Live, Love, Laugh...

That felt so good being able to get into my craft room again and have some fun!  Feels like forever that I've been able to sit down start a project and finish it.  The weather is rainy and ugly out, my sister in law is sick so we couldn't get together for our course today, so I am taking full advantage of my day.  Laundry on the go, bedding washed, and my art journal page completed.  :)  

So many of my past pages have been layered with so many dimensional pieces that my poor book is bulging already and I just started doing this.  LOL  So, I wanted to do something not so bulky but give the impression of dimension.  ;)  I am loving this page and the vibrant colors.  It is so out of my norm but I am really liking it.  I love the fact that there are no boundaries in art journaling and that I can do whatever my heart desires regardless of what my style has been.  I really want to experiment in different styles and techniques.  This page has so many layers it's crazy.  Mainly because I was never really happy with how it was looking and so I just kept building on it until I was happy with my results.  :) 

Here is my page and then I'll do a quick tutorial of what I used.

Don't you just love the bright colors?  I sure do.

I started by gesso'ing my page.  Next, I found some pages of design paper that I probably will never use for scrapbooking or cards, so I tore up large pieces and used Multi medium matte and glued them down randomly on the pages.  I was hoping that the patterns would shine thru in the end.  Then I had a bunch of dollar store acrylic paints that I thought I would try to use.  They were cheap and by cheap, I mean they not only were inexpensive,but they were CHEAP!  Really poor quality, very watery.  Oh well.  So I painted the page with a bright orange, a yellow, and a green.  It was so transparent looking.  So, I grabbed some of TH distress paints in a green and a red and randomly applied them over the other paints.  That helped.  All the colors mixed really well and gave a really great variation of colors on the page.  But I felt that it was a bit too bright.  I had no clue what I was going to do next but I found the colors a little too vibrant.  So, I pulled out my TH Ideology tissue wrap and tore out a piece large enough to cover the whole layout.  I used my Multi medium again and sealed it down.  It was still really bright so why not used a watered down version of gesso to glaze it and that would tone down the colors.  So, I added a layer of gesso.  When it dried it still seemed really bright, so I did another layer.  Still really bright until I figured out that I had grabbed my clear gesso!!!  DOH  Mission not accomplished.  LOL  So, I grabbed my white gesso and started to apply it.  Apparently, my clear gesso wasn't dry enough when I started the white because the white was rolling off.  Parts were glazed and other areas were looking really nasty.  I grabbed my baby wipes and started to take off what would come off in little balls of paint.  Oh boy.... what a mess... Well, I'm leaving it as is now.  No more gesso'ing or white washing.

This is why art journaling is so interesting.  Even when you mess up, you just find a way to continue and see what comes of it.  :)  Next, I grabbed some sprays.  I used 3 Lyndi's stamp gang Flat Fabio's in Magical Mai Tai, Aloha Avocado, Pink Ladies Pink and a Dylusions spray in Lemon zest.  I sprayed the page with these colors and let them mingle together and dry.  Still really bright but I'm learning to love it. 

Time to grab my 12x12 Zenspirations stencil by Crafters Workshop Live Love Laugh and I placed it down on the left and used my Faber Castell Big Brush India ink marker in Black and colored in the stencil.  Some of the edges were a bit rough so I went back and traced around the edges to make them smoother.  Once dry, I took my Big Brush ink in White and outlined around the letters for a dimensional look.  I grabbed my Uniball white gel pen and drew stitch lines on the Live Love Laugh for a little more visual interest. 

 

 

I pulled out my Stampendous Jumbo Hydrangea stamp set and stamped with Archival ink a couple of the flower clusters, several of the single flowers and several of the leaves.   The images were colored with Gelatos.  I love my Gelatos.  Where were these babies all my life!!!  For the leaves I used margarita, lime and green tea.  I blended the colors with my water marker.  The flowers were done with aqua dulce, cotton candy and raspberry, also blended with a water marker.  I fussy cut out the images and sealed them down using my Multi medium again.  I took my india ink black pen and outlined the edges and smudged with my fingers before the color set to create shading and make the image pop.

I found in my stash of left over goodies a chipboard key from Dusty Attic that was embossed with Vintage gold embossing powder.  I glued it down.  I was looking at my page and it felt like there was still a bit of empty space that didn't feel right.  So I grabbed my Hero Arts brush strokes stamps and pulled out the heart and stamped the images with TH distress white paint randomly on the pages.  Next I filled in the hearts with TH picked raspberry paint. 

Yup, loving this page now.  It has so many dimensions and layers and stuff.  It's just a yummy page.  I had no plan in mind, just started and let it go where it wanted to go.  There is no room for disappointment when you don't have a preconceived idea of what you want.  :)  I hope you like this page as much as I do.  Please leave a comment and tell me what you think. 

Live with promise, Love with passion and Laugh with pleasure.  xoxo