Gallery Of Travel

Ok, I know this next statement goes without saying but I'm gonna say it anyway: Hooray for Air Conditioning! Without it I would just throw in the towel...call it day. It is so completely stifling hot here on the NJ Shore. Incredibly humid...airless. And I'm amazed that it isn't raining. I honestly think the little rain cloud graphic has been present in the daily forecast for a month straight. The work we were doing out on our deck had to be put on hold til further notice, and we've switched to interior improvements. But this weekend we spent most of this weekend in the studio. Lots and lots of painting going on. We loved hearing your thoughts on painting...especially the ways you like to approach abstracts. So many of you said that you can identify with Aaron's approach.  

Well, we're still working abstract pieces into our creative rotation and above is one of the pieces I worked on this weekend. When I sat down I told myself that I wouldn't use my fave color...aqua. Oh my gosh! I cannot tell you how hard that was for me. It was as if someone told me that I had to go to a party wearing someone elses clothes and make up. It felt so wrong. I sat there working on areas over and over and I actually had a bit of anxiety. Art is usually my therapy...when life gets crazy or stressful I can find my medicine in the painting process...the supplies, the colors. Now all of the sudden the painting was the thing that was stressing me the most! Aaron told me to cave...and the very second that I put some aqua strokes on the painting I felt a sense of calm. After I broke that ice and fell back on my creative color crutch, it was just me, the painting, and music for the next two hours. Very good therapy.

Here you see how we start every day...Smoothies. This happens to be one of our favorites. Don't let the pea soup color fool you. It is so so delicious! Banana, strawberry, mango, spinach, grape, vanilla protein powder, and almond milk, and some ice cubes. I promise that there is not one hint flavor-wise of spinach...you cannot taste it...it is like an under the radar spinach sneak attack for your system. You get in like an entire bowl of it and your taste buds are none the wiser. We throw fistfuls of it in our chocolate peanut butter banana smoothies as well.

Here's a happy little area from another piece I worked on. I love to zoom in and pick favorite areas. I can imagine that the little 4 inch area is blown up and its an entire large canvas. Its actually a pretty good way to train yourself into making sure that you finish every single part of your painting. Just grab a microcosm and see if it looks good to you. 

Yesterday, between rain showers, Aaron and I took a trip over to Michael's We had to pick up a few things that we really needed, but we were also thirsting for some new happy and inspiring supplies. We picked up those fab gold foil letters you see above, and since they were on clearance we grabbed two packs! And the Heidi Swapp letters were like 2.00! StazOn is a favorite of ours, and we had been meaning to grab a gray...and then we saw this opaque white and just had to get it! And these tiny little wood heart clothes pins were in the dollar bins. They were the last ones, or we would have stocked up. 

We also picked up this chipboard album kit...which contains the makings of two books, one large and one small. And the paper is so incredibly thick in this fantastic pad of Mixed Media paper from Strathmore. Perfect for Art journaling! 

The kit comes with a whole bunch of chipboard pages but we decided that we'd instead use the chipboard as the front and back covers of a few separate journals. 

So we measured our Mixed Media paper, cut, and punched holes, so that these would be the art journal pages between the chipboard covers. We just need some extra rings to bind them with.

So this morning we sat down to work on our new journals, starting with covers.  I knew I wanted mine to be bright, happy, graphic, textured, and fun! So I grabbed a favorite stencil.

I then mixed a few of my go-to acrylic paint colors with some Gel Medium.

I then used a palette knife to spread the paints over the stencil. 

I added some stamps, speckling, and a bit of wash around the hearts to give them a little more dimension.

You may remember this sweet gal...I printed her out and adhered her with some decoupage medium and then shaded around her with charcoal pencil to pull her forward from the background a bit. 

Aaron was working on some paintings as well...and decided to take his painting style right over to his new Art Journal cover. He was almost working in a production line fashion, and everything got stopped midpoint so the heavy paint layers could dry, so we'll have to share his finished cover with you guys another day.

Here's a little close up of my cover. 

And here it is. I added a little talk bubble I sketched on pink polka dot scrapbooking paper...added hand drawn stitching...and my new Heidi Swapp letters. I attached one of the hearts from the little clothespins I just got in our Michaels haul. Sorta made it into a fascinator on her head...and painted a little black band.

My art journal isn't a place where I get serious. It is where I go to leave the serious behind. Some journalers like to use their pages to write out all of the things that have been weighing on them...thoughts and fears etc. I actually do use mine in the same way...but you'd never guess by looking at it. I'm escaping life's heavy stuff through candy colors and fun imagery. My art journal days are all about just playing and having a good time...zoning out....good music, new art supplies, paint colors...that's the best medicine for me. 

I love that most of us art journal for similar reasons but we have very different styles and ways of going about it. 

Why do you Art Journal? Do you have different Journals for your different moods?