Journal Journeys Challenge 19

Its 'Birds' this month over on Journal Journeys this month so here's my offering.

I started by scribbling Derwent ArtBars (in Spearmint, Honeycomb, Pacific Blue and Allzarin) in blocks all over the page.  I used a paintbrush with water to blend them together.  This is the first time I've used the ArtBars and I *love* them.  They're like water soluble wax crayons (and we all know how much we love wax crayons!!).

Next I tore some pages from a bird book  and stuck them on with gel medium.  Then I put some Claudine Hellmuth Blank Canvas paint on top of them with my finger and scrubbed it off with kitchen towel to blend them in with the page.


I used a Stewart Gill stencil of a Peacock Feather and sponged Landscape Green and Yellow Pastel through it.  After that I really looked at the background and realised that there was pink and blue in there so I sponged Painterly Pink and Sky Blue through small sequin waste and scrubbed some into the background with my finger.


Ages ago Jo and I were in The Works at the Metro Centre and we came across a book in the sale called Fotolog.  Its a book jam packed full of all kinds of photos on everything imaginable.  Well at a fiver who could resist....  I used 4 unusual photos of birds on the page and scratched into them using Stampbord tools.  I used the same colours of ArtBars to scribble round the edge of each photo and then outlined them with black pen.

I googled bird quotes and found the 2 I've used.  I thought because my photos are a bit dark, the quotes needed to be deep.  





I hand wrote them using a black pen, first going over it in black then in pink to accentuate it.  I don't hand write in my finished pages very often but I think this page benefits from it.




I used a Tim Holtz clear flock of birds stamp with Sweet Plum Memento ink randomly on the page.  Memento doesn't dry too well over acrylic paint and gel medium so I used a heat gun to dry it and scrubbed any damp ink into the page with a kitchen towel.

So here is my finished page.

Its something completely different for me but I'm really please with it!

Thanks for organising this Dawn :-)

Journal Journeys CH07

Over on Journal Journeys Dawn set us the challenge of April Showers this month.  How apt.  Mind they've not been 'showers' as much as torrential rain at least for us in the North East!!

Dawn made such a wonderful page and it was hard not to copy her idea of the huge rain drops so this is what I came up with.

I coloured the background of my Moleskine by scribbling all over with Derwent Aquatone in kingfisher blue and activated it with a baby wipe.  I dried it with my heat tool and then flicked the same colour blue, zinc yellow and magenta all over the page by using a wet paintbrush and flicking off the end of the Aquatones.  The effect is brillaint and looked just like multicoloured rain.  Of course my camera was downstairs and I was in the 'zone' and forgot to take a photo.

I wanted to make the page seem almost psychadelic and used the Crafty Image Emporium CD from Crafty Computer Paper.  Its one of those CD's that I use time and again when I'm looking for something a little bit different.  I used a section called '1960's' and the small flowers came from a sheet that had loads of embellishments on it.

I used the same CD for the paper for the umbrella.  I found an free umbrella template on-line and fitted the papers into it.  My Mam said it looks like its silk.  I suppose it does a little.

I've realised that there always seems to be a mistake in all of my pages.  This time its the date.  I stamped March instead of April.  See I don't even know what month we're in even though the challenge is 'April Showers'.  You'd think I'd have caught on ;)

To bring it all together I used individual letter stamps to stamp the wording and stamped some flowers along the bottom of the page.  They didn't stand out so well so I coloured them with Spectrum Noir pens.

I also coloured the flowers in the rain with the same pens to make them stand out a little more.


And here is my finished page :)