Well, that doesn't look right!

I know better, I read it in the instructions, I've done acrylic gel transfers before, but I just grabed something interesting looking to do some more 'art experiments' with and this is what I got:

Oops! You can transfer a butterfly image or a tree, even a face and it will look OK as a mirror image. But a map is like text and comes out all wrong!  OK, I won't do that again but Photoshop Elements to my rescue, just Scan and Flip and all is right again:

And while I am using PSE I might as well try something else like a quick color change. I like this even better than the original!

Who Knew?

...that spreading paint with a plastic card could be this much fun?

Well, a lot of people... except me! I read somewhere about using a credit card to spread paint and then I saw a little video demo using a credit card in making an art journal page so I had to try it myself. What fun! These are a few of my experiments:

 

I plan to use them as the background for art journal pages but I since I have scanned them I will probably end up using them in a digital collage or other digital artwork as well. I also am working on more of this type of page in other colors with additions like paint splatter and acrylic gel transfers.

Practice Pages

I have been working on some art journal collage and painted pages. I have to learn when enough is enough. I start out liking a page I am working on then I add a little of this and some more of that and the next thing I know I have seemingly ruined it. That's when I turn to Photoshop Elements to help me fix my overdone artwork.

The original collage and painted page:

 

The scanned page with a few PSE8 color enhancements and splatter effects:

Digital Collage Fun

I started out making a simple collage with the Mixel app on my iPad and then used PhotoStudioHD  to make some colorful change:

Yellow Butterfly

Drawing of a Danaidae Euploea phaenareta Butterfly edited in PSE8 and then colorized for fun.

The natural color is Translucent Yellow:

 

These are just for fun colors:

How Much is Too Much

A simple Collage.

Modified and reused in another collage.

 

Some Photo Effects added.

And more effects added.

And you end up with textured stone or metal.

File Folder Blank Book Cover

I've started "messing up" the File Folder Book I posted earlier. This is the cover 'mess' I put on it. I feel like I want to add a few more paint accents to it but I don't want to really mess up what I've already done! I'm much braver with my digital art, ugly additions can be undone easily. Actual acrylic paint can be very unforgiving!

Random Pages

I have been doing more collage and painted pages. I'm not happy with all the results but I'm learning a few things.

I liked this little painted project until I added the blue hearts and ended up smudging it. I guess I'll set this aside for awhile until I decide what to do next.

I'm ok with how this painted collage mix turned out. I think it will work as the background for something. I may just use the scan in a digital collage.

This painted collage page has some interesting map pieces peaking through the paint.

Aged Paper Blank Book

I made this blank book from some old packing paper I found in the attic. I used coptic binding and added some map scraps to the front and back. This book is 9" x 11".

Testing 1 2 3

I experimented with some colors, effects and stencils on this page using acrylic paint on a piece of old folder. This was an exercise in creating a background for an art journal page.

File Folder Blank Book

A pile of old file folders + some trimming + coptic stitching = another blank book for art work and journaling. 

 

I just finished this simple project after cleaning out some old files. This is made from basic file folders trimmed to 8" wide. The book itself is composed of six signatures of two folders each and a single folder for the front and another folder for the back.  

Now it can be used for collage, painting, sketching, journaling or all of the above.

Quick and Crunchy Blank Book

This is nothing fancy. Just a quick little project using basic 8 1/2" x 11" paper and card stock for the cover, some crunchy texture effects applied to the paper and color pencil sticks to color the pages, a simple coptic stitched binding to hold it all together and it's ready to be used in some interesting way.

 

Brown Paper Blank Book

Today I completed a Coptic stitched blank journal/notebook made from paper bags and pieces of an old wall map. I saw a post on the Internet for Books made from paper bags  here and decided to give it a try myself. I did make a few changes in the process to complete my book.

I used paper lunch bags for the paper and added a soft cover with a double layer of paper from a wall map of the world that was torn and had been thrown away. It was a new map but had been designed to look like an antique map so it already had an creamy aged look. I though this would go well with the brown paper from the bags.

I used 18 paper lunch bags opened and cut to 9.5 inches by 14 inches each. Each sheet was folded in half so the the book will be 9.5 inches tall by 7 inches wide. There are 6 signatures with 3 sheets each. I cut 2 pieces, also 9.5" x 14", from the old map and folded them in half to be the front and back cover of the book. The book has a total of 36 leaves or 72 pages (front and back).

I prepared all the paper as shown in the demo. The paper was crunched, quickly dipped in water and hung on a drying rack in my bathtub to drip dry. This has to be done quickly because the lighter weight paper has to be handled gently while it is wet or it will fall apart. Once it dries it will be fine. After all the paper was dry I folded it neatly, stacked it and left it under a large pile of heavy books. By morning they were still nicely crinkled but basically flat. All ready to be sewn into a book.

The basic book is composed of a total of 8 signatures. Six brown paper signatures and the front and back cover also counted as signatures even though they are just one sheet of paper each. I used a basic Coptic stitching technique to complete the binding of the book. There are numerous instructions and videos on the Internet demonstrating this process. The most straightforward one I have seen is here .

The last thing I did was glue the two sheets of paper for both the front and back cover together to form a solid double layer for each cover. I use acrylic gel medium as my glue. And all this goes back under a pile of books to keep everything flat while the glue dries. A few hours is usually enough. Now all I have to do is decide if I want to do any more embellishment to this book but, at this point it is ready to be used.

Digital Paint Butterflies

I used the combination of paint, collage and photo effects apps on an iPad to make these butterflies then edited the pictures in PSE8 to add the shadow.

Stripe Butterfly

Color pencil drawing edited in PSE8.

Rodinia calpharnia

Orange Butterfly

Color pencil drawing edited in PSE8.

papilio zagreus

Butterfly Lines

I created this butterfly in an app called Scribblify on an iPad then applied a few PSE8 edits to add the shadow effect.

Butterfly Repeat

I have created a number of abstract digital butterflies and this is a small collection set in a pattern that repeats seamlessly.