Tag Archives: altered book

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day 13

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Girl, Girl, Girl

Now don’t think because I don’t post that there’s no creating going on… it is probably because there is nothing presentable to share. Over the past few days I have been immersing myself in Suzi Blu’s portrait course: The Goddess and the Poet. I mentioned before that I wanted to learn how to draw faces – all kinds of faces. These three were my first attempts using colored pencil. They have been scanned, shrunk and printed so have lost some of their original lustre. Never mind, they make good journal page fodder.

I placed them on the previously made backgrounds I showed you a few posts back. On one page, I journaled a few random thoughts and on the other I placed a seahorse stamp and rubbed in some extra color with Neocolor lls. I think will probably do more to this page at some time – especially when there are more days left than pages!

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day 12

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Clear Gesso

Some arrived in the mail, so had a little play with it. You might think that clear gesso has no purpose… I mean, gesso, clear?… So I printed yesterday’s girl onto watercolor paper and Mod Podged her into The Book on top of the plain old white gesso mixed with acrylic paint. Squished on some more collage, pen scribbles and Neocolor IIs. Now you once you have added crayon, you can’t usually write or paint over it.  This is where the clear gesso comes in. I mixed some with a little cerulean blue acrylic ink and applied it to the whole page. I thought I had effectively obliterated everything but after a short time on the radiator, all the detail underneath reappeared. Magically, I could write right over the previous layers, wax crayon and all. Cue more markers, crayons, Neocolor 1s and pastels.

This is not art; it is experimentation.

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day 11

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Nothing completed in book but I have gessoed a double spread ready for tomorrow – it is still drying. I was planning on adding this drawing to the page – and this was completed today so I reckon it counts as my ‘Make something every day’.  Never been any good at drawing faces but am determined to learn how this year.

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Ten

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Doodle Anything

Missed a couple of days – lack of sleep and inspiration at zero level.

Took my pre-made fabric paper and use it as a background. Then I simply doodled. Painted a face with acrylic paint and made a mess with more paint, markers, oil pastel and metallic markers. I worked quickly and didn’t pre-plan anything. Have been watching and reading material by Traci Bautista and have her Doodles Unleashed on order, so with her style in mind, I tried to be free and easy about this page.

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Nine

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Dream Catcher

Today’s offering – layered collage. Scraps of fabric, handmade paper and ribbon were adhered to the page, then painted over with acrylic medium. I added a layer of white tissue and allowed the page to dry thoroughly. I tried to leave the word. “Source” from the original page heading to show through. A little bit of rubber stamping and some white pastel scraped over sequin waste provided the next layer. Then I glued on the girl, the butterfly and the printed words in Dymo font, charcoaled around the edges of the collage and finally sprinkled the page with some talcum powder, which takes care of any sticky bits.

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Eight

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Printing on Muslin

The really good thing about this project is that I have no preconceived ideas about what I am going to produce each day, other than it will be in, on or connected to this book. I can experiment, make a mess, ruin a page and it doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to create a thing of beauty but to simply change a page one way or another.

Today’s experiment is printing on muslin using a freezer paper backing. haven’t tried it before and was utterly surprised and gratified that it worked on the very first attempt. Get a sheet of freezer paper, iron onto a piece of muslin so that it sticks. Trim any raggedy edges – you do not want them getting caught up in the printer. Remove cat hairs. Place in sheet feeder tray of printer. Select your image on your computer, press print and you’re away.

Remove from printer. Pick off cat hairs. Carefully peel freezer paper off muslin. You might have an interesting shadow image left on the freezer paper. Examine muslin, feel pleased with self and remove any remaining cat hair.

I’ve used acrylic matt medium to stick the muslin into the book. Trim edges to fit page.

The photo is of my mother when she was 17.  She was (and is) gorgeous though I think I have pulled her face a little out of shape. Sorry, ma! I love the way the underlying text shows through. There was a heart on the page so I positioned the print so that the heart looks like wings.

 

 

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Six

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Cheats Backgrounds

Two kinds of fast and easy backgrounds. These pages are ready for some further work so are incomplete. Well, it doesn’t say anywhere that the job has to be finished every day! The turquoise page has been transformed by glueing in a piece of my pre-made fabric paper.

Take a piece of muslin, brush on a coat of very runny PVA. Layer on some interesting paper and/or images. More runny PVA, a layer of tissue paper and a splash of dilute acrylic paint in one or more colours. Allow to dry. You can rub on some gold wax or acrylic paint to add some shabby chic glamour. Sometimes I cut them up into sections and then machine them back together with zig-zag stitch and gold thread. You can use them for anything. I kept the left side raggedy edge because I like raggedy edges.

The magenta page is simply a piece of scrapbook paper glued into place. Makes pages nice and sturdy. You can doodle or paint on it or add a transparent acetate ‘pocket’ to display a piece of ephemera or a treasured photograph.

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Five

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Moving

In case you landed here somewhat randomly, I am taking part in the challenge issued by this book: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life by Noah Scalin. I decided to take the book (which I didn’t like an awful lot) and create a daily art journal by altering it. There is no particular theme – I am simply attempting to come up with quick techniques in order to fulfil the criteria. There’s very little planning taking place and I’m being pretty slapdash about the whole project. What I am discovering is that doing this is having an affect on the rest of my art and writing and rather than causing me to have less time to create, it seems to be providing the kick-start I need to keep working – nah, I can’t use the ‘W’ word, that would stop me right in my tracks – so, to keep playing. Onwards and upwards.

Today’s masterpiece is ‘found poetry’, or rather I took some words in the text of the book and tried to make them meaningful. I isolated them with a marker pen, then laid down strips of paper fabric all over the page. To adhere the strips, I used my trusty Scotch ATG double-sided tape applicator. I really like it because you can roll off little boogers of adhesive for the wee, small areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It says, “Moving the rules every day. See time, then choose. Even stop; look and see from (a) new perspective.” Okay, I never said it was going to be pretty, did I? Or make sense.

 

 

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Four

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Waiting for Summer

After playing about with the weaving last night, I returned to my first scabby pages and gesoed them and left them overnight to dry. As it is the weekend, I simply left the journal nearby and returned to it on and off throughout the day. Thinned acrylic paint with gel medium instead of water and sloshed on a greeny-blue wash. Added collage and rubber stamping. Covered with yellow ochre wash and rubbed it a to get a distressed look. Not that the book isn’t already distressed enough – hope I can keep it alive for the whole 365 days!

Printed off the girl’s face from a scan of one of my other journals, alpha-stamped it and added the daisies using the kitchen paper used in the distressing stage above. You can tell I am recycling all my art waste these days! Used pens to emphasize the stamped words, rubbed some Neopastels around the borders and tis done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: The daisies didn’t come out well in the photo so tried again. Spent a few minutes highlighting a few details – darkened the eyes slightly and added some white to the daisies as they dried almost transparent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

365 A Daily Creativity Journal – Day Three

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Off the Grid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick blast today without all the wet, soggy mess of yesterday. Cut alternate ‘slices’ from a page and then reinserted them in a rough woven grid pattern. Added text printed in a Dymo font, “I would like to live off the grid”. I might but I probably wouldn’t.