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lunanista

~ Standing up for sanity (mine anyway) through art and humor.

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Tag Archives: altered art book

Completed Altered Journal

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Journal 52

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

acrylic paint, altered art book, Altered book, Journal 52

Lots of finished pages for the journal. I have already given it to the wonderful young man and he was so happy. It is so wonderful when a handcrafted gift is appreciated. This process has really rejuvenated my personal journaling practice, too.

Jacobs journal any path

Jacobs journal life is simpleJacobs journal happy

Jacobs journal touchJacobs journal hands

The book that I altered was about the senses and I had fun playing with the different headings. This orange page has a lot of interesting textures on it and I put some of the paint on the drawings of the hands on the facing page to go along with the idea of touching the paint. This layout for the “Smell” page is one of my favorites. It is created with a stencil, a sponge, and some black gesso then a white pen for journaling lines.

Jacobs journal smell

Jacobs journal color blocks of opportunityThis page is another one of my favorites. I wrote some favorite quotes on the pages and I hope they are legible as I’m not really up to typing them each in today.

I’m having some technical difficulties. So I think I’m going to wrap this post up and post the rest of the pages another day.

Raise Your Words

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

acrylic paint, altered art book, art journal, collage, handwriting, Journal 52, lettering, Rumi

journal

I have been making progress in both my altered art journal and Jacob’s. Here is his title page. This page in his book inspired one in my own!

journal0001

today I want to

Here are my journal pages from Monday. The page above and the two pages below are originally pages that have macro photos of butterfly wings and they make such a fabulous backdrop for whatever I am putting over the top. It is one of the great features of altered art books to incorporate what is already there. I had done some of the paint layers on the pages below on previous days. I have increased my use of leftover paint on stencils and brushes to make marks on future pages so as not to waste the paint. It has led to some interesting backgrounds (like the paper flowers background – that had been created over the course of a few days, but just a few minutes each time.) I am including a scanned copy of my journaling page because this has become my favorite form of “handwriting” in my art journal. It allows me to express private thoughts in a way that I can then publicize the product. I also really like how it looks. I exaggerate any loops and go back into them with short and wide lower letters. On the facing page I did some more traditional journaling with acrylic paint.

blue and orange 001

journal

And this page includes one of the many quotes I love by Rumi:

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Jacobs book layers of tissue

The images and words on the page are not completely obscured by the layers of different papers I layered over the  top of it. I used matte medium to make an interesting surface to write on. I also included a single layer from a paint filled napkin in the collage. I really love this technique. There can be so many layers of colors, images, and meaning.

Have a beautiful day.

New Altered Art Journal

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acrylic paint, altered art book, Altered book, art journal, eye, vision

I am making an new altered art journal for a young person I know who is soon to go off into the world. He is very talented in music and writing and I hope it will support his creativity. So here are 3 of the pages I worked on today. Some fun synchronicity found its way in.

Jacobs book vision

I really like how the eyes from the book page “peek” through the gesso and paint.

Jacobs book staff paperJacobs book the eye

I hope he finds it to be an inspiring and entertaining journal.

Building with Paper

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52

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Tags

altered art book, Altered books, art journal, cherries, cherries with pits, collage, Elsie de Wolfe, gratitude, hostess gift, Liquitex paint pens, painting, painting workbook, paper art, quotes, simple syrup, Watercolor pencils

art deco 007

I am back in my altered book journal and decided to document the process of this week’s entry as I’m experimenting for a larger piece. I started out with the back of a piece of watercolor paper from last week on the left hand page. I found this quote on the blog Hey It’s Frances To and it really struck a chord with me. I really like what she has done with her lettering portfolio, too. So when I saw that the Journal 52 prompt was Positive Change we had another week with synchronicity! Hooray! My lettering is a little half hazard as I have not been practicing it very much lately, but I do like how the page came out overall. While my vision problems continue, I am finding different things I can do to express my creativity and make my life interesting and hopefully add to the beauty in the world. The flowers were cut out from a scrap of leftover map that I like to use as a metaphor for my intentions for where I am headed. I used marker in the middle and blue watercolor pencil around the outside of each flower.

