A Collaboration with Tiffany from Southern Gals Design!

Oh My Gosh!! How fun is this going to be! I am doing a collaboration with Tiffany from Southern Gals Designs! We will be making 2 Journal pages total.

Today we are both posting our videos for our backgrounds, which we will mail out, we will the pages a few times recording out process as we go, so we both end up with an awesome journal page to add to our journals! I am so excited!!!! I hope you follow along and I will post at least a quick blog with a link to both whenever we publish!

I cant wait to see what we end up with!

I had so much fun playing but I had such a hard time letting go! I love this background! Using both brushes and my fingers in my watercolor palate, using my favorite stencils, some Liquitex Ultra Matte Gel medium, Acrylic craft paints, and dylusions sprays, do you know what that creates!?

The Perfect Monday!

I hope you enjoy watching the fun I got to have!!

here is my background video

And to see what I'll be working with Click this HERE to see her video! 

She said she will be posting a blog tonight so go check her out at SouthernGalsDesign!

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

Shana Banana!

Inspired by Bird Wall Hanging Mixed Media Tutorial

I had some fun using a Video from Tiffany from Southern Gals Design for inspiration, she did a whimy bird wall hanging that was ADORABLE and since I had some plaques collecting dust I decided to do one in my style! Hope you enjoy and go on over and check hers out! The way she does her backgrounds is inspiration in itself and I only hope I can someday make one like hers! Big hugs and love!!

Inspiration - Pick a Decade - Artful Journeys Week #45

It has definitely been a while since my last blog post! I have been leaving the Journal prompts to be posted on the Artful Chicks blog, so if you would like to see some of the past weekly and pop-up prompts go over to Artful Chicks to check them out !

This weeks Prompt is Pick a decade! I kind of got an awesome 2-fer out of this one because I also played with a new medium, Chalk pastels.

How awesome are these things!!!

I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful set of handmade chalk Pastels gifted to me by the main admin and a dear sweet friend whom I love and adore, in the Artful Journeys Betty ( AKA Arty Auntie.)







I was so excited to try them out that I decided to put the time to good use and play with them for my prompt this week! For my paper I used Canson Mi-Teintes 98 lbs Pastel Paper and I used no tools other than my fingers for smudging.

This is the 1st ineteration of my flapper girl, but the more I looked at her the more I saw there wasn't any real contrast.




















 So I went back in and added more depth into her face, hair and the scarf on her head, even after adding more highlights and shadows she still seemed so bland, so I changed up the background using the color form her eyes to add some pop.When I was satisfied with the look I did an even coat of Aqua-net Hairspray since I am out of workable fixative. SO I would have the pastels rubbing off in my journal.























 I found an awesome quote from F.Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby Girls that totally fit the attitude on my girls face and wrote it using my Prismacolor Chisel tip and brush tip pens in black.






















I thought it needed a bit of sparkle so I went in with my Martha Stewart Glitter glues in Sugar Cube, Hematite and Candy Apple to add some sparkly details.

I then tipped the original girl into my junk journal with washi tape and Golden Matte medium for extra hold.

I hope you enjoyed my process overview! and please let me know is you have any questions that I didn't address. For your convenience I have added a link for every product mentioned throughout.

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!!

Shana Banana

Inspiration - Black Cats and Bats Week #41 Artful Journeys

Hello my Lovelies!

I hope you are all doing awesome!

I loved this prompt, not just because of its Halloween theme but also because of the black cats! I love animals and have a soft spot for black cats, did you know that black cats are more likely to be euthanized than any other color? Because of the stigma of black cats being bad luck many people pass up wonderful animals, here in Phoenix at a local pet store that helps adopt out cats they actually have a special for black cats! They give food, a cat tree and a litter box along with a reduced adoption fee!

I actually have 2 black cats Gable that I rescued 15 yrs ago,



















and Matty who had to be given up because his owner was moving

They are both awesome pets and I wouldn't trade them for the world! Ok enough of my speech! On with the art!

This week I went for simple, my tools were Mixed Media paper, watercolors, black and metallic gold acrylic paint.
I was inspired by a silhouette Halloween window decoration I saw and decided to put some color into it!

I did a simple background using all the shades of blue and purple in my Koi watercolor pallet and brush wet layers of color over the entire page leaving it streaky for a cloud effect.

I then grabbed a paint brush and painted the tree, cat and bats into place, I planned on being done at that point but I wanted a bit more contrast so I grabbed my Lumier metallic gold paint and added the moon, stars and the eyes of the bats and cat!











I was thinking I may add some words but I wasn't sure what would fit so I let it as is.


















I will put it in my art journal as a tip in and maybe I will be inspired then!


Big hugs and Mushy stuff!

-Shana

Inspiration - Leaves - Week #38 Artful Journeys

For this weeks journal entry I decided to go cute! To be honest I started the page without it actually being for this week! The page started out being the pages I used to clean my stencils after spraying my Dylusions inks through them. the colors that were there already had a fall feel to them and I went from there!

I wet the page and reactivated the inks and move them around a bit on the page then coated it with watered down gesso.

Then I went looking for what images I saw in the spots! I found this cute little guy! holding an acorn getting ready for winter!

I brought him out using craft acrylic paints and prismacolor pencils.

I love my journal! I can work in my journal with no fear of error because it will only be seen if I share it!

I'll keep it short today!

Big hugs and mushy stuff!

Playing with Dylusions Ink in a new way - "dreams"

Hello All! I just thought I would share this process with you all, this is how I like to play with Dylusions spray inks. This is the process I usually follow when I am at a loss for inspiration but I want to create!

I have been using this process for quite a while but I never thought to share until I realized I had never seen anyone else use their sprays this way! I shared this video in some facebook groups I am a part of and could not believe the response I got! This is by far my most popular video on Youtube and I think I need to record my play time more often.

The reason I love this process so much is that it is soo uncontrolled, because I start with the black background I cannot see where the spray ends up very clearly and I dont see how the inks are mixing together, when I add the white to it and Smoosh the pages together I have no control as to how the white will lay on the page and what color ink it will attach itself to.

I hope you enjoy the video, if you have any questions feel free to ask! I am usually pretty good at answering them!

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

Inspiration - Go To the Fair - Week #37 Artful Journeys

I am sorry in advance for this short post, but sometimes time is not in the abundance that I wish!

This weeks prompt was "Go to the Fair" I had the idea for a watercolor and ink like I had done in the past that I wanted to tweak and to make it better. I did this a few years ago for a art swap and I wish I would have kept it for journal! but I have the picture so I can try again and make it better, it was a lot of fun to make with the simple sunset sky and the black silhouettes. I will do it again I swear!

I did make a new piece this week, but I did it digitally! I love playing with Photoshop to create instead of just adjust images for printing!

For this piece I took about 6 different images and used some effects to get the great gradient shading then added the blue yellow and red to give the illusion of Electricity at the Fair!

I know it is simple but I think once I get it printed out and in my journal is will be a great addition to my creative collection!

Go over and check out what the other ladies have done with this weeks prompt over at Artful Chicks!

Big Hugs and Mushy Stuff!

- Shana