Painting with Perfect Pearls

It's a Perfect Pearls Mandala Monday with extra shimmer and shine in my large Dina Wakley Journal from Ranger, which has the thickest and sturdiest cotton rag watercolor paper I've ever used; it's seriously dreamy and will stand up to any amount of paint, water, ink, sprays, gesso... pretty much ANYTHING you can think of.

Did you know you can watercolor with Perfect Pearls Pigment Powders? It's super easy, you don't even need to use Perfect Medium OR set the colors afterwards! Just add a bit of the powder to some clean water in a palette, mix it up well... et voila! You've just made your own pearlescent watercolor. Combine shades together and make custom colors, or use them as they come. For soft subtle tomes, mix just a little powder in; for bolder hues, add more pigment.

This mandala was painted using the newest additions to my Perfect Pearls collection: Iris, Turquoise, Sunflower Sparkle, Blush and Perfect Bronze. Outlines added with Letter It Fineliners.

MM01: Butterfly

It's a Magnificent Monarch Mandala Monday thanks to this beautiful glossy butterfly photo snipped from the back cover of a magazine last year and saved, "to do something with"; in this case, the "something" turned out to be a mostly symmetrical mandala in coordinating colors in my large Dina Wakley Media Journal from Ranger.

I hope your first full week of 2025 is off to a warm(ish) and wonderful start! ♥

Will It Go Round in Circles? (YES!)

It's a Multi-Tag Mandala Monday in my Dina Wakley Kraft Journal* from Ranger. I made the shapes with Letter It Fineliners, filled in soft color with pencils, and added a few extra patterned paper circles in the background. Wishing you a happy and productive week! ♥

*The 6x6 Kraft Journal is currently out of print, but there are lots of other options in kraft, in square, and well, lots more choices; you should check them out! ;)

Gourd-geous

It's a Smashing Pumpkin Mandala Monday doodled with all three sizes of Ranger's Black Letter It Fineliners in my Dina Wakley Kraft 6x6 Journal. Hope your Halloween Week will be full of fun and treats! ♥

Journal Cover

I've been working off and on in my Dina Wakley 6x6 Kraft Journal from Ranger for several months, but I hadn't gotten around to decorating the cover... until NOW! 

Of course I raided all of my favorite Dina Wakley MEdia goodies: Fly High Stamps, Collage Sparks, Transparencies, Typed Ledgers and Collage Paper; not to mention a bit of Marine Gloss Spray mixed with White Gesso, which added color to the tissue and transparency pieces as well as adhering them to the journal cover.

And now it's even more inspiring to work INSIDE the journal, so I think I will!

New Art Journal

I will take any excuse to sit and make a random collage, and the christening of my brand new Dina Wakley 6x6 Kraft Journal from Ranger is definitely the perfect time to combine some of my favorite vintage goodies (sheet music, nature illustrations) and some of my favorite Dina elements (Collage Paper, Typed Ledgers) and even a brand new Simon Hurley create. stamp set (Watercolor Flowers).

I made a background of torn, strongly patina-ed, sheet music layered over a few different ledgers, then added bits of collaged script on top. I inked up some of the larger Watercolor Flowers with a combination of Oxide Inks (Prize Ribbon, Wilted Violet and Chipped Sapphire) then misted the stamps lightly with water to get sort of a blurry, faded look... like vintage fabric. 

I put the tissue paper lady on top, having selectively inked and shadowed her face; then added a cluster of white flowers from a gardening book and a hummingbird from one of those free giveaway calendars that my mom always saves for me. 

I could easily write more about this spread, but the fact is, my lovely little journal has 63 more blank pages and I could be adorning them, so I'll sign off for now!

Dina Wakley + Perfect Pearls = Journal Joy

Ranger's Perfect Pearls add a beautifully soft shimmery effect to any project. My art journal is my favorite place to experiment with new (to me) products and techniques. Since there are so many ways to use Perfect Pearls, and they look different on every shade of paper, I think I could fill an entire volume! I haven't quiiiiite done that yet, but today on the Ranger Project Page you can follow along as I use them three different ways with Dina Wakley's beautiful "Everyone is Welcome" stamp set, in my Dina Blue Edition Journal.

I'd love for you to head on over and check it out!

Collaged Mandala Monday

It’s time to FACE a new week… with a collage mandala in my Dina Wakley Blue Journal from Ranger. Dina Wakley Media Collage Paper layered over Dina’s Typed Ledgers; with punched heart and circle accents of vintage paper and flowers from a falling apart book of Cath Kidston fabric illustrations. Enhanced by lots of glorious Peat Moss Archival from Wendy Vecchi. 

