Daisy Art Journal Page Tutorial

Hello friends! Today, I got a new ergonomic desk chair for my studio, and it is a lovely vintage pink, and more comfortable than my old one. I have a sunshiny art journal page to share with you, made mainly with Simon Says Stamp Exclusive Products.

In my grandmother's garden some areas were covered with beautiful white and pink little daisies. They were common daisies, or lawn daisies. She thought they were weed. I loved them and couldn't understand how they could ever be weed. I still love them, and made an art journal page about this humble little flower. On our recent visit to the area where my grandmother lived, I saw that they are still growing in the lawn of the house where she used to live. I did a scrapbooking layout about the same theme last year. 

This page was done in my large Dylusions journal.

When I have leftover paint or paste, I often smear it on pages in my art journals, so I had a base to immediately start working on. The background is first a layer of gesso, then texture paste through Tim Holtz's Ornate stencil, and then painting with yellow and gold acrylic paints.

Die cut Simon Says Stamp Daisy Stem and Peeking Daisy from watercolor paper.

I kept my daisies white and yellow, but you can of course also do them in other colors. Smear Distress Inks on a craft sheet, mist with water and pick up with a paint brush.

Die cut grass from heavystock paper.

Ink with an ink-blending tool and then mist with water droplets to create texture.

Adding a bit of metallic shine often gives instant interest to a project, and here I die cut swirls from gold paper, with Tim Holtz's Adorned die set.

Stamp the background randomly with the script stamp from the Entomology set.

Die cut the title from yellow glimmery cardstock and the mat from white paper. Write the rest of the sentiment with alphabet stamps.

Tuck the flowers in among the grass, making them appear to be of different height.

Tusensköna means 'daisy', but literary translate to 'thousand beauty'.

I don't know if you can see the warm shine from the gold paint. I might even have added some foil to the page earlier.

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These sweet flowers would look great on a card, tag, ATC or scrapbooking page too.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! Tomorrow is the start of STAMPtember® at Simon Says Stamp and it will be a whole month filled of stamping fun, and lots of special surprises.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy stamping!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Pastel Journal Page Tutorial

Hello stampers! We had a very interesting and fun weekend. The boys and I took the train to a big family gathering, with descendants from my great grandparents, in the small farming community where they lived. 92 people came, and we could have been even more, if the two family branches in the USA had been able to join us. The previous gathering was quite some time ago and it was great to see all old and new faces again. The whole area is also very special to me, since we spent a lot of time there with our grandmother when we grew up. The boys hadn't been there before, so I told them a lot of stories and showed them some of the special places. 

I also have many new photos, and I am planning to do a minialbum soon.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a 'S is for' theme. Lots of different options! It is the last week for our August guest designer Alison Bomber, and don't miss her wonderful project, with many s-theme ideas.

I was inspired by a new box of Scribble Sticks, and also used stamps and stencils, on this pastel art journal spread. It was done in Dina Wakley's White Media Journal, which just arrived here. It's a 6x6 in journal, with heavyweight cotton-rag watercolor paper. I love how thick and sturdy the paper is, almost like watercolor chipboard. 

I did a fun watercolor stamping technique here, which happened almost by accident. At first, I stamped with Jet Black ink, but I didn't press hard enough, and the paper is pretty textured, so the impression was terrible, so I decided to start with Distress Ink instead.

There are three sets of Scribble Sticks now (set 1, set 2, and set 3), and I love all of them. They are easy to use and can be used for many techniques.

Ink up one of Dina's Interesting Faces with Ground Espresso, or another dark brown, Distress Ink. Stamp on the page, and don't worry about how awful it looks.

Use a paint brush and water to start blurring out the stamped lines. Since Distress Ink reacts with water, the stamping with turn into watercolor. Don't overdo it, you can always add more water later. I used the Scribble Sticks 3 set, which consists of pastel shades and metallic shades. Pick the pigment up with a paint brush from the tip of the crayon and start watercoloring.

Color directly on the paper for the background and top, and dissolve the crayon with water. Don't worry if it still doesn't look particularly nice, it will change later.

Start adding some shadows to the face, such as under her chin. Add darker shades of color at the top and bottom of the background, using crayons from Scribble Sticks 1 and Scribble Sticks 2. I also added some metallic shades here and there, such as in her hair and in the shadow areas.

When everything is dry, add lines with a black pen. Don't worry about getting it perfect, we are aiming for a sketchy and lose look. I later added some white to the right eye, since it was too dark. 

I had fun, so I decided to turn the page into a double spread, stamping and coloring a bird with the same technique. 

Add some more scribbly lines with the pen and stamp here and there with texture background stamps. These are from Tim Holtz's Tiny Textures set.

Finally, I sponged white paint through the Gradient Dot stencil here and there, for extra texture.

I used a mix of stamps, stickers and the new SSS Sentiment Strips 4 for my sentiments.

Use a white gel pen to fix mistakes, here you can see that I added some light to the right eye.

Use a background stamp to add pattern to clothing. You can see some of the shine from the metallic crayons in the upper left corner.

The background scene continues into the second page, making it look like the woman and the bird are looking at each other across the landscape.

Dina's Scribbly Birds are some of my favorite stamps. 

Here's another look at the metallic effect. It's a little hard to photograph, but adds an interesting touch to the otherwise pastel page.

I hope you will join us this week in our S Is For challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Vintage Flower ATCs

Hello friends! I hope your weekend was a good one. I was busy organising our new place, and things are now starting to look better, although it will take awhile before I get used to where everything is placed and won't have to look for things. Our frying pan is mysteriously missing and must have been thrown away accidentally. I also can't find a bunch of background stamps and my craft hammer, but I think they will turn up eventually.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have an Artist Trading Card challenge. ATCs are 2.5 x 3.5 inches, and if you have never tried out this fun size, I hope you will.

Don't miss the gorgeous ATC by our August guest designer Alison Bomber. 

I love working on the small space of an ATC and I should be doing so more often. This week, I made two vintage flower ATCs with soft colors and lots of texture. They are very easy to make, much easier that what it might look like. 

Start by cutting four ATCs (2.5 x 3.5 in) from Heavystock paper. Die cut flower designs from two of the cards, using Tim Holtz's Mixed Media 5 set.

Glue the die cut cards on top of the solid ones with Matte Medium. When dry, give them a coating of gesso.

When the gesso is dry, paint the cards with watered down Distress Paint. Start with Antique Linen, and drop in darker colors. Mist more water on the cards if you want the colors to blend more. The darker paint will collect in the recessed areas.

I had my Prismacolor pencils on my desk, after having worked on another project, and got the idea of coloring the flowers with pencils. It worked really well and gave a soft look. This morning, I finally found the box in which I had placed all my pencil sharpeners.

Stamp the cards randomly with the script stamp from Tim's Entomology set.

Dry brush some dark brown paint around the edges and here and there on the flowers.

I used a black pen to draw a rough border and added some Clippings Stickers as sentiments.

Here's a closer look at the texture. The roses almost looks embossed, but in fact it is the other way around.

Don't forget to write your name and the date you made the card on the back, even if you are not giving it away, it is a good practice and it is fun to look at cards and see when they were made. 

You can also cut sentiments from an old book.

It almost looks like I used gold on the cards, but I did not. However, if you want to add some metallic paint, that would look great too. I wanted to have added foil, but I couldn't find my foil.

I hope you will join us this week in our Artist Trading Card challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.