Background Noise Journal

Call me anal if you want but when I started my background noise journal I wanted to have facing pages with one page of instructions and one page of samples, so I left the first page blank. Well it was staring at me and daring me to do something... anything. I have never art journalled before and didn't know what to do, but I wanted to represent the concept of background noise, so I filled it with lots of doodles in black and white.

I finally got around to putting samples of my shining stones backgrounds in my art journal. This is what it looks like.

Colour Frustrations

I am wondering if I am the only stamper out there frustrated when it comes to layering colours. I know the colour wheel and I understand colour schemes, primary, secondary, tertiary etc, but I really struggle with the various shades within that. What I mean is, for example, I know purple and yellow can look really good together, but I also know that some purples look awful with some yellows and I find picking what does and doesn't work very, very difficult. I wish I could say I was colourblind - that would be a good excuse - but I'm not. I just don't have a feel for colour. And it gets even worse when I have something like the shining stones backgrounds below - multiple colours to layer. I normally resort to the good, old trusty gold, black or white but I would like to be able to look at a multi coloured background and pick just one colour out of it and be able to find a matching layer. Anyone else feel this way?

Shining Stones Background Technique

On Next-Generation-Stampers we are currently participating in a Background Noise Challenge. For details on this project, and the shining stones background technique, visit Trish Bee's Art-venture website at http://trishbee.co.uk/?p=307

Here are my backgrounds. They turned out a bit washed out, probably partly because my Kaleidacolor inkpads are drying up and partly because I used too much water. Hopefully I will have time to 1) add them into my art journal and 2) create something with the 'extras' in the next week or so.




This background was made using Kaleidacolor Creole Spice ink pad. I didn't have any perfect pearls or other mica-type products so I ended up using gold lumiere's watered down a bit.

This background was made using Kaleidacolor Carribean Sea with gold lumiere paint.

Altered Puzzle Pieces

I thought I would start by sharing a couple of altered jigsaw puzzle pieces I made as part of a swap with some good friends.

I love the little boy image I used in this first piece. I just wish I could remember where I got it from. The frame is made with a Stampers Anonymous stamp. I had purchased it from the US for a specific project and waited and waited for it to arrive. At the last minute I changed my mind and didn't use it, so it was good to have a worthwhile project to use it on.

I really struggled with this piece. I think it was because the friend I was making it for is a very talented lady and therefore I felt I had to create the 'perfect' piece. I really wanted to do a time themed piece but after two failed attempts gave up on that idea. Using the watch face to hold shells came to me in the middle of the night and I was happy with this piece in the end.