Last night was week two of four Tuesdays that I'm teaching Visual Journaling: A Life Collage at Stampin' Cat Studio. Seven of the women had returned from the previous week, with two new women joining us for a total of nine eager and talented women.
I begin each evening by demonstrating a technique, one which gets some color and texture onto the blank pages. Earlier in the day, as I was contemplating which technique I would teach, I started playing around in my journal. I knew I wanted to use water soluble wax pastels as a base of color, so I grabbed my set of Caran D'Ache Neocolor IIs and began drawing a large multi-colored circle on one of the pages of my journal. Then I spritzed the page with water and closed the opposing page on top of the moist colored page, rubbing the two vigorously together - sort of like making a monoprint. Ta da! Two pages filled with color. I quickly dried my pages with a hairdryer, then applied a thin coat of Liquitex Matte Medium to seal the pages. Now what? I had done the water soluble trick in a previous journal, but had not done anything else to the pages. At my work table I spied a container of gesso. Ummmm, gesso. I started slathering gesso onto the page and into the gesso I started making marks with a wooden stick. I applied more gesso, and wrote and squiggled using my fingers; then I added texture by blotting the gesso with an embossed paper towel, a bit of corrugated cardboard, and a little piece of lace. I liked it! After the gesso dried, I added some paint: a bit of violet, a dab of orange, a tad of yellow. Beautiful! Two pages of background color ready for embellishment and journaling.
I begin each evening by demonstrating a technique, one which gets some color and texture onto the blank pages. Earlier in the day, as I was contemplating which technique I would teach, I started playing around in my journal. I knew I wanted to use water soluble wax pastels as a base of color, so I grabbed my set of Caran D'Ache Neocolor IIs and began drawing a large multi-colored circle on one of the pages of my journal. Then I spritzed the page with water and closed the opposing page on top of the moist colored page, rubbing the two vigorously together - sort of like making a monoprint. Ta da! Two pages filled with color. I quickly dried my pages with a hairdryer, then applied a thin coat of Liquitex Matte Medium to seal the pages. Now what? I had done the water soluble trick in a previous journal, but had not done anything else to the pages. At my work table I spied a container of gesso. Ummmm, gesso. I started slathering gesso onto the page and into the gesso I started making marks with a wooden stick. I applied more gesso, and wrote and squiggled using my fingers; then I added texture by blotting the gesso with an embossed paper towel, a bit of corrugated cardboard, and a little piece of lace. I liked it! After the gesso dried, I added some paint: a bit of violet, a dab of orange, a tad of yellow. Beautiful! Two pages of background color ready for embellishment and journaling.
During our two-hour class in the evening, the women jumped right in with the wax pastels. Lisa, of Stampin' Cat Studio, did not have the Caran D'Ache pastels, but she had a wonderful 24-crayon set of Lyra Aquacolor, a water-soluble artist crayon. I purchased a set for myself and used a studio set so everyone had plenty of colors to choose from. We were so busy with the crayons and the spritzin' and the gessoing, that I forgot to snap any photos of the finished pages!
I had to interrupt the crayon play so we could shift gears and focus on Teesha Moore, our artist of the evening. I showed the women copies of Teesha's zine, Art and Life, as well as a little set of her journal books. I told the women to get some paint on their pages, add some borders, then add some faces with hats, crazy-shaped bodies, and some eye-catching images. I had brought along piles of magzines for images and faces, and several bins of scrapbooking paper for embellishing. I wasn't even finished talking when the ladies dove in . . .
Some of their pages in process:
They definitely got the hang of it, we just needed another couple of hours to play!
Here are my Teeshaesque pages:
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