Inspired by the collage on the facing page from a couple of weeks ago:

Windows and Flowers

Playing in my Dina Wakley Media Blue Edition Journal from Ranger. I love how the windows from Dina's beautiful "Everyone Is Welcome" stamp set look stamped in Wendy Vecchi's Peat Moss Archival atop a vintage paper collage that I was not in love with; I matted them on dark green patterned paper to make them stand out better. Collage background built from Dina's Typed Ledgers layered with Gridded Collage Paper; then finished off with some roses cut from an older, falling-apart book advertising Cath Kidston fabrics. I feel a little bad leaving that heavyweight cotton paper un-altered since it handles paint, ink, stain and literally any type of wet media one throws at it so superbly; maybe it'll see a bit more action when I work on the facing page...

MM50: Funky Flakes

It's a Soft and Snowy Mandala Monday... that is, the MANDALA is soft and snowy, whilst thankfully the Monday is sunny, clear and cold. Hope that the week before Christmas (or the week OF Hanukkah) is treating you well! 

Ranger's Letter It Fineliners plus a few Zig Dot Markers

 and a tiny bit of watercolor in my Dina Wakley Blue Edition Journal. 

Scribble Sticks!

It's a softly colorful Mandala Monday made with Dina Wakley MEdia Scribble Sticks in my Dina Blue Edition Journal. 

Like most mixed media adventures, this was composed in a few sessions, to allow drying time (and occasionally thinking time, lol) between steps. I drew and colored the basic shapes with wet Scribble Sticks (from Set Three, which has the cool metallic shades) on one of the bright white super-heavy watercolor paper pages in the journal (there are also blue denim and creamy colored burlap pages). After it was completely dry, I added assorted stencil patterns (including Tim Holtz's Bubble and Flourish Patterns) in coordinating Distress Oxide Inks and outlined with a .01 Letter It Fineliner. To finish up, I added a few additional details with colored pens and a tiny bit of handstitching around the central circle.

If you've never used Scribble Sticks, I highly recommend watching a Dina Wakley video or two to see how they work and get a few ideas. Actually, I highly recommend Dina's videos to everyone because she is just such a joy to watch when she's creating! In fact, here's a great demo that shows the Blue Journal's variety of page styles and ways to use them.

TN Update

My friend and fellow SOS Alum, Mary Juska (aka Mimi, She's Crafty) is one of the most talented stamp carvers I've ever seen. I am constantly admiring her carves on her Instagram account, @MillwoodStudioArt and last week she sent me some of her winged designs stamped on library cards. I'd love to tell you I'm making them into gorgeous cards to send my friends, but mostly I plan to hoard them and use them for art journaling. To that end, I made this quick collagey-page: 

Here's a closeup, just because. I added torn vintage paper to the background, as well as a strip of White Lace Tape, which I dabbed with Spun Sugar Distress Ink (since the tape is made of very thin, slightly shiny plastic, the ink "sticks" to the paper behind, without tinting the tape). But really the stamps are the stars:

As long as my Traveler's Notebook was in photography mode, I snapped a pic of the March page in my 2022 Monthly Insert. I like being able to look back on all my papercrafting projects for the month.

It is quite a dull grey and rainy Sunday here in central NJ, so I think I will go and make something COLORFUL!!! ♥

(not quite) mandala monday

technically speaking, it won't be mandala monday for almost another twelve hours, but i just finished listing some fun mini sketchbooks and watercolor sketchbooks that i made. they're in my etsy shop, just enough stuff, and i really couldn't wait to show them off!

the books are different sizes, shapes and have various paper types, so click the caption beneath each photo to read the complete details in the listing!

orangeade mandala journal

this one is just over 4x6", has blank, white, light-cardstock pages, and a hand-drawn, ink-colored mandala split between the front and back covers

blueberry mandala mini sketchbook

a smaller book, just about 5" square, this one's pages are made of canson mixed media sketchbook paper, which is my favorite type of general-use paper and it's great for collage, sketching, etc; you can even do a bit of watercoloring if you don't get too very watery, lol

 

rainbow mandala sketchbook

the biggest book of this lot, it's nearly 5x7" and has pages of the same mixed media sketchbook paper as above

pink lemonade mandala watercolor sketchbook

just about 5" square, this one is filled with strathmore cold press watercolor paper, which is a really nice, middle quality choice-- sturdy enough to stand up to real watercolor painting, but not so fancy that you can't just play without feeling guilty

sunflower mandala watercolor sketchbook

very similar to the one above, but a slightly more rectangular page. both of the last two are top-bound because i find that sometimes i'm fighting the binding when it's on the side, so i thought i'd see if this helps (and i think it really does!)

