We’ve not used watercolours in our art journal sessions for some time, so this month felt like the perfect opportunity. I combined fresh washes of colour with toner transfer art journaling techniques, using laser printouts to add layered imagery and texture to the page.. Here’s the sample layout I made for the session:
In this month’s session, we explored art journaling with fusible webbing – a technique that brings texture, sparkle, and surprise to your layout. It’s a heat-reactive mixed media method that uses iron-on adhesive sheets to trap colour, foil, glitter, and more.
I vaguely recall trying out this technique back in art college, some 13 or so years ago, but I came across it again recently. I had been looking through my library of mixed media technique books and found it in both Surface Treatment Workshop (p.114 – Fusible Webbing) and Mixed Media Revolution (p.41). Since I have oodles of fusible webbing available after buying a whole roll of it for quilting purposes, I came up with this after some experimentation:
It’s going to be a two-parter… We’re underway for this month’s art journaling session in The Studio, taking Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ as our inspiration. When I was putting the sample together, I quickly realised my ambitions for the class were not going to fit the time available so texts went out and my first two-session layout was agreed. My Klimt inspired art journaling layout looks like this:
In my description of The Studio, I refer to it being (as you’d hope) a working studio. Now, not many people get to see what’s happening at any time as I tidy up (or hide) current projects. As you can see from the BTS (behind the scenes) photo below, it’s not always possible to see the work tables. This is what’s on my desk, today, 24th May 2025:
When I’m looking for potential techniques and ideas for my art journaling sessions, I often reach for analogue sources: books. For this evening’s session, I took inspiration from ‘101 More Mixed Media Techniques’. In the fabrics & fibers [sic] section, there is information on sticking and covering elements and pages. And so my cloth collage theme was born and this is what I came up with:
This month’s theme for the last art journal session of the year is ‘Christmas NBU’. A long while ago, I suggested the tag #nbu for ‘never been used’. I’m not sure it caught on… So this wintery layout uses items that have not been used yet alongside other bits and bobs that came to hand:
This evening we are playing with all sorts of watersolubles for our Art Journal Session. I’ve raided my stash for media that we don’t use often in the sessions, with pencils, paints, crayons and gelatos on the menu. The session is all about experimentation and the different ways the water interacts with the pigments on the page. We’re adding some stamping and hand-drawn embellishments to adorn the page:
I unpacked a box of ancient washi tape rolls for this evening’s art journaling session and eventually got them all to unpeel without tearing. We used them to build background collages in black and white and colour, and layered them for maximum contrast in this finished layout:
Today’s Art Journaling Session at the Studio revisited working on aluminium foil. Last time, we used thinned acrylic paints to cover the foil with multilayer colour. This time, we played with alcohol inks. The inks are designed to stick to shiny surfaces and really pop against the reflective metallic background. There are various ways to add depth and texture, take ink off and add other inks on to make a very shiny and interesting collaged background for a suitable saying. I’ve included making notes below, along with a video of the techniques.
I don’t know how much of this art shrine sample was shown on TV last week… I certainly didn’t have enough time to demonstrate how I put it together, so here comes a tutorial to follow if you want to make your own 🙂
