#featured

Katie Smith

Sketching In Your Art Journal Online Class

I’m a little bit late in posting this, as my class came out 2 weeks ago, but I’ve been dying to tell you something: I’m officially a teacher at Big Picture Classes! I’ve been a fan of Big Picture Classes for years, so I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when they asked if I would be interested in teaching in art journaling course! Obviously I said yes. What is my first class? Sketching in Your Art Journal. It’s just what the title implies- a course showing you my tips and

Katie Smith

Art Journal Workshop: 21 Secrets – Tell Your Story

(As a 21 Secrets teacher, this post includes affiliate links) I have exciting news to share with y’all!The latest (and last!!) edition of the 21 SECRETS art journal workshop by *Dirty Footprints Studio is now available for pre-order! and I am so honored to announce that I am one of 21 different artists teaching a course in it! If you don’t know, 21 SECRETS is a 150+ page downloadable eBook filled with 25+ hours of videos, full colored photos, templates, and clear instruction

Katie Smith

Painting Galaxies Online Course

I have some exciting news to share! I have an online course with Get Messy Art Journal launching today! I have been secretly working on this course for the past few months so I am thrilled to finally have it out in the world. What is it about? Painting Galaxies! It is a technique based coursed, showing you all of my secrets on how to create stunning starry scenes. I use multiple mediums including watercolors and acrylics and in the 7 lessons I show you how to use them as well

Katie Smith

How To Create A Traced Portrait

I’ve got a fun sketching technique to share with y’all today! I love to sketch portraits freehand (drawing nerd!), however sometimes I want to do things the easy way- tracing! So today that is what I’m going to show you. For this project I am creating a portrait of one of my favorite artists- Frida Kahlo, but this will work on just about any photo, I think. 🙂 I recently received Cricut’s new Bright Pad (Thank you Cricut!) and I am using it in this project. The Bright Pad is

Katie Smith

DIY Butterfly Resin Tray

Hey guys, today I have a project to share with you that I’m really excited about! I created these “Lepidoptera Display Trays” for Walnut Hollow and I LOVE how they turned out! Lepidoptera is the order of insects that includes moths and butterflies, and I’ve always loved the bug displays so that is what inspired this DIY. With a coat of resin on top, they look like they are under glass! I’m super pleased with how they turned out. Grab the full tutorial here. #featured #tutoria

Katie Smith

Get Messy – Taking the Heart Journal Class

This past week Get Messy launched a new online course – Heart Journal The course was created by my friend Essie, who has such a whimsical and magical collage style and I was excited to learn she was teaching a class. The Heart Journal course is designed to help you work more emotions into your art journal, rather than just make pretty pages. Although pretty pages are always good too, yeah? As a part of the Get Messy Creative Team, I got early access to this class, so I’ve bee

Katie Smith

DIY Wood Burned Cactus Art

Hey Y’all, Today I am over on the Walnut Hollow blog sharing a few tips for doing wood burned illustrations, like these cactus above! You can get the full tutorial on the Walnut Hollow blog here. #featured #tutorial #walnuthollow

Katie Smith

Celebrating National Scrapbok Day! – Mountains Mini Album

Hey guys, today I wanted to share this mini album I made! National Scrapbook Day falls on the first Saturday of May, and *Tombow sent those of us on their design team a package to celebrate the day! It inspired me to finally scrapbook these photos from my trip to Colorado last year (right before leaving for this years trip!!). Tombow partnered up with a few amazing paper crafting companies, and they sent us so many goodies! I want to thank them here and then I’ll get on to sh

Katie Smith

DIY Acrylic Paint Galaxy on Wood

Hey you guys, I have a new tutorial up on the Walnut Hollow blog! This time I am showing you how to paint galaxies and night skies on to wood, using acrylic paint! Usually I paint galaxies on paper with watercolors, but I do love a good acrylic galaxy as well. You can get the full tutorial here. #featured #tutorial #walnuthollow

Katie Smith

Art Journal Tools to Take When Traveling

Today I am sharing a post over on Caylee Grey’s blog. Caylee makes the most gorgeous mini albums, and is the co-founder of the Get Messy Art Journal community that I am always talking about. I love Caylee’s work so I am honored to be sharing a guest post on her blog today! I wrote a blog post all about my favorite art supplies to take with me when I am traveling! If you want to read my tips and learn what supplies I love, hop on over to Caylee’s blog and give it a read! #art

Katie Smith

20+ Art Journal Galaxies to Inspire

If you’ve ever looked at my art journals then you may have noticed a certain theme that reoccurs throughout. SPACE! I find outer space to be so magical and inspiring, and I also just love painting galaxies so I do that a lot in my art. If you want a bit of inspiration for doing the same, I’ve rounded up a bunch of my pages here for you to enjoy. I am also sharing a few tips + ideas. Try using photos with your galaxies. Moons and planets. Print out pictures of them or paint th

Katie Smith

Oregon Coast Mini Album (NSD 2016)

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day! Did you celebrate by pulling out paper and photos? I did. Well, sort of. I was busy all day Saturday, so I celebrated on Sunday. Close enough! This year Tombow partnered with a bunch of fabulous scrapbook companies, and as a Tombow Brand Ambassador I got to play with a few new products and goodies! I created this layout using the Attwell collection by Fancy Pants. The blues in this collection worked perfectly with my photos of th

Katie Smith

The Blue Color Chaos Journal

Today I’m sharing an update on the group art journal project I am a part of -The Color Chaos Journals! 6 of my art journal friends and I decided to do sort of an art journal round robin, we each start a journal and send it to each other, letting the others create pages in their journals. The twist? Each journal is a different color! Fun! See the previous journals I’ve worked in here- Pink, Red, Gold. This past month I have been working in the Blue Journal. My first and favor

Katie Smith

Get Messy Thursday- Season of Happy Week 6

Happy Thursday! It is the last week of the Season of Happy over in the Get Messy community. Below are my pages. Get Messy Art Journal is an art journaling program that is a school, art playground and family. We are a group of like minded art journalers who have come together under this art form to learn, share, practice our skills and push past our creative limits with hopes to inspire. Our community values consistent creating, encouragement and suppport and trying new things

Katie Smith

Music I listen to while Crafting

One thing I love to do while I’m crafting (Besides drink tea. That’s a must.) is to listen to music. My mom always had music going in the house when Taylor and I were growing up- usually 80’s, or classical when we were doing our homework. I still love listening to classical music- it helps me think. I have a variety of music I listen to now, but “today’s hits” has never really been my thing. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a few favorite popular songs, Such as “Happy” by Pharre

Katie Smith

Joining an Art Journal Community

Todays post is a little bit more writing than normal, which is harder for me. I just like to post pretty pictures. But I wanted to tell you about something I love- Art Journaling! and more specifically, the Get Messy Art Journaling Community. I’ve been art journaling for a couple of years now, but it was always just off and on. At the beginning of this year though, I joined the Get Messy Art Journal community. Not only did Caylee and Lauren (the Get Messy founders) provide fa

Katie Smith

Easy Faux Watercolor Look using Markers

You all know that I love watercolors (okay, so I love most mediums… shhhh!). They are not only vibrant and colorful, but also so fun to work with. They have a certain style to them that is fun and artsy. What if you don’t have any watercolors, but want the look? I’ve got a solution for you! DIY Faux Watercolor Coloring. For this technique you’ll need water based markers. What I used, and recommend, are Tombow’s Dual Brush Pens. I used the set of secondary colors and they blen

Artist & Aesthete