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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Then it was time to get into the texture paste again!
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.
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.
I stamped all over the coral with my versa mark ink and then sprinkled the powder all over it before heat setting.
Once that was all done I got out the Pan Pastels again and added some colour to the coral.
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.
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!
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.
Back to the coral again! I adhered them with glue dots so that the coral looked like it had movement to it.
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.
Yep, I was pretty pleased with my page so time for the date tag.
Here’s a close up photo of him taken outside:
And here he is stuck in my art journal:
And the final photo… the double page spread:
So what’s the verdict? Is he a seahorse or a water dragon?
Happy Wednesday xx
Damn you're talented. He looks awesome (the seahorse) So what are these 'Pan Pastels'?
ReplyDeleteDeborah Evans
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!
DeleteA Stallion Seahorse.
ReplyDeleteLOL that's a great description of him!
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