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Mixed Media Circus Workshop at Darkroom Door in Berkeley Vale, Australia

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After the workshop in Melbourne, Julie and I taught in Berkeley Vale at Darkroom Door, about 1 1/2 hours North of Sydney. My wonderful friend and awesome manufacturer Rachel Greig hosted us in her warehouse and classroom and it a great group rocking out the paint, art supplies and art journals!

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Everyone was working for three day, creating covers, painting, stamping, stenciling, book binding – getting messy fingers and tables:) It was so much fun! I loved the class room with high tables and high top chairs, making it possible for everyone to choose to work standing up or sitting. Since I work standing up- this was a dream :)

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Look at all the beautiful colorful pages …with Birds, and Elephants, and other stamp sets :)

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Birds mixed with Julies Stamps and Stencils.

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and more elephants :)

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the Urban Scribble – love the staggered city look!

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And lot’s of stencil patterns for background papers

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I loved how everyone embraced having two different teachers and stencils and stamps from two different persons as well.

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Love the look of the Fashion Dame Stencil used in different colors for pattern

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And the Lilly Wallpaper stenciled with black gesso

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and the Arabesque Stencils used with white over black gesso

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Batik

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one of Julie`s Face Stencils used with my Ornament Stencil for hair

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Another hybrid page with Julie’s stencil on the left and my Art Deco Wallpaper Stencil on the right

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And this is so true – :) If all fails, join the circus :)

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I think this one did? Love the girl taking a ride on the Elephant Stencil!

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So much creative energy and colors in the classroom

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And here is Julie explaining something – it was really fun teaching together again :)

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And here are some photos of me teaching …which usually- you know…there aren’t any :)

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Thank you so much Rachel for having us- you are the best!!!!

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And here we are :) Bound and colorful finished art journals!!!

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And thank you Amanda and Amanda, Belinda, Rachel, Robyn and Robyn, Paula, Kristy Lee (mmmmhhh did I butcher your name again???? please forgive me with your super cute smile, ok?), Lorraine, Genevieve, Vesna and Vesna! We will always have “I pet a kangaroo”, the dog on the tucker box, create you own at mäccas, don’t hesitate to mess up the table, fire alarms, Lemingtons, Anzac Biscuits and lot’s of laughter together. It was wonderful to spend those three days with you!!!

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I will post some photos from Melbourne and Sydney, street art and kangaroos in the next weeks – it was such a fun trip :)

 

 

Nat

Comments (17)

  • Robyn Seaniger

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    Looking through your workshop at dear Rachel Greig’s Darkroom Door Workshop on the Central Coast reminiscing about how much I learnt from you and Julie. Watching other creatives interpretate your demonstrations into art was so much fun. I see you have shown two pages of my own and also a photo of me smiling happily while working on my album. I feel like an accomplished artist now ☺️. I wanted to look back on this workshop because it was a great accomplishment for Rachel to bring you to the Central Coast. Thanks for the wonderful memories of friendship and art.

    Reply

  • Tracy Moloney

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    F U N times :)
    I thoroughly enjoy watching Rachel in action on ScrapIt tv as well!!!

    Reply

  • Jackie P Neal

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    Looks like everyone had a blast and the creativity was flowing!!

    Reply

  • Becca Yahrling

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    Oh what fun and creativity at it’s best.

    Reply

  • Teresa Godines

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    Wonderful projects. Looks like everyone had a great time.

    Reply

  • Karen Petitt

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    Lucky ladies! Looks like everyone had lots of fun and enjoyed it too. So wish I could do classes but being disabled is a real issue for me and getting to and back from one I just can’t right now. Lucky, lucky ladies Karen x

    Reply

  • Nicole N.

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    Looks like a lot of fun! And it’s great that it can be shared around the world.
    From: Connecticut

    Reply

  • barb macaskill

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    I would absolutely LOVE to meet the Darkroom Door crew one day!! It would be the culmination o a dream come true. I have always wanted to go to Australia and being able to do crafty things while I was there would make it an even better journey!!
    LOVE what the ladies have created using your awesome Foam stamps and stencil sets!!! MUST HAVE THEM ASAP!!! TFS!

    Reply

  • Carla Hundley

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    Looks like a wonderful
    time had by everyone!
    Carla from Utah

    Reply

  • Sue Clarkes

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    Nat, you even managed to post different pics than Julie did.
    I really like the quote “when all else fails, join the circus”.
    It goes well with “not my monkeys, not my circus” in some way.

