partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in Australia. These are the eighth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in Wendy's journal.

The theme for these pages was hopes, dreams or aspirations for 2010 or beyond.

They both have gesso backgrounds with water-soluble crayon colour over the top. Both have collage elements. Hand lettering has been done with white Signo Uni-ball pen and Sakura sparkle gelly roll pen in the roses page, and black Pitt artist pen and coloured pencils in the wings page. The wings and flourishes in the second page are stamped with black ink.

I think I will try something a little more vivid in my next two partner journal spreads. Mmmmmmmm! Have to think about that!

souffle pens

I get asked a lot about my souffle pens, so I decided to do a quick post about them.

The pens are a type of gel pen that are done by Sakura. Sakura makes three types of gell pen (that I know of) Gelly Roll, Glaze and Souffle. I have a mixture of pens because once I realised I liked them I just bought anything I could get my hands on.

What is neat about them is the brilliant rolling end that allows the ink to just flow out magnificently. It makes them brilliant to use in mixed media artwork because they just roll over the top of the different surfaces you have laid down and just keep flowing. The colours are wonderful as well, and they really pop out when you get them on the right background colour.

They do have drawbacks, but they are so cool that I don't mind them. Because they roll you have to slow down your writing to let it flow out smoothly, the slower you go, the thicker the line. You also have to wait for it to dry properly, because it is a bead of liquid. Many times I have gone to work on something else on my page while my souffle pen dried, and I looked back to discover that I unknowingly ran my hand through the paint and it is now smudged. You also have to get used to which colours you can use over which background colours. Some colours will just disappear into other colours, but if you choose the right combination they will sing on the page and nearly poke your eye out!

Here are all the blog posts I have done that reference souffle pens:

http://mixedmediamartyr.blogspot.com/search/label/souffle%20pen

Kelly Kilmer is a pen guru in the art journaling world and here is a link to her favourite pens:

http://kellykilmer.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-pen-list.html

Well, I hope that this has helped all you out there in blog and Flickr land. It was a post I should have done ages ago, because I love these pens so much.