July's Calender Page with Kate Crane

Today turned out to be a fabulous day, not only did my 'monster journal' arrive, but I spent the day in class with the fabulous Kate Crane at Art From The Heart 

 

I've been looking forward to today for a while now. Not only because I got to meet Kate, but I had the chance to buy a new A3 Pink Pig Journal to start my new Journal of Calendar pages, and I got to experiment with 'Golden Acrylic paints', which were great.

 

I've never tried to journal on a page this big, so I was a bit daunted at first, but was soon relaxed and rearing to go....thanks to Kate being so enthusiastic, friendly and helpful.

 

I've seen some fabulous calendar pages from some of the ladies in class and was amazed at how different and imaginative they all were.

 

Kate explained how to use the 'Golden Acrylic Paint', so then all I had to do was choose my colours - easier said than done...!

I chose 3 colours, 'Titanium White, Gold Green and Phthalo Turquoise'.  I was surprised at how much of a smooth finish it had, and the amount of sheen it had. The 'Golden Fluid Acrylics' were beautiful to use, and they blend so well together.

                 



 

I didn't know were I was going with the design of this page, I just knew that I loved the colours and sheen of the paints.  Once the paint was dry, I applied Gesso in a few areas through some Dylusions stencils, just to give it some depth and definition.

 

Kate, very kindly, brought her full collection of 'Stampotique Stamps' with her.  I'd seen some of the stamps before, but having a chance to use all of them was just fabulous.  The trouble was that there were so many of them, I had a hard time deciding which ones to choose. Whilst I was trying to choose my main image, I stamped the top and bottom of my page with the 'Abstract Foliage' stamp from Stampotique. The page needed something to frame it, and I thought that this stamp was ideal.

 

I finally decided upon 'The Giant Shroom' and 'The Leopard Queen'. I stamped them onto some very smooth stamping paper and coloured the images in with Dylusions spray inks and Tim Holtz Distress Marker, then cut them out and stuck them into position.

 

I then selected some co-ordinating coloured paper and punched out 31 circles, 1 for each day of the month, arranged them on the page, then stuck them down leaving enough room at the top of the page to write the month and year. 

I stamped the month and the date using some foam stamps that Kate had brought with her.

 

The last thing I had to do was just date each circle so you are able to tell which day of the week it is, and that was my first calendar page finished.

 

I am so pleased with the results and learnt a lot today.  Kate Crane is a fabulously talented lady and a great teacher, and I am looking forward to taking many more of her classes in the future.  Thanks Kate, I loved it.

 

I am definitely going to carry on with Kate's Journal Calendar club, and do a new page every month (well that is my cunning plan anyway Baldrick...)

 

Thanks for looking fellow bloggers, I would love to hear from you, so drop me a line to say 'hi'.....x