    Reply

  • Greta H

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    Oh what fun–beautiful art work!

    Reply

  • Mary Holshouser

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    I would love to take some of your classes. I enjoyed seeing all of the finished projects – especially the elephant designs. I collect elephants and I’m always looking for new stamps/stencils and ways to use them.
    the girl riding the elephant was a clever idea.
    thanks for sharing so many wonderful finished projects.
    Illinois.

    Reply

  • Sabrina Radican

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    Oh boy… I wish I lived there so I could come and visit you and have lots of inky fun!! All of their pages look absolutely, gorgeous, beautiful. wonderful and looks like they all had a blast!!

    Reply

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My City Speaks to Me – Michelle Rydell

CS April My City Speaks to Me Blue

It’s Tuesday, so it’s time for my Creative Squad to share a project with you with this month’s theme: “My City Speaks to Me”.  Throughout the month, the team has been using my new Urban Scribble Foam Stamp, Rubber Stamp and Stencil Set to interpret the theme and to share with us what their hometown or city is all about.  We want to know what makes it special, vibrant, and important! This month, our Creative Squad has taken us on a trip to their city!

Today we have a really fun art journal page from Michelle Rydell. Her colorful interpretation of the theme is like an insider’s travel guide to Minneapolis :)  Thanks for sharing all the good spots, Michelle!
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Up until a few years ago, I lived in the city of Minneapolis my whole adult life.  Now, I live in the country, just outside of the city, but Minneapolis will always have a piece of my heart.  I love this month’s theme because it gave me a chance to document that!

First I created a background in my art journal, using black on the bottom to represent city streets, and blue on top to represent sky.  I used white paint with the Urban Scribble stencil to create texture on the streets, and clouds in the sky.

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The city is broken up into neighborhoods, so I decided to represent that with a variety of colors and patterns, using painting underpapers as my substrate.  I stamped the cling stamp on two different color schemes, and the foam stamp on a third. Then I cut them out…

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I pasted them onto my page in overlapping rows, and drew little banners on sticker paper to label the neighborhoods.  I also typed up the names of some of my favorite places in each neighborhood, printed them onto sticker paper and stuck them on to corresponding buildings.  I colored over the building names with tombow markers to blend them in a bit.

Here’s my finished piece:

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And a few closeups…

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I absolutely love how Michelle used the Urban Scribble stamp to create rows for different neighborhoods, and her colors are so vibrant against the black stamping, the whole design really pops.  The overall idea is a super clever way to share with us the hotspots in Minneapolis!

Besides the supplies listed below, Michelle also used newsprint underpapers with a variety of paints and sprays on them:

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And maybe you will even play along -we would love to see how you interpret the theme – email me how you used my stencils and stamps with the theme and email me an image – I would love to share what you did at the end of the month!

See you next Tuesday for the another project from the Creative Squad, with a brand new theme for the month of May.

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P.S. Stampendous is doing a blog hop this week and you can win one of the stamp sets. Simply comment on this post or their blog post in order to be eligible to win!

Check in with their blog all week long to see some fun projects with my foam stamp sets – my creative squad is posting a lot of new projects this Friday- so stay tuned :)

 

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Nat

Comments (39)

  • Tracy Moloney

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    FABULOUS pages Michelle!!!
    LOVE the colours and dimension of your “old town”
    THANK YOU for sharing :)
    Tracy from Australia

    Reply

  • Kate B

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    This is fantastic – so creative and colorful!

    Reply

  • nancy L

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    Awesome, love the cityscape

    Reply

  • Sarah P.

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    This looked like a lot of fun. The talent is awesome.

    Reply

  • Jade Sutton

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    Your page is beautiful. I love how you have layered the city to create the different areas.

    Reply

  • myriam Le Blanc

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    Wow! I love it! The colors are so vibrant!

    Reply

  • Miriam Prantner

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    Really love these pages and the different layers of the buildings and the colors, so fun!

    Reply

  • Joela

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    That is incredible

    Reply

  • Teresa Godines #6857

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    Wonderful project

    Reply

  • Rachel Alexander

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    Love the colours, such a fun page. Rachel

    Reply

  • kirsty vittetoe

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    I have a soft spot for city scene, lived in and visited many, LOVE this!
    (Las Vegas)

    Reply

  • Greta H

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    Very creative–just beautiful!

