Art Journal - Spring

Well the monthly challenge thrown down by Fiona from Create was to create a Spring page in our art journal. I did warn you yesterday to bring your dark glasses - many thanks to Julia from the Art Journal Group who kindly told me my page was vibrant. So as this is all totally new to me I have recorded the steps along the way to share with you all.

When I thought what Spring meant to me (apart from wee lambs, daffodils) it was blue sky, green leaves, butterflies & flowers.

Here's a picture of Rusty back in the garden after being locked up in the garage all winter & yes Spring has arrived in Auckland.

I started my page by tearing some of this luscious Tim Holtz Melange tissue wrap paper, adhering a few pieces randomly with 3D Gloss Gel medium. What I have learnt is you always have to have torn edges on the tissue if you're going to do this - no straight lines.

I then shaved off some Lime & Margarita mix gelatos with my palette knife & mixed them with the 3D Gloss Gel medium, and using my fingers hand-painted/blended over the base of the 2 pages, and I repeated the process for the "sky" using Snow Cone & Cotton Candy gelatos.

Then I went off to the hairdresser & let it all dry. When I returned I had a fun time mixing up a mixture of gelatos with Whipped Spackle this time as I wanted a thicker layer & used a palette knife to apply through a Dylusions Flower Medley (small) stencil. I tried originally to apply the gelatos directly through the stencil but that didn't really work. Some of the colours I used were Lemon, Tangerine, Bubble Gum, Passionfruit, Lavender, & the same 2 greens as the background for the leaves with the flowers but more Lime this time.

I was very afraid removing the stencil that it would be a big gluggy mess but it all looked pretty good & I cleaned up the bits that had escaped where I didn't want them with a wet cotton bud or my finger again.

As I had plenty of time I left it to dry overnight naturally but you can speed up the process for any of these steps with a heat gun.

Next day; time for leaves this time I used Green Tea & the Lime gelato but I think I added a bit too much Green Tea when it dried it was darker than I was aiming for & the Mini Climbing Vine is from TCW (The Crafers Workshop). I used my jar of Modelling Paste as I wanted to see which one I preferred to work with. In my opinion the Whipped Speckle was lighter & easier to work with & certainly gave more texture but the Modelling Paste seemed to be easier to "stencil" with as it was firmer.

When this layer was dry I tried using my fan brush to splatter a wee bit of white gesso that I had mixed with some water as I was thinking it really was looking too bright. But I'm not a very good splatterer (yet).

 I also stamped out the word spring using Tidy Alphabets (from Stampin' Up! - retired a very long time ago). I inked the letters up with Tim Holtz distress inks as the distress ink colours seemed to work best with my page. Colours used from L>R: Peacock Feathers, Squeezed Lemonade, Pickled Raspberry, Milled Lavender, Twisted Citron, Abandoned Coral, Dried Marigold.

I then stamped the saying from Butterfly Basics (Stampin' Up!) multiple times in Wild Honey ink & cut them out individually & the wee butterfly from the set is stamped in Pickled Raspberry & then punched out with it's corresponding punch. It's also had a wee wash with a Zig Wink of Stella pen  to make sparkly & adhered with a wee bit of  thin 3D foam tape (which I got from CTMH). I am enjoying having a thin bit of foam for some projects when you don't want things raised too high.

I think this saying is really appropriate for "Spring" : There is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly.

Well that certainly was a long INKredible Journey, I sure had a lot of fun creating the page, our next challenge for October is "Something Scary" so I can assure you it won't be vibrant.

If you've read to the end of this journey thanks for staying & sharing it with me.