Art Journaling 102: Technique Feature – {Hybrid} Tutorial

Gesso Wash & Borders

What I Know For Sure by Julie Ann Shahin

For our second Technique Feature of 2012, I’ll be sharing with you a Hybrid Tutorial as I create an Art Journal Page where I use a Gesso Wash and show you how I build up my Borders to create this page, shown above.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Tip: There is an awesome Art Journaling Supply and Resource List included in Tangie’s Studio Box Workshop 1: Buildable Art Journals.

1. Start with a blank page in your art journal. I happened to turn to a pre-painted page with paint splatters from previous art journaling. Having a painted layer first is optional.

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2. Print backgrounds and elements from Tangie’s Collage Mania 1 & 2 kits, these kits are printables. Cut out elements now or as you need them. Sometimes in the evening, I’ll just sit and cut out elements as I watch television.

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3. Take several of the printed backgrounds, and cut one or two vertical strips from them. Adhere to the page with a glue stick.

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4. Continue adhering strips across the page. Select a border base for the top of the page and adhere.____________________________________________________

5. Mix a little water in with gesso. Swipe over the strips to give a white water wash. Do not paint over the top horizontal border, just the vertical strips.

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6. Adhere a border at the bottom. Cut out and adhere elements such as a heart, flower, and row of paint dots and add at the end of the border.

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7. Build up the top border by adding a smaller border along the top, a piece of word art that says “opinions” along the side on the left, and the girl head element.

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8. Build up the bottom border by layering elements such as a star and circle behind the border on the right. Also layer word art (from Pinterest), another star, heart, cabuchon, key, time, paint brush, and borders.

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9. Next, I adhered an image of a vintage movie star that I cut from an old book. I used mini letter stickers for the title, and then doodled around the letter stickers with my Copic marker, or you can use a black sharpie.

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10. Then I wrote my journaling out on pre-cut cardstock strips.

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11. Adhere the finished journaling strips to the page. Add dots around selected strips. Draw a line around the arrow. Adhere photo corners to the first and last journaling strip. Create shading with dots under the photo of the mvintage movie star. Outline the star in the bottom border with dots. Add any other finishing touches according to taste! Here is the end result: 

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Journaling Prompt:

What do you know for sure?

Technique Prompt:

Try a hybrid page with a gesso wash and/or built-up borders

OR

just print out some of your digi art journal pages and put them in a journal!

Julie Ann Shahin is a New York-based art journaler, scrapbooker, mixed media craftster who specializes in hybrid and altered art techniques. She will be blogging regularly for tangiebaxter.com on {Wednesdays – new day} and Saturdays. You may contact Julie Ann directly at julieann dot shahin at gmail dot com

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