Journaling: We had the flippin most fantastic long weekend in Portland and Hood River. We LOVE it in the Pacific Northwest. Could go ever year. Could like there. So much to do. This time - condo rental near Burnside. Japanese Gardens. Sushi happy hour. Beer tasting - of course. Pearl District. Golding at McMeniman's. Drive to Hood River. More beer. Waterfalls. Watch kite surfers. Saw Mt. Hood. Saw Food Inc. at a Brew 'n' View. Please let's go again!
Lately I've been looking around at other people's scrapbook pages for new inspiration. I even started a list of techniques I like and want to incorporate more often into my pages. A lot of times I start a page and just stand there trying to think of what to do to make it look the way I want it to. Sometimes I even do this over the course of a few days. I'll start, then stop, then revisit and try again. So having a-go-to list of ideas should be helpful.
I thought I'd try to start a habit of sharing the techniques I'm trying out, in case others need the inspiration. I don't claim to have invented any of these, but scrapbooking is all about recycling other people's ideas so here we go.
Several techniques I used:
- Transparency layering I have been hoarding this grid transparency from Hambly and decided to layer it under my title for texture and depth.
- Photo collage I've been making a million photo collages lately. I used the Picasa collage feature to create two 4x6 photos that contained 6 photos each. Then I could just glue down the two 4x6s to run the whole width of the 12x12 cardstock. You could do this in Photoshop too and have more control over how the photos are cropped in your collage. Or by hand.
- Magazine and freehand lettering cut outs I love using magazine cut outs because it takes me back to my middle school days. For my title I used a magazine page of a cool illustrated map of Portland that I kept from our trip. I then cut out the title freehand from the magazine tear out. This could be done with magazine, a map, a menu, whatever is fun. The letters contain names of the places we visited, and have the colors I associate very strongly with the Pacific Northwest. Worked out perfectly with the photos. I also used a few more bits from the map as embellishments. Love this. And it was free. I picked up the magazine from a free stand at Powell's Bookstore.
- Repetition of colors I choose yellowish beige as a neutral background, then some brown to ground the page, with pops of blue and red.
- Hanging and ripping a tag I think I got the idea of tearing off the bottom of it from Tara Whitney's pages, and the idea of hanging it off the top of the page from Ali Edwards. Work well for a subtitle or the date. It also breaks up the square lines a little.
- Clustering embellishments I'm not a big buyer of embellishment so often I create some from bits of paper, stamps, tags, staples, etc. Clustering them in one spot rather than spreading them out helps focus the page.
Here's another page where I used some of the same techniques. Particularly, clustering, a freehand letter, and photo collage.
Journaling: Oh my lands little one. This was the trip home where we really got the time to bond with E and get to know her vivacious personality. Impromptu photo shoot with Aunt Sara. She worked it!
What techniques do you love? Please share!
I've been playing around a new medium - encaustic paints. Encaustic paints are a combination of beeswax and damar resin. Since sometime last year I have been slowing reading up on them and ordering or finding supplies to make my own paint. I love all things bees (minus the stings) so this art form really interested me. You can buy the pre-made and tinted paints from a company or on Etsy but I seem to always take the messy route and wanted to make my own. Plus, it's cheaper.The thing about encaustics is that there is a little bit of danger involved because the fumes can be harmful, and making the paints and using them involves applying the right amount of heat as you lay on and fuse layers of the paints. People use an iron, a heat gun or even a small blow torch. In order to make the paint, I scourged thrift stores for a mini crockpot (which ended up not providing enough heat) and an antique iron without holes on the heat plate to use for fusing layers of the paint (which turned out to be too hot - you can see how the iron melted parts of the photo I mounted in my first piece above). Proper ventilation is really important and kind of a problem for me because we don't have normal windows that would allow me to put in a ventilation fan. After the crockpot failed me, I used the stovetop to melt the wax and even though I used the overhead fan, I think the fumes did bother my lungs a bit for the next week.I also ordered Claudine Hellmuth's DVD on beeswax collage on ebay. She doesn't use the damar resin, just the beeswax, so it technically isn't encaustic but her DVD has some really interesting techniques for layering the wax with photos, craft papers, tissue paper, pen and ink, and oil paint sticks. The bottom piece is a collage I made for Matt. One of his favorite movies is Life Aquatic. Captain Zazzou was pursing a shark but the sentiment is the same. Plus, octopi are beloved by Detroit Red Wings fans. He took the photo at the Detroit Institute of Arts which we both moved. The sea diver and octopus are actually these amazing theatrical puppets made in 1903 by Walter E. Deaves.I really loved the process of making these blocks, so I searched out an art class in encaustics and was really lucky and surprised to find a weekend workshop in the Chicago area with an encaustic artist Sarah Rehmer that was specifically about working with photographs and encaustics. I'm hoping to a learn a bit more about process and how to pursue this art safely. We're making a few pieces over the weekend so I'll share the results when I return.