The right hand page started with a few slaps of the paint that I’m using in our unplanned bathroom remodel. The shade of green is called Peter Pan and my son just finished working as the music director for our children’s theater production of Peter Pan Jr. It was just another funny coincidence that we chose that color – not intentional. The latex wall paint was not adhering well to the page so I used a credit card to spread a little gesso on the page. I added some blue acrylic paint for my sky. My cityscape was inspired by a project in the book The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy (now listed in my Reference and Recommendations page.)

art deco 001

I liked how the blue didn’t really cover the top of the page and I really covered the bottom of the page with the green. I used a tip from the Painting Workbook and drew into the wet paint with a watercolor pencil, but it didn’t work very well. I don’t know if that was because it was latex wall paint instead of acrylic paint. I will try again another day. I really did like how the scratched out flowers went through to the original colors on the page. I tried a few different brands of watercolor pencils and the Inktense ones left a little color, but none of the other ones did.

art deco 003

I decided that I wanted to make an Art Deco building in my cityscape so I cut different papers into shapes that were Art Deco inspired and I painted them in colors that made me think of Art Deco. One of the techniques that I used that I was pretty happy with was putting the long thin strips down the center of the band-aid looking pieces to make “windows” on them at regular intervals. I recently got a set of 3 Liquitex paint markers and I am really loving them. They were great for adding details to my “building.” I played around with the different paper shapes until I came up with a building that I found interesting. I did some journaling with a white pen on the blue sky and glued everything in place. I painted the flowers with the orange Inktense watercolor pencil after experimenting with a few other media and I drew some leaves and grass with green markers. I learned a lot in the process of making this page and I hope this has been instructional for you too!

art deco 004

On a totally unrelated note…

I made a cherry simple syrup without pitting the cherries. We got 7 pounds of cherries from our CSA and that is a LOT of cherry pits. For the last pound or so I was looking for something to do that would not require removing the pits and I had a hard time finding anything. All the simple syrup recipes I found required pit removal. I decided to try it with them in and it worked beautifully. So here is my version:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

a bunch of cherries without stems but with pits

Simmer everything at a low heat for at least 10 minutes and then squish through a sieve. Keep the syrup in the fridge for as long as it lasts. It is fabulous in lemonade or iced tea. I don’t know what the shelf life is because mine doesn’t last more than 2 weeks. It also makes a lovely housewarming gift or summer party hostess gift.

art deco 006

I hope you have a delicious day!

Vivid Idyll Refurb Collage

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Mandalas

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, altered art book, Altered book, Buddhist art, collage, Mandala, Mixed Media, Refurbished Art, Sharpies, Tibetan Art, Tree of Life, Upcycle, Watercolor pencils, Zendala

refurb finished

Here is the completed collage! I have been enjoying other people’s process photos and videos, so I’m including some of them for this piece. I really had fun with this.

Oh, the reconstituted collage poem was inspired by my blogging friend Claudia McGill. It reads

This observation is grounded

and

at first did not move her thus

I had a strange feeling

and kept walking.

and drifting among other souls

floating up

That complemented my mandala montage nicely, I thought. The funny thing is that the text is from a book I didn’t like and one I haven’t read. The larger text is from a more than 100-year-old copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. She was reluctant to give me a “ratty old book” for a gift and I finally convinced her that I was very sincerely excited about the prospect of getting my hands on that book to use in my art. The other book was The Goldfinch which is printed on lovely paper and that is my favorite thing about the book. I learned the hard way not to do watercolors on the pages because there would be impolite language in the middle of a white flower (for example) and that was not the mood I was going for at all. That book needed some editing and I have enjoyed cutting the pages up for collage fodder.

So… here is the before photograph. I paid $20 to purchase this piece of “art” from a local gallery to enter their Refurbished Art Contest.

geese and refurb beginnings 008

I like a challenge.