    Reply

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Mixed Media Circus Workshop at Artified in Melbourne, Australia

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I am back from Australia where I taught some amazing Art Journaling Classes with my friend Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. Here are the photos of the 3-day-class at Artified in Melbourne where the wonderful students created an art journal – from painting pages using loads of art journaling techniques and creating a nice cover to binding everything into their own book together in the end.

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We started Friday with loads of fun coloring techniques.

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They were all in such a wonderful mood- and some traveled very far from Tasmania and even far away from Adelaide.

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I really make a grumpy face when I create something- but I assure you ….I am in a good mood :)

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Look at those amazing patterned and colorful pages and … hands :)

 

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Loved seeing my new stamp sets in action :) It always inspires me to see how students use them !!!

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Even if used on an apron- LOL

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This is sunday afternoon – I love this photo- everyone creating and painting and the light is so beautiful in the classroom.

 

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Of course Julie and I also goofed around a lot … I mean- hey …the circus was in town ;)

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And what is not to love about this:

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Look at all those pages – everyone holding up their favorite:

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And here are all the newly bound art journals

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And thank you Chris, Kelly, Margaret and Margaret, Anna, Carol, Abby, Pat, Bec, Deborah, Ngaire, Karen, Nicole, Evi, Katherine, Wendy and Angela and Mel for loads of chocolate, the Tim-Tam-Slam, Vegimite Songs, Twists and licorice, pick-ups and lunch-lifts, beautiful books and necklaces and loads of laughter, creativity and good spirit!

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Thank you for joining the circus :) Look out for more class photos and heaps of other inspiring photos of my trip to Australia in the next couple weeks :)

Nat

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Art Stroll – Lucy Dodd at Whitney, NYC

Art Stroll Dodd Collage

A couple weeks ago I went to the Whitney for it’s open plan exhibition featuring Lucy Dodd. I stumbled across this exhibition through the Whitney’s Instagram feed and decided to take a short trip to the museum and have a late work start.

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It was located on the fifth floor which stretches out without any walls in between and offers some amazing views.

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I loved the shapes of the canvases, reminding of sails.

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Lucy used fermented walnuts, kombucha scoby, hematite, yerba mate, and pigments which she all collected while traveling to paint on raw canvas.

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The big canvases were painted on the terrace of the Whitney and the progress photo of this work was what I had seen on Instagram and made me investigate what was going on :)  You can spot and see the grid of the underlaying tiles of the terrace on the canvases. Dodd seems to use this method of creating a grid this way a lot.

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I loved the scale of the work and the movement visible in it.

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It makes me want to work big.

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Her use of different natural materials and the texture and marks they leave is also very intriguing. I enjoyed this exhibition and learning about Lucy Dodd’s work- she is now definitely on my radar. A well worth trip to the museum, I am so glad I discovered this on social media.

What is the most uncommon material you painted with? It would be branches and leaves for me but more as mark making tools.

Nat

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My City Speaks to Me – Marsha Valk

CS April My City Speaks to Me Blue

Happy Tuesday!  It’s time for my Creative Squad to share a project with you with this month’s theme: “My City Speaks to Me”.  Throughout the month, the team will be using my new Urban Scribble Foam Stamp, Rubber Stamp and Stencil Set. This month’s theme is all about expressing what your hometown or city is all about.  What makes it special, vibrant, and important to you?  This month, our Creative Squad will take us on a trip to their city!

Today we have a super dimensional art journal page from Marsha Valk. Her interpretation of the theme takes us all the way to the Netherlands, and she asks us: how well do we really know our own city?
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I live in the middle of the Netherlands in a city with a beautiful medieval city centre.  The neighbourhood I live in was mostly built around the 1930-ies. I decided to concentrate on the question: ‘What does my city say to me?’ and explore that through art journaling.

I’ve never lived anywhere longer than I’ve lived here. I know the best places to eat, to shop, I know the most important sights, I have my own favourite ‘sights’, I know some of the history, but… what else do I know? Well… turns out that I’ve still got a lot to discover. My city is telling me to finally open my eyes. To view it in a different light. There are many places that I have always intended to visit, but that are still on the list. I really, really need to stop and look.

