Creative Squad

Creative Squad: Dear Mother Earth – Jordan Hill

Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a journal spread from Jordan Hill working in a junk journal and using my Mini Santa Fe Foam Stamp and our theme: Dear Mother Earth – Our planet Earth is an amazing and beautiful gift to all of us. Let’s write her a letter, telling her just how we feel. This could be an actual letter/mail art, an art journal page, or some other mixed media project.

Hello, everyone! I’m very excited to be back with my project for July! This month’s theme of “Dear Mother Earth” resonated with me quite strongly, since I tend to draw a lot of inspiration from nature for my artwork. I hope you enjoy following the process!

For this month’s project, I decided to work in a new little journal I made semi-recently; this is actually the first official finished spread.

I started things off by prepping my background. I selected a photograph from an old book, consisting of some beautiful pink flowers, which reminded me of this month’s theme of “Dear Mother Earth”. After tearing that photograph to size and gluing it down, I added some CraftSmart acrylic paint in Coral Pink and White (to create a color reminiscent of the flowers) and a printed image of a postage stamp that also featured pink flowers.

Next, I reached for Nathalie’s Mini Santa Fe Foam Stamp and some black ink, adding it over most of my spread. I’ve tried several different methods of applying ink and paint to these foam stamps in the past, but for this project I wanted to experiment with a stamp pad re-inker. I wasn’t sure if this would work or not, but the roll-on nature of the re-inker actually made it quite simple to cover most of the stamp and get a good, solid impression. I also found that the effect of using this type of ink was different than if I had simply used an ink pad.

Usually, words are the last thing that I add to my art journal spreads, but for this month’s project, I got the urge to add them in earlier. I wanted to incorporate this quote (which again, reminded me of this month’s theme) in white gel pen over the photograph. However, because of the glossy finish of the photograph, the pen didn’t really want to adhere. In order to mend this issue, I used some clear gesso to paint over the photograph. The pen was a lot more willing to cooperate with me after that.

In addition to the white gel pen, I also outlined the words with some black ink to help it stand out that extra little bit.

At this point, I was ready to add my focal point. I started out drawing a face, but I found myself wanting to spice up the clothing a bit. Instead of the tank top style shirts I typically dress my figures in, I used a turtleneck style for this character. After painting the top pink, I then added some little patches of white, which I later drew petals on top of, in order to give the shirt a pattern!

I also used a small piece of a paper napkin and some Mod Podge to collage another little interesting element into the background.

In order to finish off this spread, I gave the character some hair (which I’m actually quite fond of, and would love to have myself) using Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic in Prussian Blue Hue mixed with white, and added a small little collage cluster in the lower right hand corner of the page. When creating this collage cluster, I took care to choose colors and imagery that I felt fit with the left hand page, in order to tie the two together.

Overall, I’m very happy with the way this spread turned out, and I definitely think I’m going to be reaching for my stamp pad re-inker for use with my foam stamps again in the future!

Thank you Jordan – love that you worked in a junk journal for this one – great way to repurpose scrap papers!!!

Give it a try: you can find all my Foam Stamps in my Online Shop and in addition to some collage elements, here are some of the supplies Jordan used:

For more from the Creative Squad check out Nat’s Creative Squad on Instagram too: Each week we post projects, ideas, and inspiration for mixed media art.

Nat

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Creative Squad: A New Day – Jordan Hill

Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have an art journal spread from our new member Jordan Hill. Jordan is creating collage papers with my Mini Santa Fe and Mini Hex Set foam stamps, and pulling elements together in her art journal page inspired by this month’s theme: A New Day – Let’s try something new today :) Although these are tumultuous times and we never know what each new day will bring, it also seems like the perfect time to throw caution to the wind and just jump into something new with both feet. Try a new material or technique or approach. Why not? Today is a new day… and tomorrow is too!

I am so incredibly happy to be here as one of the newest Creative Squad members; I hope I am able to inspire you in the time I spend here!

When I was first presented with the theme for this month, “A New Day”, the first thing that came to mind was the concept of creating a variety of new collage materials to use in my work. I really enjoy the process of painting my own papers, since I feel it adds an element of originality to my art journals that I might not get from store bought patterned papers.

The first step in this project was to pull out my gelli plate to use in combination with Nathalie’s Mini Santa Fe Foam Stamp as well as the Mini Hex Foam Stamp Set. Though I can see potentially infinite uses for these foam stamps, using them to actually remove paint from my gelli plate was the method I decided to use here.

In order to achieve this result, I simply added some Blick Studio Acrylic in Bright Aqua Green and CraftSmart Ivory paint to my plate, then used the foam stamps to stamp into the wet paint. I then used the paint on the stamp to create an entirely new design by stamping onto a blank sheet of paper (shown in the photo above).

Once the paint has dried on the plate, you can then add another color (in this case I used Fluorescent Green) to pull another print! This gives you multiple different designs from the same stamp, and is a lot of fun to play around with.

I spent a while working with my foam stamps and my gelli plate to create a good assortment of papers I would be able to use in the future. Above you can see a few pieces from the final selection I had to choose from! As you can see, you can get quite a variety from just a few stamps and a couple different colors of paint.

Once I had a handful of painted papers, it was time to actually incorporate them into an art journal spread! The first step in doing this was to select a page in my journal, then tear chunks from the painted papers. I did this randomly, without thinking much about what the torn pieces looked like. Then I glued a couple of these randomly torn bits onto my page with an Uhu glue stick.

Next up, I added a couple of different collage elements and some Pale Blue CraftSmart acrylic paint to the background, just to give myself a base to work off of. After the background color was down, I began the process of adding a figure to add to this spread. Personally, I love adding faces and figures to my art journal spreads, and they tend to make their way into most of the things I create.

In the photo above you can see that I added quite a few more layers to this girl’s face. I did this with a combination of Natural Beige and Espresso CraftSmart acrylic paints. Natural Beige is quite a light color and Espresso is quite a dark one, so combining them in different ways gave me a good variety of colors to use as shadows and highlights.

This was also where I started to use some ink to define the details of the face. I used the Zebra Fude Sign Brush Pen in Extra Fine to add these details, which is my favorite pen to use in my art journals as of late.

To finish off this art journal spread, I added a quote to fit with this month’s theme inside of the figure’s dress and accented the right hand page with some more stamping with the Mini Hex Foam Stamp Set. This tied everything together nicely and gave both pages a more cohesive feel.

After adding a few finishing touches to the face using a handful of Prismacolor Premiere colored pencils (Aquamarine, Henna, Black Cherry and Nectar), I was ready to call the spread done!

I hope you enjoyed this little look into my process and use some of the ideas I discussed here to create some projects of your own!

Thank you Jordan for sharing with us your process! Love your unique style with creating figures.

Here are some of the supplies that Jordan used:

Nat

Comments (1)

  • Sue Clarke

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    I love the message and the background paper you made Jordan!

    Reply

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Owning Your Story – Art Journal

“Owning your story is the bravest thing you will ever do”

I started with some acrylic paint on my background and then created the all over pattern with my new Mini Santa Fe foam stamp and black ink – love this little repeating pattern.

I used little mini alphabet wooden stamps – stamped on printing paper and cut out the words and glued them down with a glue stick.

Here are some of the supplies I used:

Nat

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