Art Journal Challenge week 3 and 4 Fun with Words, Hidden Doors & Stencil Sandwich!

Last week one of our participants created a beautiful page with circles drawn on it and her words inside each circle. It inspired me to re-tool my idea for this week , which is to be about 'closure'. Her work made me think of 'stops' along life's path....or obstacles that might be tripping us up.

I knew that wanted to create little 'doors' that we will journal behind about issues in our lives that need closure and then close them up! (Moving on!!!!) I loved the look of the circles, so I made my doors 'portals' but for your assignment, your 'doors' can be any shape...rectangles, leaf shapes, whatever means something to you!

One of my favorite products we have discussed before, is Tumble Dye spray fabric dye. I love it, we use it in a lot of our canvases in our parties. I love that the colors stay separate, they dry quickly and you can cover a lot of area in a short amount of time. You can purchase this product at Hobby Lobby on the tie dye aisle. Each bottle is 2.99 and lasts a very long time. They do have a tendency to get clogged up, so I usually keep a little spray bottle of alcohol nearby that I can remove the sprayer, put into the alcohol and spray the alcohol through to unclog. It works every time.


I'm going to start pushing you guys to try some new techniques...this week we are going to work with a 'stencil sandwich'.  You don't have to use real stencils....any patterned things with punched out holes will work. IE: lace, shelf liner, doilies, sink mat, plastic canvas shapes, heavy paper with cut out or punched out designs, wooden or cardboard die cuts...whatever you can find!  This process will really only work with fabric dyes though, so you will need to choose 2 or 3 colors that work well together. I used teal, blue and hot pink. DO NOT USE COMPLIMENTARY COLORS, they will turn into brown.
Avoid these combinations
Green and Red
Orange and Blue
Yellow and Purple.

My process
I punched out 3 circles with a large punch and placed them on the work surface.
I layered stencils over the entire work surface, going right over the circles. I did not tack down the circles, because I am spraying over, they will not slide around like they would if I were brushing or pouncing over them.

Some of the stencils I used for my stencil sandwich...you can't see the plastic canvas circles and the doilies (they are underneath the other stencils).

I had placed a plastic canvas disc over each of the punched out circles. Because they will become my 'doors', they needed to have some fun pattern on them too!

Here is my completed background. It still needed something so I laid down a wooden word by Heidi Swapp (scrapbooking aisle at both Michael's and Hobby Lobby)  and sprayed over that too across the right bottom corner.

Now I was ready to begin my journal entries.....I wrote about each of the 3 things in my life that need some closure...because these topics are likely to be super private for each of us, we won't share photos of those journal writings (unless you just really want to.)


I laid my circular 'doors' back over their spots and then sprayed some black 'Spray Webbing' all over the place. I love black spray webbing, it gives a look that you can't get with any other product.

Finally, I attached my 'doors' over my secret journal writings and created a little hinge with some washi tape. You could use any kind of tape or glue, just make sure you allow room for the door to open to reveal your entire journal entry!

Have fun with your stencil sandwich and creating doors for hidden writings!!!

Art Journal Challenge Week 2

For this week's challenge I knew that I wanted to have us write a letter to our past selves, from the perspective of today!
Reflecting on what you have overcome, and ways in which you have grown is an important factor in staying positive and forward motion (at least for me...) Plus it's always nice to give ourselves a warm hug and a proverbial pat on the back about our progress and challenges we've overcome.


As far as fun techniques, I thought about 'making your  mark'....
What ways have I made my mark in the last 10 years or so? Obviously, I have started a new business in an area I never thought I'd venture in to and it is going amazingly well...but not only that, I've had a lot of personal challenges in the last 10 years.....(the last few years of my first marriage and subsequent contentious divorce, being a single/struggling mom,  financial challenges of single parenthood with an uninvolved co-parent, dating again and being in love with someone who lived in a different town....)
I think I've done pretty well, these last 10 years despite the fact that at times, I have really sucked! (just ask my kids :)

So as far as fun techniques go for this week's challenge, I want you to look for 'mark making tools' outside of the obvious.
For my mark making tools, I used
*the triangular side of a makeup wedge
*a nacho cup lid (we go through 1000s of these in the studio and I HATE to throw them away so therefore I have a bumper crop of nacho cup lids)
*a 1x1 inch tile with a bullseye design
*a wine bottle cork

The other technique I want you to employ, is to write words that mean something to the woman you are today, write them big and bold and black! ( I painted mine...but you can use a sharpie or cut words out of a  magazine or whatever!)

My process
I first sprayed the background with hot pink fabric dye through a honeycomb stencil. Because I am a busy bee! Once that was dry, I used a black ink pad and a 'scribble text' stamp to randomly stamp into the background.

I then 'stamped' on red paint with the nacho cup lid, in an interlocking ring design  which I decided represented monkey bar rings (cause what is more challenging than monkey bars?)

I stamped on the white triangles from the make up wedge radiating out from the red rings. I snuggled in some aqua blue dots (again, my favorite color besides pink!)
and stamped on red bullseyes. This symbol for me was a no brainer, I constantly feel like I am fending off competition.
I added some dots of varying sizes with white paint and black paint.
I let all of this dry and then mod podged down some pretty punched out flower designs (just to add some pattern and color and balance out my design).

I started thinking about words that mean something to where I am NOW and painted them on, caligraphy style all over the surface.  I let them dry and then painted a white 'journaling area' onto the page, partially covering up some of the words, because my 10 year ago self wouldn't have fully understood those words yet.
Once this white surface was completely dry, I wrote my letter to myself with regular ink pen!


To reiterate this weeks challenge,
You will
*Write a letter to yourself from 10 years ago, with the perspective of today.
*Make your mark with unconventional stamps and tools
*Use meaningful words, big and bold!


I hope you enjoy this challenge, this one was very meaningful for me!
Paint Happy!
Elizabeth