Another Art Journal Page and a tutorial :)

Hi everyone :)

On Monday I had a ‘play date’ with my friend Nina.  Arranging grown up play dates is so much more fun than arranging them for your kids!

Nina and I had half the dining table each and while she worked on her stuff I worked on a new art journal page.  I’ve managed to take step by step photos so here goes:

When I started my page I knew I wanted to use these resin face pieces along with some cool paperdeco stuff that I bought at the Dunkley’s show for background texture.

I started off with a piece of cardstock that I’d already painted with gesso and then I added some corrugated card to begin building up my background.

Next came the paperdeco stuff.  It’s really cool to work with!  All you have to do is wet it and it pulls in all sorts of different directions and makes the coolest textures!

Then I used the glue gun to adhere the resin faces.   I wanted the faces to be partially hidden so I added a bit more paperdeco using mod podge to cover some of the resin.

Then I had to really dry the page out.  To be honest it took quite a while because I had layered quite a bit of texture onto the page… thank goodness for my handy heat gun!

Then came a layer of gesso to give me a textured background ready for paint, ink and pastels.

I brushed on a layer of blue paint followed by some green and although it gave me lots of colour I was totally not loving it.  Of course I could have painted gesso over the whole thing and started again but I decided it wasn’t as bad as all that LOL

I got out some paper towels and spritzed them with water and then used them to pick up lots of the colour.  I really liked the way the colour stayed in the recesses and I could definitely see the start of what I was hoping for.

I dried off the background paint and then used my pan pastels to create the basic ‘tree’ shape I was after.  The pan pastels definitely added plenty of colour but they also let the original blue and green pop through as well.

Then it was time to focus on the tree a bit more.  I really like the way the pastels add colour without losing the texture… so many possibilities with this!

I kept going with the pan pastels adding it more detail and depth to the tree.

I got out the bronze perfect pearl spray I’d made for my last page and brushed some over the resin pieces to bring out their detail.  At this stage the resin started taking on the look of very old stone… awesome!

Then I got out some of my inky sprays to add a bit more colour.  I definitely had plenty of texture but the page wasn’t quite right.  I wasn’t sure what it ‘needed’ but it almost felt finished so I decided to call it done!

I added the date stamp and it was all ready to go in my art journal.

I was still thinking it needed ‘something’ but had no idea what.  Last night I showed my night class ladies my last few pages and they loved them all until I got to this one and they all said… “it needs something”… we tossed around a few ideas and I pondered it for a bit more and then this morning I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

I got out my Distress Markers and added some lighter areas to the trees… some darker areas to the shadows… some colours to highlight the features of the resin faces and finally some tiny little bling pieces to represent fireflies in the background and now it’s really done:

Much, much happier with it now and it really does feel finished.  I also added to the date tag to remind myself that it’s ok to add things at later dates.

So there you have it… another art journal page in my book!

Thanks for stopping by xx