Blue, Green, Purple Journal Pages

Joanne Sharpe over at Whimspirations posted a little challenge to make a page out of blue, green and purple.  I'm always putting blue and green together, but loved adding a bit of purple to some of my layouts too.  The background layout above I made just for this challenge, the very back color is a seafoam green but photographed blue.  I think it still needs a bit...but like so many art journaling folks, we just keep layering right?  The pages below are still evolving, but I'm trying to add the blue, green and purple to all of them (they started out just green and blue...I love the purple additions too!). 

Tutorial: Checkered Art Journal Background

Here is one of my favorite techniques for creating a multi-layered background that can be as colorful or as subdued as you want it to be.  Plan to get a bit messy with this fun process.

 

 Start by taking text printed pages from vintage books and give them some color.  Using inexpensive acrylic paints, squirt a line at the top of the book page and drag the color down with a plastic gift card or old credit card.  Watery, inexpensive acrylic paints work best for this...save your expensive acrylics for a later step.

Make a  bunch of pages like this with lots of bright colors.  Brighter, dark colors work best for this.

Rip the pages up and make a patchwork page of the ripped pieces.  You can paint the background pages first if you want, but here I left them white. Glue the colored text pieces down with a glue stick or gel medium.

Put a thin, watered down layer of white paint or gesso over the colored patchwork.  The less you use, obviously the more color that will show through.  I vary the amount of white, but on this spread I used a lot of white and really blotted out the colors for a more subtle effect.

Use a cosmetic sponge to create a checkerboard of squares using white or off white paint.  Here I tend to use a higher quality brand of acrylic paint that isn't so watery because it's more opaque.

Fill the entire page with a checkerboard.

Outline some of the squares with metallic acrylic paint in a random pattern using a paintbrush.  I outline about 1/3 of the squares.  My favorite brand of metallic paint is Utrect Iridescent Gold. This adds just a touch of interest to the entire layout.

Now you have a background ready for all different applications and lots of layers if you so desire.  Below are two ways I've used this background.

On this page my background papers were dark red, green and purple.  I put ripped pieces of a paint blotter page on the left and right side filling in the page with writing.

For this page I used all blue and turquoise text pages for the under layer.  I also used a glaze of blue paint on the outside edge and then filled the inside with text and babblings.

What do you think?  If you try this technique I'd love to see what you do!

Striped Background Toned Down

The other day I was thinking that my backgrounds in my art journal were all starting to look the same...maybe vertical stripes would be fun and a bit different.  I picked a few bright colors and painted away.  When they dried they looked entirely too bright...what to do?

A wash of watered down ink was just what I needed to tone down these bright, garish stripes.  I used a really watered down wash of purple ink and now the colors are still bright, but not obnoxious.  Not sure what I'm going to do next, maybe just writing along the stripes...who knows?

Colorful Doodle Backgrounds

I really got into making these backgrounds from Paivi's directions on her blog, they looked like so much fun to do.  The backgrounds start with a layer of random watercolor painting then adding lots of different pens and colors in many different layers.  When I made my first one I was hooked and couldn't stop making them.  I tried different doodles for my each of my four different backgrounds.  I found the doodling part so relaxing...I would just zone out while doing the doodling.  Below are two art journal pages I made using the backgrounds.