Happy New Year

This photo is of my first journal page of the new year, it started out on a non gesso'd background with Neocolour II Crayons applied in shades of blue and purple blended together with a wet brush.

I had found a technique in craft stamper that I had tested out in my technique journal that I wanted to apply on this page to seperate a third of the page for the date.  This involved layering torn pieces of masking tape of different thicknesses over each other to produce a border of sorts.  One this had been completed I was keen to highlight the texture and blend it in with my page so masking off the areas that I did not want to have colour on I applied Tim Holtz distress stains in faded jeans and tumbled glass and spritz other area's using the purple dylusions ink.  As this began to permiate into the tape I blotted off any excess using a dried out baby wipe.  To add even further texture I used a palette knife and applied small areas of Golden clear beads paste to the border.  Once this had turned clear, and the inks had dried to ensure the integrity of the border I applied a layer of Mod Podge matt to seal it all.

I knew I wanted to use a rubber stamp of faux string wrapped around some card/paper.  It just seemed to place itself to the bottom left of the masking tape border which I stamped in Cobalt Blue Archival Ink, to then make it look more like a page behind the border I then stamped the same image above the border twice as well before applying a faux shadow round it using graphite and a small wet brush.

The next layer involved stamped text, patterns and images in blue, black and purple inks. 

I wanted to add a further colour to make the page pop and settled on the light green dylusion spray which I applied in an assortment of areas through different stencil's.

With the Crafters Workshop wording and key stencil I applied some pale blue acrylic paint through in random areas.

Lastly the final layer I applied some Golden Crackle Paste mixed with white acrylic through the Harlequin background stencil.  Unfortunately this did not show up well on my camera but I can assure you the cracks give the pattern an aged feel to it.

I hope you enjoyed looking at the above Journal Page and the route to its creation.

See you soon

Em x