Gentle Journalling

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here.  I've been trying to be gentle with myself in the run-up to my big journey.  It's been so busy round here that I needed the little play time I've had lately to double as mind-calming relaxation, so I just did some gentle journalling in the pages of a book.  It's only looking at it now that I realise how much of a story it's telling about my imminent adventure!

All being well, I should be en route to the States later today - yes, the passport arrived with the visa inside just in time!  I'll be in New York working on a production of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.  So while these pages provided a little respite in a crazy August of work and admin and preparation and packing, they also clearly have that sense of taking flight into new adventures built right into them, along with some ancient text.  (Okay, it's not ancient text I'll be working on, but it is more than four centuries old!)

I started from the idea of wanting to "preserve" some of the original book text, and I used Katy Leitch's butterfly silhouettes to do it.  They're stamped in Versamark and then clear-embossed.

Next came a wash of Chalk Fresco paint, and while that was still wet, I swept some Turquoise on too.  (Both colours are from the new Limited Edition JOFY set.)

Through all the later stages I did my best to keep them clean and clear so that the text would stay fully present.  I do like how they'll still catch the light and gleam at certain angles.

I used one of the Artistic Stamper masks to create my largest bubbles of positivity sweeping across and up the page spread.  (That seems to be the direction my art journal pages move in - look!) I sponged through the mask with Faded Jeans and Broken China Distress Inks and then did some shading and highlighting with pastel pencils.

Over that I stamped the Artistic Stamper Large Random Dots in both the Chalk and the Turquoise.  And finally I did some spattering with the inner stick of the Dylusions White Linen spray.

I seem to be a little bit obsessed with the meadow grasses from Tim's Spring Sprung stamp set at the moment, so they put in an appearance along the foot of the page.  And I used the Mini Polka Dot Background to add extra texture around the sky.

The tags had been soaked in tea and coffee, and then I stamped the beautiful Calligraphy Mat 4 in Sepia Archival Ink.

The large words from Journalling Words 2 are stamped in Sepia, as are the blots and splotches from the Katy Leitch Messy Art plate.  The big words got a bit of clear embossing for that magical extra shimmer. 

Once they were glued down, I used a couple of Inktense pencils to shade and outline them.  I really love how that makes them pop against the turquoise sky behind. And I tied some rustic twine through the tops of course.

There's a little bit of Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs inking all the way around the edge, but that's about it.  This was just a little oasis of calm in my crazy August, and I had a lovely gentle time playing with it!

Thanks so much for stopping by.  There's still a week to enter our Anything Goes challenge this month - no need to use Artistic Stamper stamps, but if you do you get two entries to the prize draw.  Hope to see you there.

Ingredients used:

Artistic Stamper stamps: Journalling Words 2, Calligraphic Mat 4, Large Random Dots, Mini Polka Dots, Messy Art

Artistic Stamper masks: Large Dot Mask

Dylusions - White Linen

Fresco Finish Paints - Chalk and Turquoise from the new JOFY Limited Edition

Archival Inks - Olive and Sepia

Versamark embossing ink

Distress Inks - Faded Jeans, Broken China

Clear Embossing Powder

Manila Tags

From my stash: twine, book, Spring Sprung stamps, tea and coffee!