ok. so i was asked by Lu Braxton to contribute to her art slam blog - i was super pumped but also my head has been swimming with so much information and wicked deadlines at the moment, that i hit a bit of a creative stumbling block.
Lu emailed me today, confirming my ’slam’, and one little word in her email jumped out at me and led me down my chosen art slam path… digital. now that was a word. a word that led from digital to digital paper projects, digital scrapping, hybrid scrapping and on and on. so, with that pivotal word in my mind, the plan was set… an art slam about hybrid paper arts projects. so let’s get to it!
step 1: picking your subject…
for me, that was the easy part. my hubs. i’ve been with my hubs for 14 years [married for 8 of those] and he is often the focus of my photography and my favorite person to journal about.
step 2: picking your colour palette…
this is usually a little harder for me because i’m a mixed media artist and i love colour. but… lately i’ve been drawn to [almost hypnotically!] to blues and browns, with bright shots of white and contrasting black. it’s my favorite yum-go-to palette.
so… rifling through my vast inventory of supplies - i’m a manufacturer of stamping and scrapping supplies after all lol! - i dug up some of my favorite paper, a few of my favorite newish stamps, a couple of great ink pads, some rubs and kicked-up the computer so i could add some digital goodness to my chosen patterned 12×12 paper.
this is essentially the collection of supplies that i pulled together:
step 3: pick and print a photo…
again. easy. picked a great photo of my hubs terry and printed it in black and white so the colour palette would stay crisp and clean. then i mounted the pic on chipboard, rounded off the corners and sanded the edges for a distress look.
step 4: pick and digitally alter pattern paper…
i decided to use our paperWERX organic collection paper called mud bay since it had light enough areas for digital printing to show up on it. it was also a new and still current favorite of mine. plus i love that it has ‘visual’ texture without the bulk of actual texture. wicked!
i cropped the 12×12 pattern paper to 8×10.5 so i could feed it through my laser printer, then i opened up photoshop on my computer and loaded a digiWERX ledgerbook digital sheet. i converted the ledger page to b/w, adjusted the ‘levels’ of the paper and resized the ledger page to a 8×10.5 digital layout base. then i added a piece of graphic stock for the title frame and finally set up the title using a bold, blocky font.
i placed my cropped 12×12 paper in the by-pass tray of my laser printer and printed the digital layout onto the patterned paper. so cool! i took a regular scrapbook paper and customized it simply by doing a few simple things in a graphics program like photoshop. many paper artists know this as hybrid paper arts or scrapbooking. i just call it like i see it, cool as heck!
step 5: start scrapping…
so first i adhered my mounted, distressed and oh-so-handsome pic of my hubs on the altered pattern paper. i covered up the butterfly in the paper because butterflies aren’t that manly. LOL! then i layered on a hambly screenprints journaling spot and journaled in my own handwriting, i used a black sharpie pen for the journaling. love those!
step 6: breaking out da rubbah!
next, i used two ink pads from the staz-on ink line in timber brown and jet black to stamp layered concentric circles around the edges of the layout. the cool thing about that was that it ‘inked’ the page edges without looking forced and contrived. love that. the randomness of the strong concentric circular stamps perfectly complimented the structured lines and rectangles of the printed pattern and photograph… cool beans man!
step 7: add the rubs…
suddenly as the stamping took over and i got all rubber happy, the layout started looking a little dark! dark stamping, b/w image, dark writing and journaling spot was all adding up to a heavy looking layout. not my plan… so as usual, flying by the seat of my pants, i hauled out the basic grey white rubs and started randomly applying them on the layout. i pretty much added the rubs whereever looked ‘right’ or was too dark. no master plan, just a quick ‘lets do this’ attitude. worked well IMHO =)
then, to spice up the rub-ons, i used a uniball signo white pen and added scribbles, fills and outlines to the basic grey rubs.
step 8: finishing up…
the final step in this fast and fun, add a ’subtitle’ to the layout. using my favorite, hard-to-find american crafts roosevelt jr. alphabet, i added the word ‘baby’. a small word, but one that fit the bill of this layout to a tee.
the final results of this layout are pretty dang cool in my humble opinion. the design of the layout is simple and clean. the graphics trendy, fresh and funky with a touch of tribal. the colour palette a favorite of mine, restrictive and simple - which means it works! it was a layout that took all of 30-45 minutes to complete and the results were quick. dirty. and lots of fun!
i hope that this piece shows you how you can combine what you already have, supply wise, and how you can ‘tweak’ your projects with digital hybrid media. hybrid paper arts are all about chucking everything in your arsenal of supplies, including the kitchen sink and your computer skills, at a project and seeing what sticks. there are no rules. nothing is wrong. as long as you like, or hopefully love it, it’s all good. use what you’ve got… or download digital media to make what you’ve got, better! now go forth and hybridize your projects.
parting shots…
BUT before i forget, i wanted to remind my local peeps that i will be attending portobello west this sunday, august 31 with a whole bunch of new artwork including a few new originals and BIG giclees, buttons and the most adorable button magnets.
