The Crafter's Workshop BlogFlutter On By Art Journal: Zero Waste Painted Scraps

Flutter On By Art Journal: Zero Waste Painted Scraps by Renae Davis

Who else out there has quite a messy craft mat? I know I am always making a mess and I do not like wasting colored medium when I can help it. I also do not like wasting scrap paper. Colored paper can be easy to use up but what about all those white paper scraps? I have found a way to use up those scraps and save all the inky goodness on my craft space.

The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. The opinions I share are solely my own.

I use a lot of printables (mostly from my Bible journaling design teams) and cut-outs in my art journaling so I always have those leftover white paper pieces that I don’t throw away. Nope! I sure don’t! I use them to soak and clean up any extra ink, paint, alcohol, medium from my glass mat, paint brushes, palette knives so nothing gets wasted. I used to use whole sheets of paper (and still do for big messes) but when I have so many little pieces piling up I thought it would be a good idea to use them up. They make collage pieces!

I sorted through my bucket of scraps and chose colors that would blend well together (and that I had a lot of) to make my background in my art journal. For this project I chose mostly pinks, purples and some blues.

When layering, I glued down my largest scraps first starting at the edge of the wire binding of the journal and working my way to cover the middle of the pages. By working this way, any papers that over lap the edge of the journal can easily be cut off to use again in the layout.

After the big blocks of color are laid down, I filled in the remaining spaces with the smaller piece.

I only applied glue to the backside of these papers but if you would like a smooth look, apply a layer of TCW9011 Matte Gel Medium over the top to smooth out any corners and rough edges.

watercolor applied to blank white spaces of scrap paper

Since the strips are mop up strips, not every piece of the white papers are coated in a colored medium- there’s plenty of white spaces. For these white spaces, I applied a watered down watercolor that matches the background just so the eye isn’t drawn to these white blotches in the final layout. I used pink watercolor on the left and purple watercolor on the right side of the layout.

TCW9002 Black Gesso through 12x12 TCW934 Sunny Butterfly with a sponge — TCW9002 Black Gesso through 12×12 TCW934 Sunny Butterfly with a sponge

I applied TCW9002 Black Gesso through 12×12 TCW934 Sunny Butterfly with a sponge on the left side of the layout.

I applied TCW9002 Black Gesso through 12×12 TCW934 Sunny Butterfly with a sponge on the right side of the layout.

traced circles through 12x12 TCW762 Shapes Stencil — traced circles through 12×12 TCW762 Shapes Stencil

To preserve even more of the beauty of the background, I traced around the circles in the 12×12 TCW762 Shapes Stencil throughout various places of the layout.

painted layer of TCW9002 Black Gesso around circles and butterflies

I painted around the edges of the butterflies and the circles with a layer of TCW9002 Black Gesso.

TCW 9001 White Gesso through 6x6 TCW384 Well Rounded Stencil with a sponge — TCW 9001 White Gesso through 6×6 TCW384 Well Rounded Stencil with a sponge

For the final layer to avoid having entirely too much black on the layout, I applied a layer of TCW 9001 White Gesso through 6×6 TCW384 Well Rounded Stencil with a sponge. I watered down the leftover white gesso on my glass mat and added splashes all the layout.

In some of the circles, I was able to stamp a few sentiments from TCW2207 Happy Sentiments 4×6 Clear Stamps, TCW2209 Beautiful Sentiments 4×6 Clear Stamps and TCW2210 Uplifting Sentiments 4×6 Clear Stamps.