January Calendar Page Progress: AJED

Today I started my January Art Journal Calendar. 

Here's where it's at, half done but making me happy :-)

First I drew out the grid and border with a waterproof Micron pen. My favorite spacing is the width of my ruler - no need to overcomplicate things. Sorry, I didn't photograph this step.

Next I quickly swiped wide stripes of watercolor across the page and flicked lots of water across the wet paint to make splatters. This step took less then two minutes. Crazy!

Since I'm impatient I dried it with my heat gun.

In December I bought a bushel of Idea-ology Nostalgic Tissue Tape by Tim Holtz and tried it here, hoping the slightly transparent tape would let some of the blue and green show through.

Just rip and stick - this stuff is AWESOME!

Hmmm... I like it, but it looks like a map!

Here's a close-up of the cool tape:

Next, I labeled the days of the week with my five dollar, bare bones, Dymo label maker.

And finally, I gessoed the cells to make them stand out and easier to journal on. I just switched to Dick Blick gesso and it's more transparent (less coverage) then the Liquitex or Golden brand gessoes. I love this as I get the benefits of a lighter area for text while keeping the background color. It really seems to unify my pages better.

That's all the time I had time for - and even this was spread out in two and five minute increments all day.

Tomorrow I plan to add "JANUARY" to the space at the top, number the days of the month, journal the 1st-6th and hopefully add an image... ideally something scandalous.