Art Journaling in Bellevue, WA

Hopefully you haven't gotten too tired of my travelogue from the March Art Romp in Seattle, WA. This post should be the wrap up of the wonderful time I had there. We took an evening field trip on one of the last nights to the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, WA for dinner in the food court and then art journaling to live music.


I decided to work on this long spread in my journal. I got inspired to make monsters (the red and yellow paint presented a kind of alien landscape to me) so I started looking through magazines and the pile of collage fodder I had brought with me and found that more than one pocketbook ad looked curiously like a monster. Other monsters on this page were made from arms, a feather, and a tree house. I added in some pen work while I was at the mall. I have to admit I have not journaled in public like this on my own for years (and then it was only once in a Starbucks while I was waiting to pick up my kids from art camp one summer).


One more thing that we did at Art Romp was playing around with making marbleized paper using spray inks and shaving cream. Maryanne and Bonnie, two of the attendees of the March Art Romp showed us how to do this. I didn't even try it while I was there (I think I was busy working on the monster collage at the time in the studio). But I tried it the other night at home and it's really easy. Here's what you need:
Shaving cream ( I used Barbasol. You can not use the gel shaving cream, it needs to be the foam. If you can find unscented go with that, otherwise pick one you like the smell of since the paper may retain some of the scent when you are done.)
Cookie sheet
Spray inks. I used the Dylusion Ink Sprays from Ranger (Squeezed Orange, Bubblegum Pink, Lemon Zest, Vibrant Turquoise, Fresh Lime and Funky Fuchsia- I ordered mine from Ellen Hutson, since I haven't been able to buy them locally)
An old credit card/gift card to scrape the shaving cream off the paper and to evenly spread it on the cookie sheet.
A stick (I used the end of a paint brush. You can use chopsticks.)
Paper (card stock, watercolor paper, good weight art paper)

I covered my work surface with paper (anything will do, like freezer paper or paperbags, craft paper, etc)
1. Take the cookie sheet and cover it with shaving cream. Spread it into an even flat layer with the credit/gift card.

2.Spray the inks on the foam. I start with the light colors first. Then swirl the colors together with a stick/paintbrush end.

3. Lay the paper down on top of the ink. Press down evenly with your hand to make sure it has made good contact with the ink.



4. Peel paper off of the cookie sheet. Don't worry, much of the foam comes away with it. Use the credit card/gift card to scrape the foam off the paper back into the cookie sheet. And there you have your marbleized paper. Set it aside to dry. You can use the foam again to make more paper. I did a couple of sheets before I scraped the foam into the garbage and put down fresh shaving cream and did some more. Lots of fun to see how differently they all come out. I also tried some on paper I had already painted a light color with watercolor paint and they came out great. Can't wait to use the papers in my art journaling projects.