Eat More Cake Art Journal Spread

I find Art Journaling to be such a break from the everyday work. In our "real" work everything has to be so perfect. And I feel like Art Journaling is the opposite of that. It's a chance to be haphazard and messy. It had been a long few days of making, packing & shipping, and while the clear coat on a bunch of die cuts was drying I found some time to play around in one of my Art Journals. This is one of my smaller Moleskine journals and it's nearly filled up. This is one of the basic Molskines with the very thin pages. Prior to doing this spread I had went ahead and bolstered most of the pages with extra layers of paper and paint. Me and Aaron each have several Art Journals and jump back and forth between all of them.

Many times with me, an Art Journal page or spread begins with a vague idea that's related to a certain image or piece of ephemera that I'd like to use. In this case, it was this birthday cake image I had cut out from a piece of vintage wrapping paper. Everything about this image makes me swoon! I just had to use it. So I started the page by painting simple oval shapes in pink and cream, and then pieced in some pink and cream stripe paper. A lot of times when I'm doing a spread, meaning two pages, I like to make the pages mirror each other in some way. Sometimes I do one full composition that spreads across the two pages. But here I wanted it to be two separate pages that fit together perfectly.

Then I did some sketchy colored pencil outlines around the ovals, and added some paint spatters. Like I said…haphazard and messy is what I'm about when it comes to Art Journaling.

Besides the cake, I felt like the spread needed a muse. A face to be the spokesperson. And who better than this little chubby faced doll. I love using my collections in my spreads without actually "using" my collections. I just snapped a pretty close and clear photo of the cutie and printed her out.

I then glued her in with some decoupage medium. And from that same piece of vintage wrapping paper I cut out the corresponding slice of birthday cake and put it in her hand. I didn't want the page to be all pale color, so I then added some bright berry pink polkadots with a dauber, some Sharpie pen doodles, and bit of bright aqua paint details.

I knew I needed washi tape somewhere on the spread. I always need washi tape!

I selected my washi tapes and then pulled out my vintage printers tray full of all my bits and pieces.

Last week I had made these tags using my fave Ashley G stamps. I def wanted to use one of these!

I love how well black compliments pretty pastels. I added some more sketchy details with my Sharpie and also a bunch of stamped flourishes. I remember when flourishes were all the rage. I've got tons! I wish I knew who made these. I don't have the original packaging, and I doubt they make these anymore.

So I taped in my cute girl tag with a bit of metallic gold striped washi. I love how it compliments her gold glittered skirt.

I used some fairly crude handwriting skills to render these letters and cut them out of aqua polk dot paper. I adhered them to the page but then felt that they needed to pop a bit more. So I added a drop shadow with some tan paint, and used my sharpie pen to add "stitching".

I glued in some pink sequins for a bit of shimmer.

And while I was in shimmer mode I figured I'd add some glitter. I keep my most used glitters in this adorable chicken wire wall rack.

I added some ultra fine gold glitter to the candle flames.

Just wanted to share some of my Art Journaling with you guys. I plan on sharing a bunch more…I had been Art Journal all this time but I wasn't taking the time to take in progress photos. I'll try to do this a lot more. And yes…I 100% believe that we should all Eat More Cake.

Not so much that we blow up like a paint and paper filled Art Journal…but you know what I mean. :) I still get a kick out of watching a new moleskine go from the skinny guy on the bottom to the chubby colorful guy on top. 

Thanks for reading! And Happy Art Journaling to you!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

A peek into our Art Journals

A peek into our Art Journals…this is going to be a recurring series for us. Every single day we are working on art in one form or another. It's our job. But we still make art for pleasure, and this usually happens in the pages of our Art Journals. For us, the Art Journal is the one venue that is strictly personal, fun, and loose. We can have a vague idea and get started on it in an instant. We don't have to plan it out, or work hard on pre-sketches or tracings. We can just go go go. 

So, we thought this would be a great thing to share with you guys. Teaching art is one of our absolute favorite things to do. It feels so good to be able to impart to others even the slightest bit of knowledge from our nearly two decades of being professional artists. And Art Journaling is probably one of the fastest and simplest ways to get right down to a person's creative source. There aren't any rules or expectations. Your Art Journal is what you make it. 

