An Accordion Book Giveaway

I took a piece of watercolor paper and cut it in half and made two little accordion books. I covered the paper with pieces of torn paper, maps, journaled and old book pages, tissue and music paper. I used joint compound with a stencil to give it more of a raised effect. Joint compound is a lot cheaper than heavy gesso and it goes a lot further. I sprayed the paper with several spray inks, added a homemade stamp, washi tape and doodled with some paint markers and gel pens. Here's the backside of one of them. Here is another one. and again, the backside. Can you tell I love these colors or should I say this color combination? So I'm thinking that since I am approaching the 3/4 mark on my blog in terms of followers, I am going to give away one of these accordion books. I will give the 75th person that joins to follow my blog here and goes here me one of these books. Please send me comment with your snail mail address if you are the 75th person. I will mail internationally if you like/want the book. I haven't been to the party for several weeks so I'm headed over there. If you haven't been there do check it out. You'll find wonderful art and community. One more thing I wanted to share. Look what sweetness I got in the mail recently from "Fuzzie Fingers" in the United Kingdom. I love the card and her art. You can see more of it by going to the party. Thanks for stopping by.

The Smash Book Overhaul -Part 2

I'm going to show you these pages a bit at a time because I wanted to explain in some cases what was done. Here's the inside front cover. ....... some doodling, playing with an assortment of markers and gel pens. Notice the mandala on the index card which is glued down. Remember ICAD, index card a day? It's coming up in June again. The next page is sort of a flap page. I took bits of paper I altered using Citrasolv , which is a natural cleaner. Pages with photos from a National Geographic magazine were soaked and or sprayed in/with Citrasolv for various amounts of time and voila! YOu get many different new images. It is a messy process but if you have some time and patience you've gotta try it at least once. I have often left disposable aluminum pans soaking for days with a dozen strips and forgotten about them only to return and have the liquid dried up and the paper stuck together. But peeling them apart promises great surprises. I also have left them hanging outside letting the ink drip off onto the ground or paper and then letting them dry from there. I've also manipulated the ink around with various tools to get patterns, create designs, writing and drawing in to the ink.Pockets and puddles of ink blend and bleed. It's best done in a ventilated area or outside. While the citrus orange leaves the room smelling very nice, it can be overwhelming for some people. Throughout the book you will find bits and pieces of paper made with this technique. I have tried this with other magazines but it doesn't work. The secret is in the ink that Nat'l Geographic uses in printing. I think I discovered washi tape around that same time, so I bordered the page with some washi tape strips. Oh, yes, and there's a bit of a piece of map showing through. Stay tuned for more.

There's Always an ICAD

I tried something new this evening, something new to do with that Gelli Plate. I made some transfer prints on clear packing tape with the gelli plate. This has to be done in layers making sure the paint is dry in between each added layer. That was hard for me because I was very impatient in waiting so I put a little portable fan right on my work to speed up drying. You make marks, whatever you want to add layer upon layer. But the coolest part is laying the clear packing tape across the gelli plate and lifting off what ever was on the plate and seeing it now transferred to the tape. Of course you know where those transfers got transferred to. Index cards, of course. You can view the video posted on 5/24/13 here . I did not have some of the items that was suggested on the video(like Perfect Pearls, but still was fairly happy with my outcome. Here are two more ICADS making me current. I just love washi tape. It's good for saving things in a hurry.I rather like the outcome of this one. In the next several days I want to share some pictures of my friend, Patty's garden. When I went to see her last week, she again took me on a tour, as she does every time I have come to see her. So many things to draw and sketch. So much eye candy!! So, stay tuned for that in the coming days. Thank you for spending some time here and thank you for all your many comments. I hope you are well...........Jo

ICADS Continued

I like doing art on index cards. They're small enough to work on anywhere when having to wait. I like working on several at a time. I threw down some watercolor on these two yesterday morning sitting in the car before work. Got home last night and cut some pages out of my old Morning Pages notebook where I had painted flowers instead of faces and then fell asleep. Tonight I came home from work and finished them up by adding various pieces of washi tape. Here are Icads day 6 and 7. I'll have to dig around and find the picture of the little book I made with some of last years ICADS. Thanks for visiting and thanks as always for your comments. I'm going to the Daisy Yellow Flickr group to check out what other's have done with their ICADS..............Jo