In today’s Wednesday Wonder, I’d like to introduce you to Denise Alloca from My Art Adventures. Since I seem to love all things small, I loved her featured video on Donna Downey’s Artist Gang this week. She created a little art journal and shows how she made it from one sheet of paper, and the cover from an empty cereal box. This is a fantastic way to create the backgrounds for a journal, and then have it ready for anything else you’d like to do to complete each page. This basic technique idea will allow you to use supplies you already have on-hand! I have posted two of Denise’s videos below. Enjoy!
If you’re ready for spring, as so many of us are, you’ll love this next video, too. See how she uses pieces of cardboard for some of her mark making, especially the petals of the flowers.
You can see Denise’s entire post with closeups of these little canvases on her blog.
You are welcome to share photos of your own Artful Adventures in our Facebook Group!
I wanted to share a wonderful video tutorial from Sandi Keene. Sandi is one of the members of Art to the 5th, which started the Documented Life Project. The project is wildly popular, and currently has almost 6,500 participants in a Facebook Group. In this video Sandi shares how to use the popular Gelli plate printing technique, without having that particular plate! For paper, even if you don’t have deli paper, you can still use this technique. You may want to try parchment paper, heavy vellum, printer paper… You know that’s the fun of art, it’s an Adventure!
Imagine all the things you could use these flowers on: scrapbook pages, cards, tags, journal pages, mixed media pieces… They lend themselves to all kinds of fun projects!
Enjoy the video and let us know what you make!
Next time, I’ll share a quick way to create these without even getting messy!
Background photo color can really make your photo pop!
Do you ever have trouble selecting a color for the background of a scrapbook page or maybe an art journal page? If you have something that you really want to stand out, your background will really make a difference. Often, we look for colors in a photo to pull out and use the same color or a shade of it, to pull colors from the photo out onto the page, so to speak. However, look what happens when you use a color that really isn’t a highly noticeable color in the photo.
You could argue there is an itsy, bitsy amount of blue in the sky in the background of the photo, yet it really isn’t even the color of blue used on the page background, or that there is blue in her jeans. Maybe you’d be right to think that is why it works. Anyway, there is no doubt about the fact that the little yellow Volkswagen in is picture practically jumps off the page!
Triad Color Scheme
The real key to this color scheme is the fact that when you look at a color wheel, one option for a great color combo is to use a triad color scheme. That is where you use three equidistant points on the color wheel. Take a look at the way this looks in this example, and notice that the triad color scheme has been completed on the page by adding the buttons in that third color. The colors used on the page may be nudged a little one way or the other to get the look you want, but they are close enough that you can see the concept at work.
Notice how there is open space, referred to as “white space” (whether it is white or not!) left at the bottom left. Just because a page is 12″ x 12″ doesn’t mean you need to fill all 144 square inches of the page with everything you can think of!
Next time you really want a photo to stand out, try using a triad color theme, and see how your page turns out! Come share it with us over at the Artful Adventures Facebook Group!
We continue our Artful Adventures today as we look at another way to use a printable download. How do you like the picture for our adventure this week?
My definition of a printable download is one which is ready to print and could be plopped in a frame as is, except for perhaps trimming it. The ones I am using this week are from Stampin’Up!, and come with not only the printable .jpg image, but have the digital stamps/brushes so that you customize colors of elements, change them around or use them on any of your digital projects. Yesterday we worked on one for St. Patrick’s Day, and today we have one that is not just word art, but has a sweet little picture.
Let’s take a look at what we are starting with today.
This is a very sweet piece which is certainly framable as is. However, around here, we like to kick it up a notch! So let’s grab a fine tip black pen and just add some doodles on this piece after we print it! We are only going to add a little definition to the larger elements, and let the more fine line work stay in the background, kind of like a piece of background paper on a card or scrapbook page.
Once again, I want to stress that it doesn’t have to be perfect! Like our friend Joanne Sharpe says, “Perfectly imperfect!” If it needed it to stay perfect you would just leave it as it came off the printer. Just try your hand on a little bit of doodling, if you haven’t. If you have, you may not have thought of giving yourself a headstart by using something straight off the printer!
Next, I just added a bit of a shadow to some of the lettering with a light, warm gray marker. I wish I would have used a smaller tip marker, but…. it’s done. Nobody is really going to be up close and examining it with a magnifying glass. If they are, and they don’t like it, they should just make one of their own to admire their own self-imposed perfection!
This next photo is up close and personal. Take a look and notice how imperfect it is. (I have to say, I never in a million years would have dreamed I would be telling people to take a close look at something I did to take special note of how imperfect it was!) There are finer tipped pens that may have been more appropriate for the doodling on this, yet they weren’t handy at the moment I wanted to work on this. Remember when you were young and liked to color and doodle? It’s still fun!
Try your hand at a project like this and come post it on the Artful Adventures Facebook Group! We would love to see what you are up to!
We continue our Artful Adventures today as we look at another way to use a printable download. How do you like the picture for our adventure this week?
