Journal Journey - January Detour

I have been interested in art journals for a while now, as some people manage to create such beautiful works of art in them. The idea of no rules, no 'wrong way', just the chance to try out a whole bunch of new techniques really appealed to me. The problem was I'm the kind of person who likes to follow a process and the unstructured format of art journaling left me not knowing where to start.

 

Kreative Koncepts changed that by running their Journal Journey 2015 free online program. This will run for the whole year, with time at the start of each month devoted to learning new techniques before walking you through creating a page using the new skills.

 

The theme for January is 'White with Two' and the technique for the first week was resists. I have spent the last two days playing with some different ideas in ATC size. To be honest, I'm not really happy with the results for most of them but it was fun trying out some new things and I might refine them a bit more later.

 

 

From left to right: Vaseline resist with acrylic paint (it stripped too much of the paint off while I was removing the Vaseline, this was also a bit too messy even for me), Vaseline resist with spray mists (happier with this result, still some minor smudging), polymer resin resist with spray mists (I think I needed to wipe the mists off the card while still wet, the resin also seeped under my mask).

 

From left to right: crayon resist with distress inks (I think I went over the images too many times and didn't allow it enough time to dry before using the crayon), polymer resin resist with spray mists (worked better getting the ink off sooner but I still had trouble with seepage), crayon resist with distress inks (this one I actually like the results).

 

Since I didn't want the time spent on these cards to go to waste, I added some extra detailing to a few of them to create simple ATCs.

 

 

I liked the colours I ended up with for this card but had lost the image in the resist as I smudged away too much paint too. I just re-positioned the stencil over the top once it was all dry, making sure it was slightly off-set from the original resist and applied black ink over the top.

 

 

This was probably my second favourite card but it seemed a bit plan. I had added some detailing with gold and pink metallic pens then added some rub-on phrases.

 

I was liking this one but them I think I applied too much ink and it started to bleed through the crayon resist and smudge the stamping. I wanted to add colours to the wings but can't because of the resist so this was stayed pretty plain.

 

 

 

I brought back the fish images with a fine nibbed pen and added eyes and details. It has a certain cuteness which appeals to me now. I am tossing up adding some 'fish in the sea' writing to it but I'm pretty sure I will ruin it if I do.

 

 

This is the card I was most happy with. Initially while applying the yellow I didn't think the resist had worked, but as I continued to apply the ink and moved to darked colours the resist became much clearer to see. I haven't added anything to this one.

 

I haven't done anything to the red/yellow polymer resist card but I'm thinking of maybe adding a stamped sentiment/quote to it. Otherwise, I think that is enough experimenting for this week. Let me know if you have any tips for improving my resist results.