Mixed Media

Painting Tape!

~ Patty Radish ~ 2 Comments

“Painting Tape”! Hmmm…sounds about as exciting as watching it dry. Well, I’m going to try to make it sound a little more interesting than that. I made some painted masking tape a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been having so much fun with it, I decided to make some more. And I thought I might as well snap some photos along the way to share in case you might be interested.

So, here we go…

Ingredients: wide masking tape, acrylic paint in your choice of color, gesso (or white paint), bubble wrap, and a plastic card or putty knife.

Here is the layering process.

I used my grandson’s finger painting tray for this, which was a great idea, this made it super easy clean up.

I went back over the tape with a darker shade of pink with my finger tip just to add a little more color. One of the nicest surprises was that you can see through the tape in spots.

Here is a finished page using some of the tape. I like to tear it off then slice it thin like washi tape…

…or use it as a background piece. The great thing about this is that you can make it in any color scheme you want. I just tape it to the plastic containers I use to keep my ephemera in and it’s always right there where I need it.

(You can see a little more about my art journaling organization here.)

So, there you go, my latest obsession.

I finally feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things with my art journals. I need to stop questioning why I like arranging small bits on paper and just get to it!

 

As always,

Thanks for the visit,

Have a great weekend,

~Patty

Shoppe News: 12 New Journal Inserts!

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

The last time I made new journals for my shoppe, I was too lazy to post about it here. But, I am so in love with these new journals, I had to share!

The covers are made from vintage magazine and book covers.

Each journal is hand stitched with waxed embroidery thread. I stitched an envelope into each journal to hide the stitching on the inside. A perfect place to keep ephemera or journaling spots.

I added extra paper pieces to some of the journals for extra interest.

Some of the pages are just text, but most of them are pretty interesting.

And, of course they include a small assortment of ephemera to play with, including a handmade library pocket and journaling card, a tea dyed coin envelope, and a small decorative envelope.

I’ve decided to shy away from adding pockets and tuck spots into my journals. They are too easy for the purchaser to add, so I thought a few interesting envelopes to play with would be much more fun!

Please go check them out, and if you feel you can’t live without one, I am offering a 15%off coupon to my blog followers. Use the coupon code: CUSTOMERLOVE15 at checkout to receive your discount.

As always,

Thank you for stopping by,

Have a great day,

~Patty

 

Gratitude Journal Progress

~ Patty Radish ~ Leave a comment

You know, I almost decided not to write a blog post about my gratitude journal because it’s pretty much all I’ve talked about this year. But then again, it’s pretty much all I’ve worked on this year. Well artistically anyway, so yeah.

I’m happy to say that I’ve made it through the Holidays, and am now poised to get caught up on January. Between the weather and staying busy catching up on everything else around the house, there’s not really too much to document, so that should go pretty fast.

On the left is a remembrance page of a day out shopping with one of my best friends. To the right are tags I collected from my latest wardrobe revamp. This is something that happens about as often as Haley’s Comet, so it was definitely worth noting!

More shopping and dining out with my daughter on the left there, and some Christmas snuggles between my daughter and my grandson on the right.

You may be wondering if I will actually remember any of this in the years to come, which is really valid concern, so I will be covering that point soon…like after a couple of photos soon.

How cute is that!

On the left is a piece from a Christmas card, and on the right is a label from a super tasty beer my son brought over for me to try, so good.

And that’s it for December, whew!

Now to the documenting part…

I decided to use a vintage library pocket to put cards and tags in for journaling.

I adhered lined paper on the back sides. If you look closely, you can see that I journaled under each date that corresponds to my pages. This is new to me, and I love it! There’s nothing earth shattering about my journaling, I just don’t like the way it looks on my pages, so this is a perfect fix for me!

I just gave myself a “high five”…okay, don’t judge me! 🙂

I’ve been spending the last month catching up on so many things, #oneword2018, Lara Casey’s PowerSheets, Project Life, my planners, Oy!

I hope to be ready to share how I’m doing my “Word for the Year” soon, I’m still working out some of the details.

So, until next time,

Thanks for popping in,

Have a great week,

~Patty

 

Gratitude Journal Organization

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

Last week, I promised a post about my art journaling organizational process, and here it is a week later! I know, I can hardly believe it myself (insert surprised look!)

First, I’m going to show a little of the art journaling tote I’m using for this project.

 I purchased this tote from Hobby Lobby on a 50% off sale, which made it about $12. It’s got loads of pockets and such, but it’s the plastic photo cases I’m going to talk about today. As you can see I have labeled them, and this is where the “process” comes in. It really saves time on having a pile of ephemera to sort through. As I go through each layer, I know which case to grab. I’ve been using this technique over the last year or so, and it really works for me

First layer “Background” pieces: I like to use these on the scrapbook or painted pages to give them a vintage look. Sometimes, I’ll scrape a little paint over them so that they will “blend” into the background.

2nd layer “Paper pieces”: scrapbook paper, origami paper, photocopies of fabric, anything with color or pattern.

3rd layer “Medium ephemera”: these usually consist of the focal piece along with large die cuts or random images. As you can see, I’m building my layers from larger to smaller.

4th layer “Small ephemera”: tickets, small stickers, die cuts, images.

Finally, “Extra small ephemera”: the usual suspects, only smaller.

After all my layers are built, I go around most of the pieces with pencil for contrast. I use a “General” 8B pencil with a “Helix” cap eraser. I use the paint brush to brush off the eraser bits as not to smear the pencil lines. That pencil sharpener  is a Kum AS2, super awesome!

(I’m not paid for sharing links, I just want to be helpful)

Last but not least, the ink stamping. The date stamp of course, but using my decorative stamps kind of went to the wayside, so I’m trying to get back into the habit.

The finished product, a page of my daughter and I shopping before Christmas.

I hope you can see how I built the layers on this page. There is a video of my process here, I just wanted to share a little of the organizational aspects with you today.

I’ve made quite a few promises to myself this year, writing a weekly blog post being one, but also quality instead of quantity. Two to three art journal pages a week is quite enough, those daily challenges can be a bit daunting.

There are lots of other things I have in the works to scale down, use what I have instead of buying, and using my own ingenuity, I’ll share some of that in my next blog post.

Until then,

Thanks for dropping by,

Have a great day,

~Patty

 

 

Page Spread of Lost Souls

~ Patty Radish ~ 8 Comments

Once in a while, I like to challenge myself to see what I can come up with using the funkiest of ephemera.

I have quite a few plastic photo keepers full of random images that I pull from to fill pages, some of them hover over the recycle bin once in a while, but get a last minute reprieve, and put away for another day. The other day I decided to give some them a chance…with a few fun additions.

The photo at the top right is some wall art I photographed 7 or 8 years ago, I  don’t know why I just couldn’t toss it, maybe because we were on vacation and it just wasn’t photo album material

To me, the challenge is to make random pieces fit together some how. I’m not sure I accomplished this, but I had a lot of fun trying.

So, if you’re like me, and you just can’t bring yourself to throw away your funky bits and pieces, try putting them on one page and see what happens!

See you soon,

Have a great day,

~Patty

(p.s. I’m hoping to write shorter blog posts more often, hope this fits the bill)