Wednesday 14 August 2013

Art Journal page and another tutorial

Hi everyone :)

Over the past few days I’ve been working on and off on another art journal page.  I’ve had the idea for a few weeks now but wasn’t sure how I was going to do it… and I had a few mistakes along the way but it’s done now and I LOVE it!

The idea was to do a ‘seahorse’ page but somewhere along the line (Mum thinks it’s when he got his ‘eye’ he turned from being a seahorse into a ‘water dragon’.  I’ve got step by step photos for you so I’ll let you decide:

Is it a seahorse or a water dragon?

I created a textured background using muslin and mod podge and let it dry.  Then I covered the entire page with gesso… such a great texture to work on!

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Quite often when I’m making backgrounds I’ll do a few at a time and on the weekend my table looked like this… so many ideas… so little time LOL

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Next I got out my new Pan Pastels and started layering on some colour… totally loving the mix of purple, blue and turquoise for this one!

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Once the colour was done I got out a stencil I grabbed from The Warehouse recently.  It was super cheap and had six sea themed stencil to work with.

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I masked off the ‘join lines’ on the stencil and got busy with the modelling paste.

When I lifted the stencil up I had to admit that I was a bit disappointed with how the stencil turned out.  I think it was due to the very textured background but the detail of the stencil was a bit lost.

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I kept looking and looking at it… and after ten minutes I just knew that I wouldn’t be happy with it no matter what I did so I quickly scrapped off as much texture paste as I could and then carefully used a soft damp cloth to get the last of the paste off.

While I was waiting for the background to dry I got out a stencil I made to put some coral on the page.

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The embossing powder is called ‘Bridal’ and it’s a little bit glittery.  That didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned either but it wasn’t too bad.

Next I got busy on my Cameo and cut a new seahorse stencil from kraft cardstock.

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Then it was time to get into the texture paste again!

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Thanks to the kraft cardstock being a bit thinner I was able to push it onto the textures of the background more and got a good image to work with.  This seahorse  seemed more in proportion with the page as well.

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While I was waiting for my seahorse to dry I kept looking at the coral pieces that I’d cut out and came up with a mini brain wave… lot that when it happens!  I decided to heat emboss them with clear powder.

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I stamped all over the coral with my versa mark ink and then sprinkled the powder all over it before heat setting.

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Once that was all done I got out the Pan Pastels again and added some colour to the coral. 

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Then I added another layer of clear embossing powder over the top to seal the colour in.

Next up was more Pan Pastel fun… this time with the seahorse!  I actually spent ages doing him… layering the colour on and spraying him with fixative in between to get the depth of colour I wanted.

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At this point he still looks like a seahorse (at least I think he does).  I wanted to highlight some areas so I got out my gold paint and added a few touches… including his eye… and that’s when, all of a sudden, he looked like a sea dragon!

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To get a bit more depth to him I added some Black Soot Distress Marker around his face and belly and smudged it in with a brush dipped in water.

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Back to the coral again!  I adhered them with glue dots so that the coral looked like it had movement to it.

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While I was looking for some things I found a wee bag of paua coloured beads and thought they’d look great along the bottom of the page.

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Yep, I was pretty pleased with my page so time for the date tag.

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Here’s a close up photo of him taken outside:

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And here he is stuck in my art journal:

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And the final photo… the double page spread:

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So what’s the verdict?  Is he a seahorse or a water dragon?

Happy Wednesday xx

4 comments:

  1. Damn you're talented. He looks awesome (the seahorse) So what are these 'Pan Pastels'?
    Deborah Evans

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Deborah :) Pan Pastels are gorgeous colours that you put on with applicators and they really put intense colour on your page/project. They're definitely an 'investment' product but oh so worth it!

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