mask (her's is a silhouette of a woman) over a painted or gelli plate page, then painted black. Take a look at it! I used a piece of gelli printed paper I already had, and used a bird mask. I painted the background a deep blue, then used a couple of stencils to remove the background paint. Then with a thick multicoloured pencil, I started writing the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe across all of the page…. I'm really happy with this, and have played with two new techniques today!

Creative Jumpstart, Jan. 3

Loved today's inspiration for Creative Jumpstart from Carolyn Dube - Art Journal Recipe for Play. Basically she had us use at least three things for this page: something you would throw away (she used envelopes - the ones that come with clear windows), your favourite paint colours, and something you have little or no control over (she used a gelli plate). I also used the gelli plate, and added delusions spray inks (no control there), pieces of water-colour projects that had been torn and thrown out (my husband's), Stabillo All graphite, paints, and stencils, markers… There are a lot of layers here - I wasn't at all happy with the way it was working out and kept layering, so it's impossible to see what was on the "trash". For other reasons today I was searching quotes and found the two I added here because they seemed appropriate. *Allow yourself to be a beginner. No one starts off being excellent. And, *… and if I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself?

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 2

Day 2 of Creative Jumpstart is a video from Tina Walker: Art Recipe Jar. (She suggests listing all art supplies and putting them in a jar then drawing out a few to use as inspiration… I'm not going to do that.) The second video was a mixed media sculptural piece, so I took inspiration from Tina Walker's use of nature and again gathered a few items from around my studio. I used pressed, dried tulip petals (that have all turned brown!, stencils, delusions spray ink, gesso, a piece of plastic mesh, gelatos, paint, textured paper, and multi coloured hemp string.

Creative Jumpstart, Jan 1

Happy New Year, 2018! I'm starting out the year with art. Every day for the month of January I hope to create an art journal page based on inspiration from videos posted on Creative Jumpstart 2018, hosted by Nathalie Kalbach. January 1 was a video by Mystele Kirkeeny: A Recipe for Play. I don't draw faces, so here I've used a stamp, and gathered mixed media from around my studio (multicoloured pencils, gelatos, paint, gesso, reflective pen, stylus, textured paper and music scrap for collage..).