AJED Challenge: Newspaper

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  There is a flickr group for sharing right here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it.  If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post.  Thanks!

I've gotten a lot of e-mails from folks looking for art journal prompts.  I thought a fun way to get some ideas going might be to offer some occasional challenges up to the Art Journal Every Day (AJED) family.  I asked three regular contributors to the AJED linky list to participate in the very first AJED Challenge!

I asked the three bloggers: Marina, Michelle, and Katie to use newspaper, in some way, on an art journal page.

Katie Smith

Katie is a lover of anything crafty. She doodles on everything she can get her hands on, however her favorite projects are scrapbooking, mixed media and restyled/upcycled crafts. She writes the blog Punk Projects and designs custom shoes in her etsy shop.

Blog- www.punkprojects.com

Shop- www.punkprojects.etsy.com

My page is about 2 of my favorites: books and tea. I am a tea junkie and a bookworm, so on this page I used my favorite quote from C.S. Lewis: "You can never get a cup of tea large enough, or a book long enough to suit me."

I love playing with my gelli plate, so I decided I'd use newspaper as a base and do a few gelli prints to see how they turned out. I used my 2 favorite prints on this journal page, but the others will probably end up in my journal somewhere else. The newspaper made a really good base for gelli prints, it stayed pretty sturdy and didn’t rip or tear as I pulled the prints. I left some places of the prints empty so that the newspaper shows through.

Marina Johan

Hi there, I'm so honoured and happy to be here. I'm Marina and I'm from the sunny place called, Singapore. I'm 26 years old. I love to experiment and trying new things, at least in the scrap world. I'm pretty addicted to Art Journalling using all the different medias and lately, I've been incorporating mixed media to my layouts too. I get my inspiration from traveling and also from just being with my better half. Crafting itself is very therapeutic but I really hope to inspire people with my projects. I can't wait to grow further (scrap/art-wise) and see more of the world.

Come check out my blog http://polishandcraft.blogspot.com to look at my projects, leave me a note because I would love to hear from you and also to check out your projects. Stay happy!

Hi everyone! I'm so happy to be here to share how I did this Art Journal page using newspaper as an element. There are many perks of using the newspaper, but my favourite is that, to me, it serves as a substitute background stamp. You can have newspaper print background without purchasing a stamp. Isn't that awesome? A little tip, make sure you cover your newspaper with a light layer of gesso. This will prevent for the newspaper background to be too wet when you all that awesome layers. If your gesso is too thick, add some water and once the gesso dries, you can still see the newspaper “design.”

Alright, enough of me rambling :) Come and click the youtube video below to check out how I made this page.

I hope you have enjoyed the video and perhaps, are inspired by it too. Just to show you again, this is the page and the close-up.

Now it's your turn to make a page and incorporate newspaper in one way or another. Have fun!

Michelle LaPoint Rydell

Michelle Rydell lives in Minnesota, USA, where she shares a country home with her husband Michael and two cats, Willie and Johnny.  She has three stepkids (from Michael’s previous marriage) who live on their own but visit often.  A government employee by day, Michelle spends her evenings winding down by creating in her art journals.  Mixed media is her favorite, but she also enjoys watercolor, junk journaling and documenting the every day in her Project Life scrapbook.  Michelle has been published in Featuring magazine, and is currently on the design team for the One Little Word challenge blog.  You can visit her blog at Inspiration Everywhere.

Links:

My blog: http://inspirationeverywhere.blogspot.com/
Featuring Magazine
One Little Word Challenge Blog

Hi everyone!  Michelle Rydell here, and I’m so excited to be here today as a guest blogger for Julie’s Art Journal Every Day Series!  I’ve been a fan of Julie’s for a long time, and feel really honored to be sharing this space. Thank you so much Julie, for having me!

USING NEWSPAPER IN YOUR ART JOURNAL

I love using all kinds of text papers in my journal; because they create an awesome contrast with color on a page.  The really cool and unique thing about using newspaper, is that you are putting a little bit of history on your page too!

My favorite way to use newspaper is as a super simple background.  Here’s a page I recently made that shows what I mean…

Making a newspaper background like this is super simple to do. All you need is…

• A journal
• A few pages of newspaper
• A permanent glue stick
• Something to glue on (I use an old catalog or magazine)
• Clear gesso

Step One:

Tear a bunch of newspaper into smallish pieces and make a nice little pile next to your journal. 

Step Two:

Take your newspaper, one piece at a time, turn it over onto your old catalog, and apply glue stick to the back, making sure to cover the entire back surface of each piece.  This will prevent air bubbles.   Adhere your newspaper pieces to the page and smooth them down really well.  This takes awhile, but it’s a great activity to do while watching tv or crafting videos!

Step Three:

Keep doing this until you have covered as much of your surface as you want.

Step Four:

At this point you need to seal the page.  This will assure that the newspaper pieces don’t eventually curl up, and more importantly, it will keep the newspaper ink from smearing and muddying up your page.  Take a foam brush (or any brush you don’t mind getting a little gunky), and apply a thin coat of clear gesso over the entire page. Let dry completely. 

And your background is done!  Yeayyy!!!

You can collage on top of it, paint, doodle – anything! Here are a few process photos of how I did my painting, just in case it’s helpful…

First, I sketched in the basic idea with pencil.

Then started to fill in with paint, building up layers and adding detail with a pitt superfine point marker as I went along.

Highlights were added to her eyes with a uniball white signo pen.

I left the outlines in pencil and let them blend with the paint. 

And here, again, is the finished journal page.  I added the title with black ink and a paintbrush, and underlined it with watercolor pencil and water.

If you look closely at the background, you can see little bits of our current culture in the text, which I think will be fun to look back on in the future!  

I hope this tutorial is helpful for you!  To see more of my work, please come visit me at my blog: Inspiration Everywhere.  I’d love to see you!

Here is this week's linky list:

I hope that you'll take up this newspaper challenge!  If you'd like to participate in a future AJED challenge, send me an e-mail with a link to your blog and let me know that you want to play!  

Thanks for stopping by!