The K&Co Smash range has finally arrived in Australia, and so we sent them out to our design team to have a play with and see what ideas and inspiration they could come up with for making the best use of the fab products. The results, as you will see, are breathtaking -
Janine wanted to use her Smash album for an art journal as she often finds herself wanting to play with art mediums and techniques but is too scared that she might mess it up, or is unsure of how some of the products will react. For the cover, Janine covered the album with white gesso and then used gel medium to apply this pretty napkin to it.
Janine wanted to play with merging glimmer mist colours and some embossing enamels. After applying gesso to the page and sticking down a few random elements, Janine then applied a thick layer of embossing enamel to the heart area and heated it up until it went molten and the different colours merged together. Then while it was still hot she stamped into it with the bird stamp. She then used 3 shades of chalkboard glimmer mist on the rest of the page, allowing the pools of colour to blend together.
This page had a bold dice paper image on it. Don’t be afraid to use these bold pages for bases of art journal pages. Just apply gesso liberally to the page and it will soften the effect of these papers. On this page Janine played with glitter effects, from mixing it with white gesso for a grainy effect to applying it onto a thick smear of gel medium. Lots of fun and a great way to experiment.
By applying a thick smear of gel medium and then applying glitter on top of it and gently pressing it into the gel medium you can achieve a thick glittered effect on your page as shown here.
On this page Janine was playing with the effects of gesso as a partial resist while using water soluble oil pastels and also the effects of layering tissue tape and napkins with gel medium.
You can see how the Tim Holtz tape and the napkin have both "melded" to create a triple layered effect on this page as you can see each of their individual images as well as seeing the layers below. Janine LOVED this effect.
Most of the time Janine merely uses glimmer mist to add some splatters to her pages of colour flowers and lace. On these pages she was experimenting with spraying at close range and holding the book upright so that the mist would run downward on the page, creating this fabulous drip effect. She then went back and highlighted with gentle patches of yellow on an otherwise pink and purple misted page to warm the overall effect. Once again she had so much fun experimenting and this smash album is the perfect opportunity to try techniques but still keep it all together and by adding photographs can become a keepsake album at the same time.