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I started my page by stamping the Urban Scribble cling stamp at the bottom of the page with black ink. Then I created a mask by stamping the Urban Scribble foam stamp (twice) on a sheet of paper and then cutting the stamped image out. I used the mask to mask off each previous row of buildings before stamping another row behind it.

When I had about three rows, I switched gears and inked the Urban Scribble foam stamp with two different tones of Distress Ink and spray mist. To create the watercolour look, I sprayed the stamp with water after inking it up. I used this method to stamp until my whole page was covered, masking off each previous layer.

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I coloured the buildings with Distress Ink. I tapped some ink onto my craft mat, diluted it with a spritz of water and then picked up the colour with a watercolour brush.

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Once everything was dry, I added details and depth with markers, charcoal and coloured pencil. I also picked up some of the leftover ink from my craft mat with a make-up sponge and used that to stencil subtle little squares onto the buildings with the stencil that comes with the Urban Scribble Foam Stamp Set.

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Lastly I wrote down my journaling. I decided to put it in a circle, to emphasise the city being (my base) in the middle of the country.

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I think we can all relate to Marsha’s desire to take the time to slow down and explore more!  In her art journal page, I love how she used the Urban Scribble stamp with a mask to create a cityscape with many layers of buildings.  It’s also a gorgeous example of how certain colors and details can transform the stamp into a completely different place; last week it was NYC and this week Marsha brought us to the Netherlands.

Besides the supplies listed below, Marsha also used 13arts Ayeeda Mist in Pastel Yellow:
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And maybe you will even play along -we would love to see how you interpret the theme – email me how you used my stencils and stamps with the theme and email me an image – I would love to share what you did at the beginning of next month!

See you next Tuesday for the another project with the theme ‘My City Speaks to Me’.

Nat

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Don’t Want it Back or … In My Art Journal Today

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I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back. – HT Paul Coelho

What a great and true quote!

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I limited my self for the background to Red painted over some collaged areas, titanium white and black and added some swatches of teal here and there. I stamped with the Urban Scribble, the Mish Mesh and the Mark Maker Stampset and also used the stencil in the Urban Scribble set, adding paint and taking it off with black and titanium white too.

 

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For the journaling I used a brown acrylic marker and overwrote with a white signo pen to make it pop a bit more. The image was also overpainted with markers.

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Fun – I love the teal and red – now I want to wear it :)

 

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Have a wonderful day!

Nat

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My City Speaks to Me – Cheiron Brandon

CS April My City Speaks to Me Blue

It’s Tuesday so it’s time for my Creative Squad to share a project with you! The theme for this month is “My City Speaks to Me” and throughout the month, the team will be using my new Urban Scribble Foam Stamp, Rubber Stamp and Stencil Set. This month’s theme is all about expressing what your hometown or city is all about.  What makes it special, vibrant, and important to you?  This month, our Creative Squad will take us on a trip to their city!

Here is Cheiron Brandon and her super colorful interpretation of the theme, which happens to feature a city that’s my neighbor too!

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Cheiron April Headshot

Even though I am a Jersey girl, New York City has always been my city. I live about 8 miles from NYC and get a beautiful view of the skyline on my drive to work each morning and most times, I see the sun coming up. It is like the city is saying hello to me each morning.

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For my project this month, I created a journal page with all the colors of the morning sunrise using the Urban Scribble stamp as the main focal point.

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To start I used a page where I had wiped up some Distress stains from another creative adventure. I stamped the page using stamps from the Marks, Wired, and Mish Mesh stamp sets along with various Archival Inks to create a background. Then I stamped the skyline twice and colored it in with Faber Castell PITT artist pens. This stamp was so fun to color! I fussy cut around the stamp and adhered it to some crinkled black tissue paper to use as my focal piece. Once my piece was done, I adhered it to the background with matte medium.

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I hope you enjoyed Cheiron’s gorgeous art journal page! We are both Jersey Girls so I totally understand her love of the NYC skyline – it inspires me all the time. I love her choices of color too and the way she layered several stamps in the background to capture the energy of the city.
Besides the supplies listed below, Cheiron also used black tissue paper and Tim Holtz Distress Stains in Picked Raspberry and Wild Honey:
SuppliesCJS


And maybe you will even play along -we would love to see how you interpret the theme – email me how you used my stencils and stamps with the theme and email me an image – I would love to share what you did at the beginning of next month!

See you next Tuesday for the another project with the theme ‘My City Speaks to Me’.

Nat

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