Just before I decided to focus on art to sell rather than more e-products, I had started writing a book on creating art journal backgrounds.  I’ve decided to share these techniques with my readers as tutorials.  Here is the first one using cut-out letters on your background.

Cut out letters

Materials needed:
•    magazines
•    letter stencils or die-cut letters
•    craft knife or scissors
•    acrylic paint
•    water soluble crayons ,oil pastels, watercolor pencils, or plain colored pencils
•    baby wipes or damp cloth
•    glue stick

1.    Select magazine pages that have interesting patterns, color or text.

2.    Trace the outline of each letter you’ll be spelling onto different magazine images you have chosen.

If you don’t want the lines of the pen or pencil you are using to trace, showing up on the front of your letters, trace them backwards on the back of the page.

3.    When all the letters are traced, cut each one out, using a craft knife.  You can use scissors if you prefer.

4.    Select an acrylic paint that goes with the magazine patterns you have chosen for you letters. Paint a page in your journal with the one solid color.

5.    Create a simple image on the page.  I made a bird silhouette and colored it in with water soluble oil pastels, but you could use watercolor crayons, watercolor pencils or just plain colored pencils if you want.  After I colored it with the pastels, I used a baby wipe to smooth the pastels around for a smoother look.

If you’d like to use a bird, also, you can click on this picture and it will take you to the original image that you can download.

6.    Decide how you want to arrange your cut-out letters on the page.  Once you’ve made this decision, glue them on with a glue stick.