I love to blur the lines between my art journaling and my scrapping…and I love to make “art journalish” layouts. What do I mean by art-journalish? I simply mean layouts that are more free-style (boo to rules!!), that have overlapping layers, and that use wet-media such as paint and ink.

Here’s a confession…I routinely start layouts with no photograph in mind to put on them. To make the layout above, “dear curt…”, first I cut the light blue frame and positioned it over the Dear Lizzy patterned paper. Then I stared at it. For a long, long time. The print is busy without being overwhelming…but I wasn’t sure what to do! One thing I’ve learned is that strong patterned paper requires an even stronger photograph. I searched my photographs, and found one of my oldest son, Curt. I decided to print it out 8×10, silhouette it, and make my page an art-journalish letter to him.

I used a palette knife to spread some orange paint over the right side of the layout. After it was dry, I wrote a letter to my son on the paint. Then I layered on the photograph and title. The light blue letters matched the layout, but they seemed to disappear, so I used SEI Tumble Dye ink to change their color. My finishing touch was a splatter of aqua paint and a patterned-paper heart. Easy as can be.

If you’re concerned that some of the journaling is obscured, feel free to re-write the journaling on the back of the layout. That way it can be read and enjoyed for years to come!

Have you ever made an art-journalish layout? I’d love to see it!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 1:10 am by dina and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.