Yesterday I spent the day at a friends house playing with paint, stencils, gesso, stamps and ink. My friends are new to the world of art journaling and paint play so I shared with them a few techniques I have learned. We made a total of three pages using a different approach for each one. I had the best time just playing. I wanted to share with them but learn at the same time. I am a very slow scrapbooker and generally very slow in my art journaling but for this day I wanted to be free. I wanted to approach this with no rules and no ideas with how the end result would look. I wanted to see what I could come up with fast and without over thinking. For the most parts I was pleased with the results. We laughed and chatted as we painted and played with our paints. Below are the pages I completed. I hope you enjoy.

For my first project I stamped with gesso on the background and then used watered down paint to do a wash over the gesso. I then used a stencil and black paint around the edge for a border. Some stamps and ink were used to add some grunge and interest and the owl. I painted some circles and outlined them with black pen and a whit out pen. To finish it off I added the quote.

The second one I grabbed some scraps to scrapbook paper. The rule was not to look at the paper you were grabbing and just pull out of the box enough paper to cover the page. After the paper was glued down some gesso was added on top using a pallet knife. The next two layers were created using a circle and ledger stencil and paint. The quote was added with strips of paper and stamps for the words Love and Laugh. I painted inside the words love and laugh with acrylic paint and painted on a scallop border.

 The last page was done in about 30 minutes. I had no idea where this was going but knew I wanted a sky with clouds and houses. I turned out ok but I would like to do this again taking a little more time to add more detail and paints.