Halloween Witches and Creepiness

I've mostly been working on some figures, polymer clay and Paperclay, during my spare October time, but I haven't managed to finish even one of those. I did get inspired to finish a Halloween page in my "Teesha" journal, a really creepy digital collage and a digitally colored Sweetpea witch. So just a little while before the witching hour of Halloween, I'm going to share those.

 I didn't know any "witch" nursery rhymes for my "Teesha" journal but found several really cute ones online searching on "witch nursery rhymes". She's a little different than the rest of the pages in that I left her BJD eyes. Her dress is from Raphael Tuck's Antique Paper Dolls, a book I've had for ages; Dover, I think. The pumpkin stamp at the bottom is from Queen Kat.

I've been working on this one for quite a while. All I knew I wanted to use was the photo Pam took at the Ohio Reformatory in Mansfield. I did an image adjustment on it to make it blue, took most of the glass out of the windows and added the moonscape. The girl, an online find, was standing in water which I turned to blood. Skeletons are a must for creepiness - I think these are from Flickr Commons. The Bleeding Hearts, flowers and otherwise, came from my desire for a creep factor.

This sweet little witch is a Sweetpea image. I've bought a ton of their witches and used only a few so I was quite happy using this one for some Halloween cards.

Thanks for visiting! 

More Pages from My "Teesha" Journal

WOW! I just looked back at my posts and saw that I started my journal based on Teesha Moore's Fantastic 16 page Journal videos in May. It's closing in on September and I still have a page or two to go, but I just finished this two page spread and I love it! More to come!!

I've used paper doll clothing, faces from ball jointed dolls, eyes from fashion magazines and border papers from various sources: magazine pages, scrapbook paper, etc. The pages are painted with watercolor washes and then rubbed with pastels. The pen work was done with the black and white Sharpie water based poster paint markers that Teesha recommended. I found those at Dick Blick online. I even managed to squeeze in some rubber stamp fishies and the moon face from Artful Illusions.

Sharon's Fabulous 16 Page Journal ala Teesha Moore

This is page 2 of the journal. It had been sitting waiting for a light bulb joke and a rainy day. Fortunately, just before it started raining I remembered that either Pam or I had thought of the song title I ended up using. If you haven't seen Teesha Moore's series of videos on creating a fabulous 16 page journal out of one 30" x 22" sheet of hot pressed water color paper, I hardily recommend it. Finding colored paper for the borders and sticking them on is great fun! That comes after sloshing paint on all of the pages, which is the state I showed in a previous post.
What I've tried doing with the pages I'm working on is using BJD faces from various sources embellished with mostly human eyes, using paper doll clothes and drawing fashion-like legs to lengthen the figures. Teesha said she felt using paper doll clothes seemed contrived to her although she did it on one of the pages she demo-ed. Since I adore paper dolls I wasn't put off by that and am considering titling the journal "Contrivances".
I also am trying to use words from older children's songs or books or nursery rhymes, although I'm finding that a little more difficult to match to the figures. I'm not a huge fan of Create, Believe, Art quotes for every journal page I work on. I think the process of doing the lettering is probably the most difficult for me. Pam gave me a few pointers a couple of weeks ago but I'm still struggling. That said, this is the best lettering I've done so far out of the seven I've attempted.

Junk Journals or Why just do it like everyone else when you can learn from every mistake in the book?

I rejoined Pam's Facebook group Art Journaling. One of the members, Patti Tolly Parrish, had shown some journals she was making out of her amazing GelliArts monoprints. She mentioned videos by Shannon Green about binding the journals so I watched those and Shannon mentioned some videos by Teesha Moore on her fantastic 16 page journal made from a 22" x 30" sheet of hot pressed watercolor paper so I watched those. All of which just sounded like FUN! In the very few minutes I've had on garden days and on those blessed rainy days when I couldn't possibly be expected to get wet since I might melt, I've been playing.
My first mistake was making too many signatures in too large a torn up hard bound book. Three signatures x seven sheets each x two pages per sheets x two sides per page makes for 84 sides of pages to get ready to journal on. I could have done the math first!!
The second mistake was using a shiny calendar for some of the pages. Not much sticks to it unless I rough up the surface.
And Shannon did say what glue to use but of course I had to try what I had which sort of made the pages curl.
But the great part is that it is so much fun and I have been able to relinquish control and just let things happen. Which is a major accomplishment for me! Here are a few shots of the sewn in signatures and some of the spreads I like a lot that won't require a whole lot more. Decorating the covers and the pages will come later.

This last one is the 16 page journal made from a sheet of watercolor paper. It's a nice break from the other journal as the pages are painted and need to dry. I'm going to follow Teesha Moore's instructions as closely as I can but I'm not all that good at following instructions. Always have to add something to make it my own!!