She is.......

persistent.  Yes I am! Hi everyone, Micki here to share my long over due art journal play!

Since first seeing the new Donna Downey stamps from Unity Stamp Co., I've been wanting to play with any of these new, larger - perfect for art journaling stamps.  I was really drawn to Donna's "She Is" stamp.  I love the painterly look of the face and love the quotes/sentiments that come with this beautiful face stamp.  It's been ages since I've had a chance to play in my art journal but was determined to find some time this past weekend.  Painting walls and cabinets is not as much fun as playing with paint in your art journal, right?  
While the paint was drying on my cabinet, I dug out my Dylusions Journal and flipped to the pages which I had previously covered with Idea-ology Composer and Melange Tissue Wrap, as well as Christy Tomlinson "She Art" Coffee Filter Sheets.  I used matte multi-medium to make sure they were secure to the pages and covered both pages with Clear Gesso.  After that I used it as a blotting page for some paint and to clean my stencils but that is how the pages were left.

The first I grabbed my favorite colors of Dylusions Ink Sprays along with my mini-mister of water and applied color.  Some areas were blotted with a paper towel roll, others were not.  I did use an easel to help with some drips.

After several layers of inks, the page ended up looking like this:

I needed to 'prepare' a spot on one of the pages for the She Is stamp, so I added a little gesso which was spread with Inkssentials Craft Scraper. 

Notice how the gesso reconstituted the ink colors, which was what I wanted. Before adding the stamp, I got out some stencils and paint.

I dabbed some Barn Door Distress Paint onto my craft sheet and used my foam blending tool (and fingers in some spots) to dab the paint throught the Mini Numbers Collage stencil. The color turned a little more pinkish because of the layers underneath I think, but it still looked good against the greens and teal colors.  Next I used Adirondack Terra Cotta Paint Dabber with Christy Tomlinson She Art stencil which didn't turn out as I had hoped.  I was so focused on making sure the colors would go with the background colors that I didn't even think about how it would look with the (by now) slightly pinkish color of the first stencil.  So I covered half of it a little by again scraping a layer of gesso over it.

Next I dabbed Black Soot Distress Paint on my stamp:

Which I then stamped onto my right page.  Because of all the texture from the tissue wraps, and blotted paint or maybe because of the clear gesso which turned the surface kind of rough, I got a light image.  I wanted something a little darker.  There was plenty of paint left on the stamp so I flipped to an empy page in my journal and stamped again.  This image came through really great:

Now I know I could have used black gesso or a heavier bodied paint, instead I opted to use Jet Black Archival ink.  I used one of my old stamp positioner to help me line her up and stamped again.  

Next I mixed gesso and Dylusions London Blue with a craft stick.

Using a brush to brush the mixed paint onto Market Street Honeycomb stamp and randomly stamped on the pages.  (I did come back and add a little black gesso and a couple of drops of Golden Pthalto Blue to darken the color a bit).  Next I used the dauber off a bingo dauber pen thingie (found on clearance at an office supply store) to add some black dots around the page:

I also used the lid of the Distress Paint to add some hollow circles. 

With my scraper I added some black lines:

Still not happy with the way the doily stenciled orange looked, I got out my Prima stencils, adding more orange (mixed with a little white gesso) through part of the Chevron stencil. Once dry I sprayed Vibrant Turqoise ink spray through the Damask stencil.

You see those circles with the little circle inside?  That is that bingo dauber.  The neat thing about this lid is that as the paint came off, it actually gave me an image of a small circle within the circle.

At this point I added some more stamping using the phrases from Donna's She Is stamp, Unity's Collage of Digits stamp as well as a Studio 490 stamp, bubble wrap and Christy Tomlinson She Art rub-ons.  And just because I thought one of the quotes from Fancy Pants Adventure stencil set  fit this spread so perfectly,  I added it using black gesso which was outlined with a white gel pen.

 I used scrap kraft card stock to stamp one of the quotes and the date.  The "today" sticker is from Idea-ology's Chitchat collection.

I went ahead and doodled in her neck and cheek outline with a back pen and that should cover it all I think.  It's so hard to keep track when one becomes engrossed in the process, lo.

You can probably understand why I had to add that Fancy Pants quote, right? Because even though there were some elements or layers that I wasn't happy with, it truly was fun getting to this:

I hope you were inspired to get inky, in your art journal, on a sheet of paper or even newsprint.....as long as you have fun!

Thanks for stopping by and definitely head over to the eP shop and check out all the new goodies, including Donna Downey's new stamps!!!!! 

Supplies Used:

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