Quiet Your Mind ~ Art Journal

Hello everyone! Bonnie Irvine here today. Sometimes when I have a lot on my mind, lots of what I call noisy thoughts, they'll wake me up in the middle of the night. That's been happening a lot lately and I told my husband, "Forget the junk in the trunk...it's the junk in my head that's annoying me. My head is going to explode!" And that became the inspiration for this, my first journal spread in my new Dylusions art journal.

I started by gesssoing the two page spread and then scribbling over it with red, pink, orange, and yellow watercolour crayons, I spread and blended the colour with a wet brush and allowed it to dry. Next I deepened the colours here and there with Tangerine, Watermelon, and Red Cherry Gelatos blending with a damp finger.

To create more pattern and texture, I spread the same three gelatos on an Impression Obsession canvas background stamp, spritzed it with water, and stamped it randomly over the pages. I love the watercolour effect this gives and how the extra water lightened the base colours in some areas. I did the same thing with Chocolate gelato and a large script stamp.

More interest was added to the background by applying Fired Brick Distress Ink through a Prima crackle stencil,. White gesso was pounced through TCW's Mini Chicken Wire Reversed stencil,  and through the Coffee Break Designs drippy stencil. Once it was dry, a black pen was used to outline the drips and doodle a checkerboard across the top of both pages. Torn pieces of black cardstock were adhered across the pages as well as torn striped washi tape. Black gesso was applied through the running man stencil (Coffee Break Designs) to create the bottom border and balance out the pages.

The face of Studio 490 Phrenology man was stamped on peach coloured designer paper and then enhanced with Prismacolor pencil shading and highlighting. Phren's head was lopped off at the top...see, I knew it would explode when it got too full ...and the extra piece landed upside down on the other page, You can see all of the junk in his head spilling out in the collage which is actually bits and pieces of collage sheets left from other projects. The two background cards are vintage Sorry game card images.

 Phren's monocle is backed with a piece of acetate and gold chain is looped through the hole on the outside piece. Both were adhered to the background with Glossy Accents. His butterfly bow tie, another leftover, was doodled on, given white gel pen dots and black Stickles dots as well. A dew drop forms butterfly's head and his body is coated with Glimmer Glaze. Phren's bird's nest is another image from a collage sheet in my stash.

The lettering was done on my Dymo labeller and the phrase comes from a Zac Brown song...it's something I tell myself when I need to be reminded. Two more dew drops became the fish bubbles and two tiny Idea-ology paperclips were added to the right page. Slightly watered down gesso was used to create the rings with a bottle lid. White dots, doodles, and more Chicken Wire stencilling were done over some of the elements to embed them into the background.

Black Soot Distress ink, Black Big Brush pen, and more doodling were all applied to the outside edges of the pages to frame them. The final touch was to stamp letters using Coffee Archival ink to form the words  "Blah...blah...blah" ...sometimes those voices accompanying the junk are annoying...lol.

Anyway, that's it for me today. I had such a blast creating these pages...and turning something that was bothering me into something that amuses me. Thanks for sharing in my fun..

Happy New Year!

Bonnie

Here are links to some of the products I used:

Liquitex Acrylic Gesso	Claudine Hellmuth Studio - Black Gesso	Faber Castell - Gelatos - Tropical	Faber Castell Gelatos - Red Colors
Faber Castell - Gelatos - Yellow Colors	Faber Castell - Gelatos - Neutral Colors	Faber Castell - Big Brush Pen - Black	Uni-Ball White Gel Pen
Distress Ink Pad - Fired Brick	Distress Ink Pad - Black Soot	Archival Ink - Coffee Ink Pad	Inkssesentials - Glossy Accents 2 oz.
TCW 6x6 Template - Mini Chicken Wire Reversed