Featured artist... The Documented Life

What an honor it was when I was not only asked by the 

Art to the 5th ladies to create some art jounal pages for the month of June but also that I got to have a sponsor with a generous gift of pens and inks to play with. Kuretake / Zig has come to the USA and they are hitting America hard with colorful greatness! 

For those not familiar with The Documented Life, it's an art journaling group that began on facebook a year ago and has since moved to a webpage as Art to the 5th. We - a very large group of art journalers, get a new art prompt each week and have a week to get creative with it. I am a bit behind this year... but not to worry because some days I sit and make several pages at a time and always get caught up. I highly reccomend that if you enjoy journaling and want to challenge yourself that you log on to their page and sign up. It's free and you can start at any time. Give it a try!

 The theme for the month of June is 

TRAVEL JOURNALING

The challenge for this week - June 13th- June 20th is

RECORDING MEMORIES

and the prompt is 

TAKE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED.

I felt like I just won the lotto when Ana from Kuretake called and asked if I would be interested in doing this. She knows how addicted to this craft I am and also how passionate I am about Kuretake. I wrote a little book several years back for them when they were with EK Success called THE ABC'S OF CREATIVE LETTERING and have been a huge cheerleader of their products ever since. But now that they are based in the USA and honestly, in my backyard... they are bringing so much more to the mixed media world. Get ready to have you socks knocked off... because their Gansi Tambi watercolors and the Gold Mica ink kinda sent me into a tailspin. I kinda went a little overboard with these two items.... oh, well... you will see... read on!

Here's a little pic of my loot. Some of these goodies will be shared with a lucky blog winner ( leave me a comment... you will see at the end of the post ).... from H2o brushes, clean color watercolor markers, to my new favorite Mangaka pens and vellum writers , to the Wink of Stella and then those lovely inks and the Gansi Tambi watercolors... Oh my! I need an intervention!

  

Sumi brush calligraphers use these creamy and rich watercolors in asia... 

here, well I am just playing around and I love them!

And then there is that lovely Gold Mica Ink... This became the basis for my Little Miss Sunshine trailer. If you haven't been following along all week, I highly advise that you look back for the downloadable free template so you can create your own trailer. I just started painting these stripes and knew something would come to me to use them for... and it did. Look at that metallic sheen to that ink. Oh my my.....

 Here is the page that Little Miss Sunshine became a part of. Complete with White Ink 30 dots and mica flake stars... I kinda love this one... not gonna lie!

 I used a little scrap of chinille to create the moon and then went to the sewing machine to secure it down... It came out really fluffy and fun.

 I have been looking for a good black pen to write over whatever I might be using and I think I found 2 of them from Kuretake.... first I picked up the Vellum writer and loved it and moved on to the MANGAKA pens ( from .003 to .05 )... these both well exceeded my wildest dreams. They drew over that Gold Mica Ink and watercolor and I painted with that White Ink 30... which I was blown away by. Anyway... give them a try. They are lovely!

By the way... the propane tank was done using the POSTEMAN pen... another great suggestion for something that writes on anything including plastic. It comes in several point sizes and extra fine is my choice. I own the white, gold and silver but it comes in lots of colors

So, I think I said before that I was generously given lots of differnt things to play with but I did get a bit obsessed with the Gansi Tambi watercolors. I just kept painting paper after paper and creating my own watercolor papers. So, what do you do when life gives you watercolor paper? Cut it up!!! And that I did. And made some trees here...

Used a map, a sewing machine, the Wink of Stella clear glitter pen over the moon, more Gansi Tambi watercolor for my journaling stripes and I think that's the vellum pen for the wording.

So much fun using some Strathmore watercolor paper to just paint and paint. I tried making a map ( above ) but ended up hating it so I cut it up to create stars, circles, trees and other goodies.

My favorite piece I created is below, using the Gansi Tambi watercolor. I had a piece of "under paper" that I kept wiping my brush off on. I always wipe my brush off onto a nice piece of paper and take into account the strokes that I make so that I can use it again. This piece just kind of evolved.  I sprinkled some salt on it when it was wet and then splashed some of the Gold Mica Ink into it... loved it!

I hope that you enjoyed these pages and my techniques. Please follow me here on my blog for more fun and creative ideas, follow me on facebook at

 Lindsay Ostrom . creator of cuteness

and follow me on instagram at

#lindsayannostrom

#creatorofcuteness

Thanks to all the Art to the 5th ladies for this fun opportunity and to 

Ana at Kuretake for supplying me with some awesome pens and products to use. This was a dream come true!

If you have been playing along with my blog...

don't forget to leave a comment. 
I will be picking a winner tomorrow

and posting my BIG announcement. 
So excited to share my goals, hopes and 

dreams with all of you and hopefully 
inspire you to get creative!

ALSO... check back through this whole week, i have been posting travel related posts... with a GIVE AWAY. Hope you will check it out and leave me a comment each day... you just might win som Kuretake goodness and some Lindsay Art stuff