Finishing Up June

I call this  - June week 4 and a half.

I first glued a few bits of the week's ephemera to the pages: a tag from a bag Gaby purchased, the tag from Nick's hiking boots for Guatemala, and the menu from Five Guys, where we had a delicious lunch of freshly made burgers and Cajun fries. Mmmmmmm. Gessoed the pages, lightly in some spots so the stuff underneath would show through. I stamped around the edges with Julie's ticket stamps. Love these too -- her freehand style translates so well to stamps.I tried out some new FC pens that I got -- the combo packs that come with the fat marker, gelato, watercolour pencil and marker. Went over them with a wet brush. Used watercolour crayons on the tickets themselves. Journalled with the Pitt markers.

July week 1.

Inspired by TH. He created a card on his blog for the 4th, and I used his stamps and duplicated his design. I used the FC fat markers on both stamps. I like the effect on these gessoed pages -- watercoloury. I used grey on the stars, where TH used white. The red and blue stripes are FC Aquarelle watercolour pencils. Like these too! The 4th stamp is SU, inked up with the same fat markers. Journaling is the pitt markers too.

Art Journaling for June - and it's now July!

I accomplished half of what I set out to do with my art journaling, in finishing up weekly pages for that week. But I obviously found it difficult to share them here. Not sure why, though summer did start off with a bang!

School was finished on Friday the 17th, and the following week, we were busy every day with VBS. Nick and Gaby were both counselors this year, and I got to be the official photographer. We all loved our jobs!

So I guess that's how I fell behind in posting my art journaling every day. Here's the rest of June:

June, week 3. Gessoed the pages, and then stamped all over with an SU Pattern Pieces stamp that I came across while tidying up my desk. I am not sure why I did this. As soon as I was done, I found myself staring at the pages, asking that very question. Why had I covered the pages with these itty bitty pattern piece shapes, and what was I gonna do next?

I ended up pulling out my SU watercolours and trying out different colour groupings on each set of pieces. I liked how it looked when completed, but I wasn't sure where I could/should journal. So I cut out the letters for the words 'School is out!', adhered those, and journaled on them with my fabulous FC Pitt markers.

June, week 4, I decided to cover my pages with bits of this lovely brown tissue I received with a recent purchase. Gel medium works so well for this and the result is much less sticky than with mod podge. And that's important during the humid season here, which can be April - October!

I also finally got my JFFB stamps, and I tried out the butterflies on these pages. The first images were a bit cloudy, as I had forgotten how bumpy the pages were. I got better as I stamped more. I watercoloured the wings, added a peacock feather rub on (Dove of the East, I believe) a recent fortune, the cap from the first bottle of Woodchuck cider for this season, and a TH journaling ticket. Again, the journaling was done using FC Pitt markers, which work well on so many surfaces.

Done!