♥♥♥

i do hope you're having a wonderful day and that you'll get to spend at least part of it doing something creative and FUN, darlings!

♥♥♥

new class schedule...

is posted on the paper anthology website, woohoo! so if you're in or around central nj* check it out, won't you? there are some wonderful classes in may and june that i'm not teaching, and two pretty good ones (at least, i hope so!) that i am. multiple dates and times, so consult the class info page for details! meanwhile, here are my official pics and blurbs:

Layer Palooza**

Join Lauren for a fun and funky exploration of mixed media collage techniques. We’ll build three 5×7″ torn paper backgrounds, then add texture, color, doodles and –of course– bling! We’ll ask and answer a lot of questions, such as, “Does texture paste go under or over ink?” (YES!) and “Did I just ruin this?” (NO!!!) We’ll play and experiment and yes… we’ll make mistakes …then figure out how to fix them! Bring your spirit of adventure and wear washable clothing! :) Please bring you basic class kit, including a good GLUESTICK! (Lauren will have plenty of supplies for everyone, but students are welcome to bring their own favorite collage ingredients, ink colors, gelatos or stencils if they’d like to. You may also work in your art journal or sketchbook if you’d prefer.)

Washi Wonderland 2***

Join Lauren and her amazing (or appalling?!) collection of washi tape, where we’ll prove it’s hip to be square by making two 6×6″ cards with their own uniquely gorgeous handmade envelopes. We’ll combine tape with a little bit of vintage paper and a whole lot of clever cutting (none of it by hand, though!) to create two cards perfect for dads, grads or just about anyone else. Make your cards using exactly the same ingredients as the samples… or branch out and experiment with different colors and patterns! Please bring your basic class kit. If you have an Envelope Punch Board please bring it along! (If you don’t have an Envelope Punch Board, Lauren apologizes in advance for the fact that you’ll TOTALLY WANT ONE after this!!!) :)

*paper anthology is located in morris county, nj; at 717 us highway 46, in kenvil, to be exact; here's a mapquest map of that location!
**yes, i make up my own class names; yes, i'm horrible at it, sorry!
***told ya i'm horrible at names! :)

painty and colorful

once again i find that i've got a backlog of things made for various prompts set by sisters with heart in art, the instagram art group i'm in. we've been having a ball, choosing a new theme each wednesday, and everyone is welcome to join in! this week it's RAINBOW, so i broke out the cool set of frixion color pens that gina gave me for a marathon doodling session!

last week's prompt was PEACOCK. i love the palette and the shapes, so i did some watercoloring with lots and lots (and LOTS!) of machine stitching on top.

the week before that, we had CUP. i had intended to draw a traditional teacup and saucer. i'm not sure how it turned into a fanciful lotus teacup, but it did, so i just went with it:

finally i have a few random colorburst paintings, sort of vaguely back to the RAINBOW theme, but a lot looser. some wavy striped circles...

...and some random paint splodges that i doodled upon... very messy, but fun.

one more colorburst painting, this one is loosey-goosey flowers in kind of a pam garrison(ish) style, just playing around.

it seems like i cannot get enough color in the winter, especially when there are still such mountains of snow piled everywhere! hope you are keeping well, getting enough vitamin c AND enough art play time, darlings! ♥♥♥

inky AND collagey AND stencilly!!!*

the current theme at sisters with heart in art was set by *ME* (woohoo!) and it's "CIRCLES" so if you have an idea for a card, ATC, art journal page, photograph, sketch, or... well... whatever... take a pic of it, and post it to our instagram group with the hashtag #sisterswithheartinart so we can all come and love it! here's what i did; not at all what i thought i was doing at the time** but i think i actually love it more than the idea which was in my head, so that's nice, right?!

the central image is a stencil... carolyn dube's "opera house" by stencil girl products, actually, and i'm somewhat obsessed with it. most of the rest of the images were cut from magazines, though there are a few bits of music paper that were used to blot something inky or finish up tinted modelling paste or both-- it turns out that even the "rejects" of those are nice when you cut them up... so HOORAY i now have an excuse to save even more and weirder bits of paper!!! :0

would you like an excuse to play with your art supplies and glue things randomly into a journal??! because sisters with heart in art exist entirely to support you in your quest!!! ♥♥♥

*and YES, those are real words! ok sorta real. you knew what i meant, right? then they're perfectly adequate, lol! 

