Art Journal - Make a Wish...

Happy Mixed Media Monday, everyone! :)

I have another art journal spread to share with you today...

This layout began with a couple of what I call my "smoosh papers." When I purchase new watercolors, or sprays, or powders, I add them to my handmade color charts for those materials. Instead of using a palette, I put small amounts of the colors on my craft mat. Since I hate wasting color supplies, I found a way to use up the leftovers on my sheet by adding more water and "smooshing" pieces of mixed media and/or watercolor papers onto the mat filled with liquid colors.

I have lots of pieces still left to use on cards, canvases, and more journal pages, so you can expect to see these on upcoming projects...

I cut a couple of the "smoosh papers" down to 5" x 8-1/2" to fit, adhered them with liquid adhesive to the pages of my journal, and outlined them with a black Pitt pen and white Sakura Gelly Roll pen...

The next step was to adhere a piece of Tim Holtz Melange tissue paper along the two outside edges using gel medium. Then I used a bubble stencil to add Studio 490 crackle texture paste (this is one crackle medium that will crackle just as effectively with a heat gun as with letting it air dry). Once the crackle medium was dry, I applied a coat of clear gesso over the pages (to prevent the base colors from changing as I added further color mediums).

Next, I used more Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays to deepen and accent some of the color areas - even though I couldn't remember what I originally used to color the pages, I could find sprays that were close, if not the same.

The next step was to stamp and emboss the sentiment and dandelions using embossing ink and white embossing powder...

Why is it when you want your embossing to come out clean and precise, it won't, but when you want a shabby, distressed look, it turns out perfectly precise? LOL  So I went to work with my black Stabilo All pencil, shading around the dandelions and stamped words, smearing the penciling with my finger to make the embossed areas a bit more shabby and distressed. Then I shaded with the pencil around the crackled bubbles, and decided that now the butterflies didn't stand out enough, so I outlined them with a white Uni Posca pen...

I thought the two upper inside corners looked too "flat," so I die cut a couple spiderweb corners from white cardstock, and sprayed them with a couple sprays to blend in with their background colors. And finally, I added small lace pieces, tears of washi tape, and black and silver sequins for fun accents and different textures...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Sprays - Hydrangea Blue,  Golden Doubloons,  Alpine Ice Rose,

C'est La Vie Cerise,  Bodacious Blush,  Tibetan Poppy Teal

            Stamps:   Unity Stamp Co. "Wish With Your Heart";   Hampton Art "Cling Dandelions"

Stencil:  Prima "Bubbles"            Dies:   La-La-Land Crafts 'Spiderweb Corner"

Printed Tissue Paper:   Tim Holtz "Melange"     

Art Mediums:   Golden matte gel medium,  Liquitex clear gesso,  Studio 490 crackle texture paste

Miscellaneous:   white ultra-fine embossing powder,  Stabilo All pencil,  Sakura Gelly Roll pen, Uni Posca paint pen,  lace, washi tapes, sequins

Thanks so much for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!