Dance to your own music ~ An art journal page

 Hello everyone. Bonnie Irvine here today. I hope that you all had a lovely weekend and were able to find time to play with paper, ink, and messy things. I have two single pages left in my old 5 x 8 art journal before it is complete and I am excited to receive my new small Dylusions art journal which I ordered from the eP store. Today I am showing one of those two pages which I have just completed. It is a hodge-podge of mediums and techniques. I had doubts along the way that it would ever come together and while still very busy, I'm OK with calling it done!

I started by adhering wrinkly Melange Tissue Wrap to the page with matte medium and then applying white gesso to the page in a very textured (read lumpy-bumpy) way. Once that was dry. I applied pink and orange pan pastel which really showed up the hills and valleys. After spraying with workable fixative, I spread gesso over parts of the background with my finger. The side borders were added using black cardstock and the top and bottom pieces using fussy cut paper from the Park Bench Collection Stencilling was applied with white gesso and a scruffy brush using Dylusions Letter Jumble and Black Soot Distress ink over TCW's Star Script Bits stencil.

The pan pastel colours were intensified using  gelatos and water. Stamping was applied with Ranger Archival black ink and a Tim Holtz circles stamp from the Bitty Grunge set. Again, white gesso was finger painted over the top of the center section and some was removed or lightened with a baby wipe until I got the coverage where and how I wanted. More pink and orange watercolour crayon was layered over the gesso. I just kept playing with colours and gesso until I was happy. I still wanted to see the tissue wrap patterns and the stamping but didn't want any of it to be distinct.

The black side borders were looking too stark with the white stencilling over the black. To mute this somewhat, mesh drywall tape was cut to fit and layered over the top of the black. It's fun stuff because it's sticky enough to stay put without any extra adhesive or medium. Two lengths of yellow music washi tape were applied to white cardstock and then adhered to the background to give this stylish lady a place to dance. I wanted the yellow colour to show and the music notes to be clear which it does if layered over white instead of the complicated colourful background. Two star tiles from Doodlebug were adhered with Glossy Accents to the ends of the tape. Once again. white gesso was finger painted over the top of the tape to embed it in the background and tone it down a little.

The fashionista's dress and limbs from Dylusions Mini Couture set were stamped on paper from Authentique's Strong paper pad. Her skin was coloured with Prismacolor pencil as was the shading on the dress and hat. Her hat paper came from a scrap calling to me from my desk. Her head is the O letter from a set of Idea-ology grunge letters. It was blackened with a Big Brush pen and dotted with a white paint pen.The hat flowers were dotted in with Spiced Marmalade Distress marker and then white dots on top. More white dots were layered over the shading on the background next to Fashionista.

The finishing touches on this page were the pink Big Brush pen around the inside rectangle to create a frame, the stamped and fussy cut sentiment from Inkadinkado's Thoughts for the Day, and the black gesso rings done with a bottle lid. Wahoo! One down and one to go and then I can play in the Dylusions journal. Thanks for joining me today. I hope you feel inspired to get inky and have a play.

Bonnie

products used from eclectic Paperie store:

Authentique - Strong 8x8" Paper Pad	Dylusions Stencil 5x8" - Letter Jumble	Dylusions Couture Clear Stamps - Mini Couture	TCW - Balzer Bits Mask - Script Star Bits
Idea-ology - Tim Holtz - Tissue Wrap - Melange	Fancy Pants - Park Bench 6x6 Paper Pad	Claudine Hellmuth Studio Gesso	Claudine Hellmuth Studio - Black Gesso
Claudine Hellmuth Studio-Multi-Medium Matte	Faber Castell - Gelatos - Yellow Colors	Faber Castell Gelatos - Red Colors	PanPastel - Exploring Mixed Media Set #2
Faber Castell - Big Brush Pen - Black	Faber Castell - Big Brush Pens - Red	Tim Holtz� Distress� Markers - Spice Marmalade