Art Journalling (Part II)

Continuing on from Monday's post I thought you would like to see the rest of my Art Journalling pages that I did on my introduction course with Lesley at Stamp Addicts.

The above page was inspired by the fact that the great british weather on the day of attendance was one minute glorious sunshine and the next minute heavy rain.  This brought to my mind some more song lyrics (a big influence on my mood and life always) "Sunshine of a Rainy Day" so there was my initial inspiration.  This time the background again gesso'd in white was painted using red, yellow and orange Neocolour II water soluble crayons (all materials again supplied at the class) and mixed together again using a wet paintbrush.  I next selected a stunning sunflower napkin (which I seperated from the plain base layer) and adhered this to the bottom of the left hand page using matte gel medium, to complete the texture on this side of the page I selected and glued on a piece of weaved string ribbon and the stamped title using red dye based ink. 

On the right hand side of the page I spritzed some red dylusion inks to the bottom left and top right of the page and blotted this using kitchen towel I then stamped the harlequin design to the bottom right hand side using Spiced Marmelade Distress Ink and the Tim Holtz Man with an Umbrella on the bottom left in brown dye based ink.  At the top right I used a template of rainfall and went through this using embossing paste, once this had dried (with the aid of a heat gun) I then went over this with Inca Gold Wax in a copper shade to tie this in with the rest of the page and finally to complete it I added a quote "The shortest period of time lies between the minute you put some money away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain"

This was my final creation of the day, unfortunately I was unable to complete it until I got home as I just ran out of time and colouring in the intricate pattern around the border using Distress Markers took a couple of hours.  I did however, manage to place the background down, this time on an ungesso'd page using the marvelous medium of Pan Pastels in a pastel yellow and blue mixed into each other across both pages.  I then stamped the big poppy stamp using versamark in the two corners and went over these using a soffit application tool and the red pan pastel which pulled the image to life.  To make this pop I went around the outside of both poppies using a graphite pencil using light pressure and blended it out to make a shadow using a damp paint brush.  I stamped the inspirational word "Remember" in black on the right hand page as I wanted to associate the poppies with rememberance and to acknowledge the loss of my Nan who I was extremely close to and is always in my mind and heart.  The second inspirational sentiment reminded me of what my Nan always inspired me to achieve and this I stamped in Red Dye Ink and again made pop using the graphite shadow method.

Finally on my return home to complete the page I added some personal journalling about my feelings for my Nan, some black Rox for texture in the centre of the poppies and some red dimensional tiles.

Again I hope you like these two pages and that they inspire you to give Art Journalling a go.  There are some amazing You Tube videos to help you get started and as you can see from day 1 it can be adapted to be whatever you want it to be based on your thoughts and feelings at the time.

Many thanks for your time

Em x