It has now been almost two years since we have done our weekly Art Journaling tutorials here on the blog. It was really Hurricane Sandy that ended the series so abruptly. And then life got hectic, and then we got busy…we wrote our book…designed a scrapbooking line…and also kept our business going. But those tutorials WILL return. We aren't sure exactly when…but we are looking forward to doing full step-by-step pages and spreads with you guys again. For now we'd like to periodically share glimpses into our Art Journals just to show you all what we're up to, and to hopefully inspire some of you to do more Art Journaling of your own. 

Ok, now lets talk a little bit about our latest pages. "Take Me To The Sea", is a page I had worked on in my spare time this past week. You may have seen pics of it on Facebook or Instagram. I really wanted to do something summery before the season ended. That was my initial inspiration…Summer.

One of my favorite parts of the Art Journaling process is gathering my supplies. And I don't just mean paint and stuff like that. I love digging for the source material…old photos, ephemera, papers, and even phrases I had scribbled somewhere in a notebook. 

The girls in this spread are from a book of paper dolls from the late 1940s or early 50s. I set them against a new beach and ocean that I painted, and I gave them new bathing suits that I made from floral scrapbooking papers. I guess the most obvious aspects of their makeover are the tattoos and pastel colored hair. This was my way of updating them a bit. I took classic gals from the 1940s, and made them into classic gals of 2014. At beaches in our neck of the woods, gals with lavender hair and dozens of tattoos are de rigueur. 

I just used pencil to quickly sketch some basic tattoos all over the gals, and then gave them pops of color with a tiny brush and acrylic paint. I wasn't worried about the details really. I was just trying to give the overall impression of lots of tattoos.

And the banner was inspired by vintage beach postcards. I love those so much. I can stare at them for hours. The colors are so dreamy…which is what inspired our seashore bathroom here at home. I also love the old classic lettering style. I think I may have had the phrase "Take Me To The Sea" fixed in my mind before I had even started the page. And the designs on old postcards so often will include gorgeous florals. I love combining lush floral clusters with beach scenes. They go together so perfectly. The florals here were clusters that I cut out from scrapbooking paper and then I totally repainted them to have my colors and bold outlines.

Ok, now I'm actually going to hand the keyboard over to Aaron so he can personally explain his own pages. Take it away Aar...

Aaron: 

In my Art Journal I often like to try to capture trivial little memories. One morning last week I was thinking about the yellow rotary phone that was in my parent's kitchen when I was kid. Yes, I'm a child of the 80s. I have all of these childhood stories that center around the memory of that phone. To name one…prank phone calls. If you were a kid in the 70s or 80s I'm guessing you made your fair share of prank phone calls. I was the youngest of three boys…so when I was very young I borrowed my older brother's friends. I just tagged along with them and did what they were doing…precocious by way of convenience. Anyway, those were magical times. Riding bikes, running around up on the wooded beach behind my house, going to the local swim club, all that stuff. 

So, prank phone calls were simply a fact of life. You and your friends could center an entire evening around silly phone calls. As you can read in the little note above, there was this mean photo of my dad right there in the center of the dial. My parents were funny like that. The photo was serious…my dad really didn't want us abusing the phone for silly purposes. But the photo was also tongue in cheek. We were supposed to fear it…but we also knew that the whole idea of it was funny. I of course don't possess the actual mean photo of my dad, so for the purposes of this Art Journal I just had Jenny snap a pic of me looking a bit mean. My dad had the same beard in that era…and we definitely resemble one another…so I figured I'd pose for the reenactment. And yes, the pic in the bottom right corner is Tanner Boyle from The Bad News Bears. I had that hair at that age, and in my memory every single kid in the world looked like that in my childhood. So Tanner simply represents youth of that generation. The station wagon on the opposite page of the spread is just a typical family car from then. My mom drove one that looked just like it, except her's was green. And I selected the yellow floral pattern behind the car because it looked like typical kitchen wallpaper from back then.

I laugh at the idea of telephone poles and cables…how they're serious and essential constructs of modern civilization…but us dopey kids were crowding up the lines with our dumb jokes. And the sketch I did of the blue victorian house on the left is my childhood home…which is still my parent's house today.

