Journal Covers Collaged

I showed these two journal book covers a post or so ago and at that time showed you how I made the strange spidery names for them online. You have to be on a computer to use that website (iPad won't open it). Probably a flash player or something involved.

Anyway the two journals were purchased at Office Depot (hard covers) and the covers backgrounds are canvas I cut out in the size to fit the covers. I did not glue it onto the books until the covers were done and I was happy with them. I used watercolors and fluid acrylics for colored places on them. I used injet transfer for Maddy's photo on the right side and I just glued on black and white injet photos on Alex's. I used acrylic medium for the glue. I think if you click on the image it will enlarge.

Both of these will be graduation gifts and their cards and checks will be tucked inside. I am thinking of photocopying a few idea pages from my Journaling book and putting them inside just to give them some ideas of outside-the-box ways that this journal could be used. I am going to suggest that if they want to collage in items like photos or tickets stubs, etc that first they glue two pages together to give the page more stability. Just using a glue stick I think. It would be cool to take yarn and a needle and sewing around the edges of some of the pages too...stuff like that. OR this could simply be a written journal. Alex is 18 and graduating from high school and Maddy is 22 and graduating from college.

Note: on Maddy's there is picture of Miss Piggy. She's my idol! (hahahaha).

I am now in the process of beginning to pack up my studio for the long and circuitous trip back to the north woods (from FL). Sigh. Happens every spring about this time. So my posts will be from my iPad as I travel along after May 3.

Collage/mixed media journal covers

As I mentioned in my previous blog...I am currently kind of "into" reading and trying out various kinds of multi media for journal covers.

This inside pages of this journal are already completed and it is a small landscape moleskin that I've worked on over a period of two years. All travel journal entries...mostly watercolor and ink. The journal cover is (like Julie's before me) done on a piece of artist canvas and finished off with a coat of acrylic medium. The slight figure you see ghosted near the center is actual a black and white photo of Marjorie Rawlins (who I mentioned in the previous post). Then I used maps, tickets, stamps, feathers, and stamping. All the color is fluid acrylic but watercolor could have been used if I had done the color before I put on the acrylic gel medium which resists watercolor.

Now...these are two journals side by side (left for Alex and right for Maddy) two of my grandkids graduating soon. The names I made with a fun website called "scribbler". When I finished the scribble art, I took a "screen shot" of the art and pulled if off onto the desktop. Then pulled it back into a blank Word document, printed it out and watercolored it and cut it out.

Click here for the scribbler site. Follow the simple directions.

The journals are bound journals (from Office Depot). I would have liked to do something hand made but there is not time for that right now. The white is again, canvas...such a nice textured background. I haven't glued anything down yet. I am in the process of going through old photographs and ephemera. Trying to decide what would look fun. Alex is 18 and Maddy is 22. Setting off on the journey of life.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

What a lovely day to visit a "cracker" Florida home. The author of The Yearing and Cross Creek lived just about an hour north of where I spend my winters in central Florida.

Cross Creek Florida is just north of Ocala.

Marjorie (although not a native of FL) became a Floridian in the true sense of the word. She came in 1928. Her home and the grounds of the orchard and farm are now an historic State Park. The tours are interpreted by people who have grown up in this area and authentic stories that have been passed down are shared. It's a wonderful place to visit. Since I had taken the tour before...while my guests toured...I sketched with chickens and roosters scrambling around my feet! Her 1940 Oldsmobile is still parked in the carport.