Uncaged Mixed Media Art Journal Page January 22 2016, 13 Comments

Hi my name is Katrina Rollings and I am a member of the Art Journal Emporium creative crew.

I am so pleased the Art Journal Caravan is back.  This will be my 4th Caravan I will have taken part in and I have really enjoyed being part of all the others, so inspiring!

Our theme for January is Uncaged.  Now some of you might already know I am a parrot lover, my online name is Arty Parrot, which is also the name of my blog.  I have been keeping little parrots for over 20 years now and have loved every second.  Our current feathered family member is Dexter, a grey male cockatiel who was found on our neighbours roof.  I live in England, so that was hardly the place for a parrot.  We took him in and as nobody claimed him he became one of the family.  He loves to move from room to room with me in his cage for safety.  He loves it up in my craft room the most but when we are in the lounge with him his cage is open and he has his freedom.  We have done this with all our parrots over the years and so to me the word Uncaged conjures up the fun and often chaos when we had 4 cockatiels who all loved to chew the wallpaper and anything else they could get their beaks on, that ensues when our little feathered friends have their free time.  Luckily Dexter just likes to sit on the back of the sofa and watch the TV and boss us around.

For this month’s journal page I wanted to portray my love of my parrots and the fun we have had with them all.  So here is my mixed media journal page Uncaged, using 2 of this month's collage sheets and the tinted fragments from January’s Art Journal Caravan itinerary as my colour guide.

  • First I printed off  sheet 10 from January’s collage sheets.
  • Tore off a tiny piece of the left hand side of it.
  • Added a strip of paper from my paper collection to fill in the gap (my journal is square so it didn’t fit)

  • I wanted to blend the new paper into the collage sheet so I took my watercolours and added some drips.
  • I added some colour around the cage and the outside of the page using my Aqua Monolith watercolour woodless pencils.
  • I added my parrots next, I printed out sheet number 9 at half size and cut out the 3 parrots.
  • Then added colour around the birds using my watercolour pencils
  • I felt the area to the left of the cage was a little bare so I used a peacock feather mask and some inks to add another layer, using the watercolour pencils to add more depth.
  • To add the word Uncaged I decided to die cut the letters out of black card and then used my watercolour pencils to add some colour around the outside of the letters.

There you have it. My first Art Journal Caravan page for 2016, can’t wait to see what's coming next!

The Collage Workshop is included in the Art Journal Emporium and then available for sale in the TB&CO shop the following month. 

Previous Collage Sheet Worshops can be found here: Collage Sheets by Tangie.

For more information on the Art Journal Emporium visit Art Journal Emporium - Tangie Baxter & CO.

[Posted by Katrina Rollings]