Art Journaling the Leftovers

Great title, yes? Hahahaha! I do like to work with things I already have on hand. All those little leftover bits and scraps of paper from earlier projects. Today I want to show you a second fun art journal page I made to share with a friend in Arizona. Let's jump right in.

So, how do you take a piece from blah! to ahhh!? Let me show you. I started with a scrap from a page I made for the book More Tangle Starts. Overall I liked the texture and the way it turned out with the combs I used, I just don't personally care for orange. It started as a gelli print and I figured it could work well as a base for an art journal page. The blocks are a couple I saved from a Dina Wakley book.

I wanted to cover up some of that awful orange. Hahaha! I had just gotten this new stencil in the mail from Joggles. Yes, I know I have a problem with stencils and probably need an intervention, but I couldn't pass this one up. And it is the only new thing I used in this project. The stencil is from a new line from Lavinia Stamps. My thought was to do a progression of color from the bottom to the top using these ink pads and dabbers.

I don't always tape the stencil in place but felt like it might be a good idea since I needed to change out inks so often. I began in the middle with that lovely bumble bee color. Dab and stab going on here with my finger dabbers. And not to worry about this stencil - when I was done, I just ran water over the stencil and all the color came off. Leaving my stencil looking shiny and brand new once again.

I really like the color on the stencil. If I had thought about it, I could have spritzed the stencil with water and stamped it onto some white paper to use for another project. Oh well. Next time.

The colors took that orange and changed it into something more interesting.

I wanted so many more layers of texture, though. This great little tool came from a company called We R Memory Keepers and has since been discontinued. How rude. There is a little ink barrel inside that round part and you just roll/stamp across the paper.

When you work on an art journal page - when I work on an art journal page - think in terms of layers. Each layer adds texture and each layer brings more to your art. Jane Davenport recently came out with a new product called Ladybug Dotters. I used five of them to make these dots. For the most part they only come out of the marker in one size. So it's like dabbing big dots wherever you want them.

I used two different products to splatter more dots across the page. The white is an acrylic ink from Winsor & Newton. The blue is Process Cyan acrylic ink from Daler Rowney. The white picked up color from the under layers and that is ok with me.

While those splatters dried I selected other elements I thought would work well with the background and with the accents blocks from Dina. Leftovers from my collage drawer. Nothing new or fancy.

And began adhering them in place. Where they overlapped the 5" x 7" paper, I lobbed the edges off with some scissors. And inked all the edges with black Archival ink. Except that face - I used the Fruit Punch color ink pad for the edges on the inside of the page.

You may notice I changed my mind quite a bit about which elements I used. I even brought in a couple more leftovers from the Zen-untangled project. The girl and flower are both part of the Dylusions line of coloring elements I already had colored and ready to insert into a project somewhere.

And my page just needed some finishing details. I used Letraset Neon Markers, a Zig Painty FX pen, a Painters Paint Pen and a Uniball Signo gel pen. Dots and highlights all around called this piece done √ for me. Probably 15 - 20 minutes involved in the making because all the little pieces were ready to go before I ever started. Leftovers make your work easier and quicker.

Here are my two leftover pages together. So much fun! These pages were built on Harmony Hot Pressed watercolor paper from Hahnemühle.