I really liked the girl walking into the painting on the antithesis of the yellow brick road. So I drew some fun mandalas (with my Pigma Micron pens on hot press watercolor paper) that I thought would make the landscape more interesting for her. I have been drawing them many mornings as part of my morning mandala practice. I decided early on to have a tree of life mandala as the centerpiece.

geese and refurb beginnings 009

Then I painted and colored in the mandalas. I have been playing with Prismacolor watercolor pencils in addition to my usual Derwent Inktense pencils and I really like the pallet and effects possible with the different brands. I also used Sharpies for some of the coloring. I also painted some papers of different weights and cut out flowers and leaves for the Tree of Life mandala and decided to use some to decorate the borders.

refurb painted paper shapes tree of life

I cut circles for the collage from the different assembled unpainted papers. I studied languages in college a really long time ago and have my notebooks from language classes (mostly Chinese and Spanish) that I really like to include as well as the aforementioned books. I usually throw in a relevant dictionary page. The page for this piece is “idyl, idyll” and I included that definition right by the girl I left in the picture, because it is her idyl, of course. I also have a page from one of my grandmother’s cookbooks, and a copy of a sheet of music from my son. So I cut circles and arranged them on the circle I traced around my dinner plate onto the print. I used matte medium to attach them.

refurb paper collage

The next step was inspired by the illustrations by Demi. You may recall my Inspiration Board post from earlier this year. That is where the idea for the background for my tree of life mandala was born! So I painted most of the collaged circles blue and went outside the lines so my clouds would be visible beyond the mandala. I also painted the lower portion with a very thin coat green so the papers showed through a little as the “ground” of the tree of life. When the paint was dry I went in and drew a Wheel of Joy and clouds and rocks inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art (a source of inspiration for Demi as well). The rocks are not visible in the photo, but that’s how gel pens are.

refurb painted

and then I put it all together with gel medium!

Here are all of the supplies I used.

supplies

This will be on display at Alter-Ego Studio in lovely Wisconsin. Come to see and/or purchase this piece! Have a beautiful day!

Small Successes and Big Events

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art book, Altered book, art journal, gratitude, Mandala, success

journal 52 mandalas

You can see some of my process for my coloring page illustration as well as the Tree of Life mandala I’m working on. The feather that was on the right hand page made an interesting surface for journaling and this was a great week for it.

The Journal 52 prompt for this week is Small Successes and the fact that I’m halfway through my 100 mandalas is definitely a success to me. The journaling includes some of my mundane thoughts, success, and things for which I am grateful. The biggest event of the past week is that my younger son graduated from high school. My husband’s parents were able to visit from out of state, even though they have some significant health concerns. His brother and family also came. It was nice to spend time with them and to mark this event in my son’s life. I have been working on a large photo collage for the party and that has taken precedence over my more intensive art journaling.

Our house got cleaned and everyone was fed. Those are small successes in the scheme of world events, but are so rewarding. Today I am back to the tree of life and my refurb. I will keep you posted…

Observations and Intentions

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52, Mandalas

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art book, art journal, gratitude, Washi tape

observe blog post 001

The Journal 52 prompt for last week was Observations. My gratitude journal is intended to focus my observations on positive things in my life and I include them in my journal in words and/or images. Framing them with washi tape makes it so much fun. My morning mandala practice fell quickly to the wayside while I was not feeling well. However, this cold and damp Monday morning led me to introspection and a return to the practice. I started a morning mandala last week with a little bit of Spirograph and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I did do some intermittent morning introspection and intention setting some days and I included my mandala work from the last 2 weeks or so. The little colored ones are from my color theory study that I have been working on. I plan to do a post of the whole bunch when I’m done with them. I have a busy day today so I need to get going. I hope you have a beautiful day. Thanks for stopping by.

Celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day and my Mother

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art book, Altered book, art journal, Celtic knot, flowers, gratitude, illustration, Mandala, Spring

circle journaling 001

Today was my mother’s birthday and we took her out for lunch. We really had a nice time. I use pages from my father’s hymnal that is falling apart as one of my symbols for her and the hearts and spaces left by the cutouts represent her. I wrote my daily to do lists in my journal for the Journal 52 prompt of Just Write. I also wrote on my Wabi Sabi Celtic Knot that I posted for the Diva’s Challenge. I did a wrap up of the week on the right hand page with my sketch for my good Celtic knot mandala. I am painting a copy of it in so I will post the finished one when it is done, but here is the  black and white version.

Celtic flowers and shamrocks

Who or what are you celebrating today?

Hawaiian (Aroma)therapy and Wedding Mandalas

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art book, aromatherapy, art journal, bride, collage, flowers, gratitude, gratitude journal, Hawaii, palm tree, watercolor

constructed collage 008 So here is a mandala created from a amalgamation of a whole bunch of ephemera from my trip to Hawaii.  The facing page is a copy of the mandala I created as part of my wedding gift to my friends who got married superimposed over a photo of a banyan tree that I journaled on and a photograph from the sunset my first night in Hawaii.

