Wednesday Art

Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. 

I realized that I've made several pages for Elle's challenge at Art Journal Journey  that I wouldn't have time to share if I procrastinated, so for the next few days I have some Books, Cats and Tea  journaling to show you. 

Today's page is one that took me  several steps to get through before I liked it and thought it was finished. 

I started by first stamping this kitty in the window image in the middle of my paper. This is an oldie rubber stamp that I just love. My black ink isn't very dark anymore, and when I stopped to get a new ink pad the store didn't even have any. (They had a lot of blank spots along the wall, and I'm guessing they were in the process of putting out new merchandise, hopefully not getting rid of all their stamping ink.) To darken up my stamped image I  used some grey and black markers and doing that even gave the window frame a little more depth. 

Then I watercolored the background, thinking I was going to give this page a sunset/sunrise look.   That idea went (hee-hee) out the window because when I added the sunset colors the  page was still too flat.  I drew in some lines to see if that helped (they didn't), and  I added some colored paint pen dots that did nothing for the page either.  By then I really disliked this page and almost called it quits.

But I didn't give up. I thought about painting over the background. Instead I decided to (first) add some ripped pieces of black washi tape.  The good thing about washi tape is I could pull it off if I needed to. Surprisingly, I liked it now. I picked up the scalloped border scrap off my desk and made a curtain. Finally I added the quote to remind me of how  making art can be as complicated as life. And that they are both so much easier if everything is simple.

And here's a tag I made for Michele's silhouette tag challenge at Tag Tuesday.  It looks pretty large in this first photo, but you can see in the second photo that it is an actual tag and not a full page. (This is a small journal 5.5 x8.5 inches).

I had a piece of cardboard just the right size for a tag. I covered it with some colorful printed paper and also some word printed paper. I then took blue ink over the exposed cardboard and the word printed paper so the background would be more consistent. 

I finished by die cutting the dancers and making a frame from 2 different sized oval dies. Finally I added this Art by Marlene quote.

That's all for me today. I hope your week is going well.