**tell me i'm not the only one this happens to: you set out with A PLAN and the next thing you know you've used THE PLAN as a blueprint for doing everything except that which was in THE PLAN...? i'm not complaining, i'm just marvelling how my art brain takes over at times, i just hope it doesn't start doing that when i'm driving or paying bills or other activities that aren't ummmmm.... "creativity-friendly"! :)

is there a 12-step program for stencil addicts??

...not that i'd *GO* you understand... i was just wondering. i think i'm past the point of no return, actually. as proof i offer my journal page for this week's sisters with heart in art prompt, which is "hues of blue":

can you guess how many different stencils i used on this? (if your answer is, "too many" then just scroll down, it gets better, lol) let's count them, shall we: 1. my own handcut buddha from over the summer; 2. heidi swapp butterflies; 3. stencil girl "dots and dashes"; 4. folk art large quatrefoil; 5 and 6. tim holtz flourishes and flowery lace. ok, so six... that's not too many, is is... nahhhhhhh... not even a whole baseball team, for pete's sake!

here's last week's SWHIA prompt, "thankful" for which i didn't use any stencils, just a handwriting background and a sort of tattoo-style design i drew because i've always loved that old school ed hardy look:

this next one we're back to stencils... but only ONE; it's called "1700's building" and it's also from stencil girl, who make these utterly brilliant 9x12" stencils where you can use the whole thing and fill a page or layer it in segments or... whatever. for this one, i was totally "enabled" by my instagram friend saskia, who used it soooooo magnificently that i HAD TO have it! (had to!) next time i think i'll put it over a less-busy background; but i just wanted to have a "play" and this page was an abandoned collage that had a few scraps of vintage paper, a little bit of leftover colorburst, and some handwriting. (i no longer tear out "reject" pages from my sketchbook... i know that at some point i will add to them or cover them up, or use them to test paint colors or... well, i just feel like it adds something to how i work/play if i leave EVERYTHING in there...)

so what are ♥YOU♥ addicted to right now? and would you give it up, if you could, or do you --like me-- find it more fun to wallow and enjoy? discuss. :) :) :)

what to do with leftover colorburst

but first let me essplain: yes, colorburst can be used in its powdered state and you can do many fun and interesting things to get serendipitous "bursts" of color... hence the name. but one of my favorite ways to use it is just to put a small amount of each color into a compartmentalized palette --ideally with a few empty pans between each, so i can mix in the adjoining ones to get more shades-- then wet each color separately and use them exactly like regular watercolor paints. which is how i wind up with leftovers. because once it's wet, you have to use it up. so i do.

another cool thing about it already being wet is that you can get awesome "wet into wet" blendy techniques. on the other hand, you can add the colors one at a time, let them dry, and layer over with another color later. i did a little bit of both on these fish:

but most of the time, the "using up" process is happening at the end of the night when i've already worked on my primary project, so there's a pretty good chance i will not have another GREAT IDEA or the energy to embark on one. so sometimes i just paint lines. does that seem boring? well, maybe, but it's the good kind of boring, imo... the kind that's just repetitive enough to be sort of soothing... which is awesome just before bedtime. plus, just as the majority of drawing is about line control,a big chunk of painting is about brush control and knowing which brush to use when. and lines are great for that. they make nice backgrounds, too:

sometimes i only have a little colorburst left over, or only a few colors. i've been known to paint squares or circles (or wedges or stripes or... whatever) on a big piece of watercolor paper over several evenings, until it's full. it can take a while, but there's no statute of limitations on watercolor, lol. when it's finally finished, sometimes i stencil over the top, or use it as a background. sometimes i just go crazy with a really juicy pen and call it done. :)

speaking of done, i think i am. so i bid you a fond farewell and a happy artsy day, darlings! ♥

what to do with leftover stuff

more sketchbook/art journal catch-up for you today. all of these are a bit random, but the thing they have in common is they're what i did with supplies leftover from other things i had worked on that day, or sometimes the past couple of days. this doesn't necessarily produce an awesome finished pieces, but it's interesting as an exercise. and it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more fun than cleaning up, lol!

