Courage Is ... Art Journal Page

Hey there, fellow stampers!  Today I am going to share my last post with Sin City Stamps for this term. But, the good news is, I am not going anywhere.  I am continuing my tenure with the design team for another term.  I guess they just cannot get rid of me!

I am going to work in my art journal again, and I want to share a few techniques with you that I have learned along the way.  I know this post is quite photo heavy, but I think it helps you to understand what I am trying to say.

I used a dabber bottle filled with white gesso and gave both pages a good coat, without trying to blend, but leaving ridges and dabber marks.  Allow this coat to dry.

On a sheet of deli paper, I stamped images from the various Sin City Stamps stamp sets, as follows:
Courage ...
Small Peacock Feathers
Leaves
Wings, Key and Lock, Wings of Love

Tear stamped images out and audition them on your journal pages.  If you want, you could take a digital picture to help you remember your placement.

Remove your images, and add modeling paste through the chicken wire stencil.

I tried to do the stencil where I have blank spots, not where my stamped images will be placed.

After the paste dries, spritz misters in Yellow Green, Turqouse, White, and Orange.   Use a baby wipe to remove and/or blend colors.

To tone down the brightness of the colors, I made a mixture of Burnt Umber and Titanium White Antiquing Cream, mixed with Retarder, to make a wash.  The photo below shows half of the page so you can see the difference.  It looks scary, I know, but the retarder gives you plenty of working time.

I painted it over the entire page and wiped off  with a baby wipe.  

Here is a closeup of the texture and depth of colors achieved with this technique, and you can see how fabulous the SCS stenciled image looks.

Next, I used the Matte Medium to adhere my stamped images to the pages.  As you can see, the deli paper practically vanishes into the background.

Die cut 5 different sizes of funky hearts from thin chipboard and cover with white gesso.

When dry, apply a base coat of red iron oxide to each heart.

Let that coat dry, then apply a coat of the crackle paste, varying the thickness for different sized crackles.

Paint each of the deli paper stamped images with intense block colors.  These are good to use for this because the colors are vibrant while still retaining transparency, allowing the stamped images to show through.

While waiting for my paste to crackle, I decided to stamp some stamped crackles directly onto my page with spiced chai ink.

 This is a background stamp, but by curling it up and stamping only portions of it, you get these nice, irregular crackles.  Just another reason to love your unmounteds!

close up of the stamped crackles

 I added some brown distress ink over each of the crackled hearts and adhered them around my pages.

 I added  a few more of my deli paper stamped images to some of the hearts.

 I decided I wanted the key hole to show up more, so I stamped it again onto a scrap of green card stock with black ink, fussy cut it, and adhered over the wings.

I used a charcoal pencil around my images and blended it with a blending stump to add dimension to each image and make them pop off the page.  Finally, I stamped the lace fragment randomly with black ink and added some paint splats with both white and black paints.  Following are some close ups of the pages.

Supplies:

Sin City Stamps:  Wildlife stamp set; Terri Sproul's Leaves stamp set; Sin City Wings stamp set; Chicken Wire Stencil;
Cottonwood Press Canvas Notebook
StazOn ink pads: Black, Blue Hawaii, Gothic Purple, Emerald City, Spiced Chai, Claret, Orange Zest
DecoArt Modeling Paste; Matte Medium; Crackle Paste; Misters:  Yellow Green, Turquoise, Orange, White; Burnt Umber; Titanium White Antiquing Cream
Golden Retarder
Charcoal pencil, blending stump

Albeit lengthy, I hope you enjoyed my project today, and I also hope you liked looking at the photos that I think really help you visualize the true depth of colors you can get from mixed media.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

Barbara