'Art For The Fun Of It' Journal

An easy and fun altered book/handmade art journal - ideal for binding special memories, ephemera, and sketches or single pages, recycling old hardcover books, odds and sods of bits and bobs,  and off-cuts of thread and ribbon. You'll find the tutorial for making the book HERE

I decided to make this into a journal collecting images which would remind my mum of all the lovely places we've visited this year. I like to change my art style and play with different processes in each journal I make, so this one uses a lot of quick but effective techniques which allow me to put colour on the page quickly and easily - fun...not stress! Lots of finger painting and smooshing of mixed media and LOTS of colour. I won't be blogging ALL of the pages so I thought I'd collect some here for you to root through, providing blog entry links where applicable. Email me at artyshroo@gmail.com if you have questions about techniques or media used - it's great to hear from you.

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Abandoned, land-locked lighthouse, and some tulips! See the blog post HERE

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The blossoms this year (2014) have been so beautiful, and typically the spring winds arrive to blow them from the trees -

 Using up some paper scraps, cutting shapes and patterns then collaging them onto the page

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Fields are mown and ready for planting. They look like a patchwork quilt.

Clouds and hills torn from paper scraps, painted with bright colours, then over painted - using a scraper - with some pale liquid acrylic. I wiped the paint while it was still drying to bring some of the brightness through. I like adding the little Kaiser Kraft tags as a feature....then adding my own colour and detail.

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Tree buds are popping and spring is here. The pussy willows are everywhere, and sweet almond- smelling yellow gorse bushes line the fields and roadsides.  I cut a simple stencil from some spare plastic sheeting and played with the shapes, using the same stencil for both willows and gorse flowers--

....and the gorse flowers (against an early misty spring sky) -

....I do like stencils....

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Visiting the marshes, we watched flocks of beautiful lapwings flying against the stark cold sky - the last cold of winter.
The bird is cut in 4 pieces from spare book pages - head & body, tail, leg #1, leg #2. I used irridescent paints to highlight the feathers and cut the marsh reeds from paper scraps, adding a piece of binding cloth from a book spine just for texture.

I like the text showing through the paint. Yummy.

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Not only Lapwings -but the trees are FILLED with nesting birds. The sound is beautiful. This is another collaged birdie. Any detail was added with layered patterned paper scraps - and scribbles!

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Walking in the meadows by the river is wonderful at this time of year...the freshness of spring and the stark bare branches of trees stubbornly holding on to winter. This page celebrates the colour of the new season and was made with lots of smooshy layers, splatters and rub-ons just for fun.

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How do you commemorate a lovely meal of ham and eggs at a wonderful local restaurant?

Done by adding layers in some areas, and taking them away in others. Also, because this is MOSTLY done with oil pastel and wax pastel, adding water-based media on top and smooshing it strategically with fingertips adds fun shading effects.

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Mother's Day - watching beautiful, stately peacocks (trying to steal peoples' sandwiches!) Painted with fingertips because I like the way that this controls paint blending and leaves a subtle but interesting texture.

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Pebble beach simple collage from patterned paper scraps and book pages -

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