i love art

Yesterday I treated myself to a little art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The exhibit was Girl with a Pearl Earring - Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis. The art, of course, was gorgeous. Then I came home & watched Donna Downey's latest video. I couldn't resist all of this inspiration!! I had to play in my art journal.

I had a flier from the exhibit, so I cut out the girl to add to my page.

From Donna's video, I wanted to try adding text pages and letter stickers. The pages are in French and I loooove them, my friend Anna gave them to me. Unfortunately as I added layers of paint & gesso, I pretty much obliterated any trace of the fabulous French text. As for these letter stickers - they came in a kit at some point and I think they are super ugly, so, I was happy to cover them up!

If you look closely, you can actually see a teeny tiny trace of the text in this picture. :-) The hearts were die-cut from some fairly thin packaging chipboard I pulled from the recycling bin. I added lots of Claudine's paint, letter stickers and a bit of platinum Stickles here and there.

In this picture you can see a close-up of those painted-over letter stickers. I love the texture they add to the background. I added the Girl with a Pearl Earring with matte multi-medium and painted around her. Unfortunately it seems I covered her pearl earring - oopsie. The word "art" is stamped with the Hero Arts set My Words.

Still loving the art journaling, yay!

Happiness is...

Do you ever watch something online and feel so inspired by it that you have to immediately sit at your desk and create? That's how I felt yesterday after watching Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday video. It made me dig out my art journal and play!

I used lots of Claudine Hellmuth Studio products on this. I began by coating the pages with gesso. Then I attached some pieces of tissue paper with multi-medium. The wood veneer bike and chipboard hearts were also added with multi-medium, I added old letter stickers to the top (they were actually green glitter stickers from the dollar bin!) and then coated the entire page with more gesso. I used Claudine's paints with a little extra time mixed in to paint the pages - I'd add a bit of color then wipe it back off with my cloth. I love the muted look that gives!

This wood veneer bicycle was something Lisa gave me a while back - I finally used it! I painted it & coated it with Star Dust Stickles just for fun. I sorta have a thing for bling on my journal pages!

The "happy thoughts" is a Hero Arts stamp from the woodblock set of the same name - Happy Thoughts! I randomly stamped it with Dusty Concord distress ink & heat set it. You can see the texture from the tissue paper in this photo, too.

I love this Tweed Pattern stencil from Hero Arts - it's a fun detail in the background of the page.

I still have a lot to learn about mixed media techniques but it sure is fun to just go for it and play!

Thanks for stopping by,