ok, so leftover gesso: i was at the end of the container, actually, which had got a bit gloppy and it was hard to reach at the very bottom. so i poured the remains onto a paper plate and then just swiped it onto random book pages --with a brush, with an old gift card, with my fingers-- in whatever designs seemed interesting. i have a bunch of these now, that i can grab whenever i need a base. this one wound up underneath my drawing of "autumn leaves" for 365 doodles with johanna fritz:

leftover modelling paste, sewing pattern and aloha lady. oh and some book paper, too: these were all from different days; i tend to let vintage paper offcuts sit in a pile near my work table, so i can grab them when i have extra paint, modelling paste, embossing paste, colorburst... whatever... it seems a shame to waste it, so i'll use whatever stencil or tool is already dirty and just swipe on the leftovers. sometimes the results sit for ages, sometimes they get tossed out, sometimes there's another leftover item the next night that seems like it'd work well. this page got a little bit of all those techniques, lol: 

leftover torn paper, acrylic paint, tinted modelling paste and sequins: another multi-night scenario-- i used the paper scraps to make a background. i put some waaaaaaay-too-bright blue quatrefoils on another night. i put the white hexies on another night. in between there were various stencils with distress inks and some schoolbus yellow acrylic paint that seared my retinas. again, i stress that these pieces are more about process and seeing what will happen after the next layer and the next... but having said that, they sometimes really grow on me!

this one's kind of a hybrid leftover, it's a rejected background and an orphaned mandala: the background was my first attempt at a home for the "aloha" collage i posted a few days ago. it was way too dark, and the flourishes didn't show up much, and the hearts were, ummmmm... UGH... etc, etc. meanwhile the completely unrelated mandala was painted freehand on a scrap of watercolor paper with leftover colorburst watercolors one night. and i liked it but... whaddaya do with HALF a mandala?? so both of these just sat for a while, until i saw this awesome post of francisa nunes' and i thought, "AHA!" so i combined them. and i really like them together much more than either one on its own:

so what do *YOU* do with leftovers? save 'em? toss 'em? keep the ones that seem promising until you run out of space? i'm always interested (you could say NOSY lol!) in other peoples' art-making habits, so i'd love to hear what you do! ♥

aloha, darlings!

no, alas, i'm not in hawaii, but a couple of weeks ago our sisters with heart in art instagram prompt was "ALOHA" (yes, it was my turn to pick, how did you guess, lol?) so i made a super-fun hawaii-themed collage, with some handpainted letters. this is one of those ideas that i think you'll be seeing again --probably on cards--because those "custom" alphabets* are just soooooooooo much fun to make!

last week we celebrated "THINGS WITH FINS" so obviously i drew half a mermaid! ok, yeah, i actually had a waaaaaaaaay more sensible idea about fish but then i saw this shirt on etsy. for the record, i'm not in love with the finished piece on this one... (i feel like the quote and the illustration are fighting each other for attention; also i colored in the letters with water-based marker before painting the background so OF COURSE everything smeared all over the place) ...but for me the whole point of working in a sketchbook is to practice, to try out ideas, and to look at what i've done and be able to evaluate: what do i like or dislike, what could i do better, what was so much fun i can't wait to do it again, etc; so i'm not having a moan here, just sharing my process! :) one of my collage/art journal heorines, kelly kilmer, recently wrote a great blog post about this very topic that i highly recommend reading.

this week we're all about "FLOURISHES" and no, this time it wasn't me who set the prompt, but you know i'm all over it!!! i started off by doodling the word  --i often begin with a bit of lettering (my drawing "comfort zone") when i'm not sure what i want to do; it seems like if my pen is moving sometimes it'll jump start an idea better than if i'm just sitting there-- and it occurred to me that "flourish" is a verb as well as a noun, so in addition to swirly bits i've got some flowers in there, too.

we'd love for you to join us on any of these prompts; we start a new theme every wednesday, but the old ones never expire, and there's no need to "catch up" or play along every week. just post your work on instagram with the hashtag #sisterswithheartinart and we'll come along to ooooooh and ahhhhhh at your creations! ♥

*i didn't think to take photos as i was working, but the basic process for the "ALOHA" letters is pretty simple: trace your favorite chipboard or plastic alphabet onto watercolor paper... add a pattern and/or paint to each letter... wait for them to dry and cut them out... mount on foam tape over the project of your choice whilst grinning like a loon. :) :) :)