Both Jenny and I paste phone book pages into our Art Journals all the time, just to bolster the pages, and we also like how the small print adds texture to the page. We usually gesso over it and let just bits of it peek through. But in this case, the phone book page was totally fitting. I really like to combine photographs, patterned papers, sketching, and hand painting. And if I can use these elements to tell even a simple little story, then I'm happy with my spread.

Ok guys, hope you all liked taking a peek into our Art Journals. Like I said, we'll share glimpses as often as we can. And real deal tutorials are coming back…I promise.

xo, Jenny & Aaron

"talk & thought bubbles" Sticker Sheets now available!

We talk about having lots of irons in the fire over here pretty darn often...and it's the truth. We are constantly in the state of trying to balance filling orders, doing custom work, designing for projects, making home repairs and chipping away at renovations, plus normal life stuff. I'm certainly not complaining. Idle time is always served with a side order of the blues. So being busy keeps us bright eyed and bushy tailed. But still...we love to make new art...the challenge is in finding the time to do so. Patience is key. We accepted long ago that we will simply not be able to uninterruptedly work on an artful project. We must grab snippets of time over days, sometimes weeks. 

Though we will try to show some sneak peeks whenever we can...probably in hopes of soliciting some encouragement from our dear sweet friends.

Not long ago we had shared a few pics of our "talk & thought bubbles" in progress and so many of you were excited about them..which in turn made us excited! We knew we just had to finish them up and make a sticker sheet. Well, because of their size and also our inability to edit them down to fit a single page, we had to make two sticker sheets! Even better! 

 So...being that I didn't want to just make this post about new stuff we made...I've also included some great examples of how talk and thought bubbles really bring focus and fun to an Art Journal. 

The above Art Journal page is one of the step by step tutorials in our book! This page is dedicated to "Favorite things", and I think a talk bubble is the perfect fit for a page like this. I almost feel like it's the Art Journal who is speaking. As if to tell the casual observer "Yes, these are some of Jenny's Favorite Things...take note!"

Here Aaron adds a super sweet stitched touch to the bubble. So many possibilities!

And I recently shared this "Dream Big" art journal page tutorial using some of the papers from our scrapbooking collection!

Our love for talk & thought bubbles goes back quite a while. They are a go-to doodle. I remember doodling them all over the cover of my notebooks in high school. You may remember this sweet two page Art Journal spread we did here on the blog,  It was part of the Art Journaling series we did. All of those tutorials can be found on the "Art Journaling" page. There are step by step instructions with little videos like the one above. 

(watermarks will not appear on your sticker sheets)

And here are the sticker sheets! We wanted to keep them doodley & cute...and of course, in our favorite color palette. And including a cute girl was mandatory! You may remember seeing a girl just like her on our Starlet ornaments from Christmas. 

So...you get both of these sticker sheets as a set! We normally sell our full color sticker sheets for 10.50 each, but you get both for 16.50! They are in the shop now! We really look forward to seeing them in YOUR art journals, layouts, and projects! So please blog them, facebook them, send us pics! If you are on Instagram feel free to tag me @jennyeveryday and #everydayisaholiday 

Happy talking and thinking!

xo Jenny...and Aaron!

"Sweethearts" Art Journal page (Inspired by Boardwalk Empire)

So I had mentioned that we just started watching Boardwalk Empire. And we are totally hooked. We are now on Season 3, and even though we are loving it, I have to admit that watching all the episodes in a row is kinda exhausting. We watch an episode every night before bed and I swear we both have had dreams involving aspects of the show. The characters are great. They perfectly walk the line between reality and caricature. There's also so much beautiful scenery, incredible costumes, sets, and decor. And at the same time there is no lack of insane violence and how shall I say??...."boobs galore"! 

But seriously, the show is currently etched into our brains.

Here are some Boardwalk Empire inspired things we've said throughout our days while working:

Jenny: "I wonder if there is a chihuahua out there named Nucky Thompson?"

Aaron: "I was on wikipedia and saw that in real life Arnold Rothstein dies in 1928. Do you think they'll take the show to 1928 so that we will see him die?" 

Jenny: "Seriously, Richard Harrow is an art journaler!?"

