The In Between
It’s been radio silence over here for some weeks now. The holidays happened, which means it’s always a whirlwind of activity. My husband and I are lucky enough to live close to both our families, so we end up seeing everyone over Christmas. Which usually translates to about a week of Christmas dinners and get togethers. It’s so fun to see everyone and just ignore life for a little while. The best feeling is not having to track time and forgetting what day of the week it is, am I right? Every day feels like Saturday! š
Thankfully all that down time meant lots of creating and also lots of new art supplies! My Christmas list was almost entirely art stuff this year. My family spoiled me with new goods to create with. Since the new year of Get Messy doesn’t launch for 2 more weeks, I’ve been making pages about everything and anything really. It’s been a great opportunity to try new techniques and try to push myself outside my usual comfort zone.
This page was super simple, but I LOVE it. It’s also one of my favourite songs right now. I’m still adding pages to my altered book journal, and have found that I really enjoy the small size! It’s only 4″x 6″.
I feel like this is a throw away page. It’s not like, the worst, but it’s not great. I’ll probably gesso over it and make a new page. Sometimes pages just don’t turn out like you hope.
And then some turn out better than you hoped! I really love this one. I especially liked used the maps as the background with modeling paste over top. I love me some texture.
I came across Julie Fei-Fan Balzer about a month ago, and was so so inspired by her work. Especially her stamp carvings – she did a stamp a day in December! So I pulled out an old stamp carving kit I have and took a stab at it. I’m pretty happy with the results! I’m hoping to use this in a future journal page.
After much discussion with some fellow GM peeps, I finally got the hang of using modeling paste with stencils. I used modeling paste with a hand cut stencil for the white triangles, and then used gloss gel medium with a stencil I made with a circle punch. The triangles are a cut up piece of cardstock I did some acrylic abstract painting on. And of course, gold. Always gold.
You think doodles would be fast, but here is a PSA: they are not fast. This page took what felt like forever, but the end result was worth it. I was inspired by the inspiring and uplifting Dallas Clayton. I made the turquoise background by laying down an old mat from a photo frame, and used it as a stencil to create the rectangle.
Another new tool I got for my birthday was a Gelli Plate! It’s been on my “coveting other people’s and want it so bad” list for months, and I finally received it just this week! I think I’ve made about 2 dozen prints since Monday, haha. It’s so easy and super addictive. I already have a bunch more ideas to try out. These ones were my first attempts at using it, and figuring out how much paint to use.
Phew! That’s a lot of pages. Thanks for sticking it out! š