Here is a closeup of the wedding mandala

anne and john mandala

The theme for week 8 of the Journal 52 Challenge is Aromatherapy. Hawaii is all kinds of therapy. The fresh sea air disguises the fact that you are in a large city. There are flowers and green growing things everywhere. Coming from a place of -10′ to this island paradise is such a relief to the entire body, not just the nose. Seeing great old friends and making wonderful new friends is balm for the soul. Taking hundreds of lovely photographs and collecting lots of fun ephemera is fuel for the creative generators! constructed collage 009 One day I sat at a picnic table on the beach and painted a palm tree while enjoying the sights and sounds of the park around me. Later I journaled on the page. The facing page is composed of some of the flower photos I took and photos of the lovely bride I went to see. She really rocked that dress. The blue hexagons are from a journal page that I painted and then cut out different sized hexagons to carry the same color scheme from the facing page. Here is a closeup of the bride mandala

constructed wedding collage

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to go to Hawaii. I’m grateful to my friends, Anne and John for inviting me to their wedding there and providing me the impetus to go. I’m grateful to my husband who delivered me to the airport (more or less) and made it possible for me to escape grown up life for a few days. And I’m grateful to the hundreds of people who work in the airports, hotels, shops and restaurants, ect. that provided me with everything I needed. I am so blessed. What sources of therapy do you have in your life? My cats, art, friends, family, books, and therapist provide me with all kinds of therapy when I’m not running off to distant islands. What about you?

Dark Humor, Red Shoes, and Hamsters

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Mandala

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art book, art journal, gratitude, hamsters, humor, journal52, Mandala, Wabi-sabi

The book I am altering as my gratitude journal is Roots of Art by Lyonel Feininger. It is a gorgeous book of photographs. And it is bigger than my scanner. While I have a new and larger scanner/color printer on my wish list, I will have to make do in the interim. That has led to some Wabi-sabi practice on my part. Wabi-sabi is the Japanese term used to describe my life. In this case in means that some of my images are a little wonky. I wanted to provide an overview of the 2 page spread that covers the last week. It came together nicely on the page. The photograph is a little sideways.

mandalas 8 through 12

I have started numbering my mandalas so that I will know when I get to 100. I am seeing them in everything these days and really having fun with this project. I am so pleased with how the Red Shoe Mandala turned out. The red shoe is a metaphor for one of my good friends. She took me to a day of doctor’s appointments and we has such a lovely lunch and shopping excursion. I am so happy the mandala reflects the playfulness of our day.  I’m including some individual page scans for a more detailed view of the individual mandalas.

red shoe mandala

My younger son turned 18 this week.

“The trouble is you think you have time.” Buddha

That quote was on the

website and seemed so appropriate for an 18th birthday, both for my son and for myself. He thinks he has all the time in the world and I can see how fleeting it is.

We got him a pygmy hamster (one of the cutest animals ever!) and a hamster on a hamster wheel is so clearly a mandala in the making. It also ties in with this quote so, so well. It made me think of the Buddhist idea of this precious human life. How are you using the moments of your life today?hamster wheel

The center of this mandala was pretty Wabi-sabi, too. Apparently gel pens and acrylic paints combine in strange and unpredictable ways. I had to paint over the mess a few times and it still was odd. I added the stencils and journaling at the end of the week upon reviewing the Journal 52 prompt. I wanted to tie the whole page spread together. The Journal 52 prompt was Conversation Starters. My intention for this year is to work on kindness in communication so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give you an update. I still have a lot of room for improvement. One of the really challenging ways I speak unkindly is when I’m trying to be funny. In my aquacize class yesterday I was discussing this with a friend of mine. We were having a blast laughing and poking fun and then I had to go and toss out this loving kindness in speech idea. We really had a great conversation. I have had conversations with others about this too. So many comedians are mean in their humor and I have used some majorly dark humor to help me through difficult times in my life.

My question for you for this week is what funny things are you grateful for this week? Are you able to keep kindness in your humor? How do you do it? Seriously, I’m looking for tips if you have any! IN any case, I hope you have a beautiful day.

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