Aaron: "It makes sense that Richard Harrow is an art journaler...he's a tortured soul like the rest of us." 

Yes, Richard Harrow, the man with the hand painted lead mask covering half of his face. The result of a horrific war wound. And yes, we looked it up. The face plate is a perfectly accurate representation of what was worn by wounded WWI vets. So ok, Richard Harrow is the most likable cold blooded hit man that you'll ever come across. Because you know that he hates what he does, and you know that he'd do anything to help out the innocent and the meek. He's also a sentimentalist at heart and spends his free time pasting collages of happy family moments in his scrapbook. Yes, in 1920 this psycho killer was an art journaler.

I was thrilled to find pics of his pages on the HBO website. Which, believe it or not, were the inspiration behind our art journal page.

I'm also so incredibly in love with vintage photo booth photos. We've been collecting them for years, and we love the tinted versions. I thought it would be really fun to make our own! A little hand drawn couple, inspired by the show Boardwalk Empire...only without the murder, bootlegging, boobs, and corruption. 

So here we go with a little step by step of our page.

 Starting with a blank primed with Gesso page, we chose a stencil that had a very Deco era feel. 

Then we laid it on top of cardboard, taped it in place, and then we used Mister Huey's, which we sprayed in layers of colors, letting dry between each coat.

We used a blow dryer to speed up the drying time.

Now we've found that Mr. huey's over gesso "moves" when we apply washes, or gel medium or mod podge over it. We really don't mind it since it softens the lines a bit. But a trick to not blurring it too much is to try to not brush over an area too many times. We "sealed" it with gel medium, and when that was dry, we mixed a wash of water and acrylic paint, and gesso. We brushed the wash in select areas.

And then blotted it to soften it, and then we let it dry.

 We mixed black paint and water, and using a round brush we dipped into the black wash and then speckled the page with it. While that was drying we worked on our photo strip.

Aaron is master of cutesy retro faces. I did a rough sketch of what I was thinking and he totally knew exactly what I was going for. He sketched out a few "poses".

And then he gave the gal a beau. Kinda Richard Harrowesque.

Can you even handle the cuteness?? 

We love the feel of the tinted photo booth strips, so we added subtle color and shading. 

While the strip was drying we played around with layout and papers. We cut a "dummy" photo strip to stand in as a place holder while we were figuring out the layout.

When we found a layout that we liked we adhered some torn papers. Vintage wallpaper, sheet music, and stripes. Love the black mixed in.

We had this sweet little house photo envelope and thought it was perfect! Again, it reminded us of something from the show. The Commodore's mansion. An amazing house that becomes a place of ill repute. And this brass Sweetheart trinket seemed perfect. And this vintage black plastic photo slide frame fit perfectly.

We chose some key elements, like our roses cut from floral wallpaper. We adhered those and the house photo, some vintage envelopes with charming old timey handwriting and affixed stamps.

We then did an antiquing wash around the elements. Using a fine tip round brush dipped in water, we brushed the tip of a brown Gelato and then floated the wash around elements, and then blotted with a finger tip.

We then grabbed some chipboard hearts and painted them gold.

And added an antiquey wash using Gelatos to mimic the brass Sweetheart

We glued down the hearts, added more of our wash to areas. And then we added a

hand drawn scrollwork border with a sharpie fine tip marker. We designed the border to be in keeping with the era.

Then we added some stamps, and a saying. We knew we wanted to add more black to balance everything. And it adds a nice masculine touch.

I found this quote while searching for something fitting, and from the era. There were so many slang terms, and sayings from the 1920's but they were all too cartoony. We thought this classic phrase was perfect.  So we typed it up on a black background in PicMonkey, which we use for all of our day to day photo editing as well. Such an easy program to work with. I highly recommend it. 

So, that quote was then printed and we cut it to fit in the right spot. We really love the outcome of the page. It captured exactly what we were going for with Valentines Day looming...and our Boardwalk Empire addiction. And yes, our passion for the show is definitely enhanced by it's Jersey shore locale.

Hope you enjoyed our little step by step art journal page.

xo, Jenny...and Aaron

If you enjoyed this tutorial, you'd probably like our book! Get it here.