Art Journaling with Cottage Rose

I love to art journal. Sometimes I write a ton, and then gesso over it, feeling like I got something out of my system. Sometimes I like to make pretty backgrounds with favorite quotes and just consider the time well spent. I think the trend of adult coloring books is great - because it makes art accessible to everyone. But stamps do the same thing, and we've known this forever!

I started this week's page with inspiration from my own garden:

What could be prettier? I made an art journaling page, with a sketch from the photo above which I watercolored using Art Anthology Colorations as a basis for it. Then I thought... I want to make a companion page. So this time, I took step-by-step pictures to share with you!

My recent trend has been to begin with a blend of Art Anthology Colorations sprays all over my background, with a stencil, or not, and followed by using my Palettini P020 Wasted stamp with Gesso or white acrylic paint, randomly on the background. This particular sheet has some heat embossed designs on the corners as well to resist the sprayed color.

Next, I stamped P022 Cottage Rose in Stazon Jet Black onto the background, along the right hand side.

I designed this stamp so that it is relatively easy to create a continuous border with it, by flipping the stamp in the opposite direction. This way it doesn't look like the same image, repeated. In this picture you can see where the two images 'connect' although I'll be taking a journaling pen to the leaf to complete the cross-hatching between the two pieces. You don't have to line things up perfectly for them to work!

I painted Art Anthology Buttercream Sorbet onto the roses. Then I liberally applied Mi-Bella Sorbet paint (deep pink) in a circular motion and dabbing in places to align loosely with the petals of the roses.

I then painted the leaves using Art Anthology Velvet paint in Basil. This paint has a matte finish, versus the shine and shimmer of the Sorbet paint, so that the leaves will become more of a part of the background.

Now it's time to dirty up the background and bring in the elements that I used on the facing page. First I applied Ranger's Snowcap paint to the P020 Wasted stamp and randomly applied this over the flowers and leaves as desired.

Then I used P010 Travel Documents with Stazon Midi Cloudy Sky (gray) and stamped it randomly in the empty spaces. With this image you can clearly see how translucent the paint is; and how much depth you can create by layering all these elements.

As a final step to the background design, I stencilled Art Anthology Sorbet in Drab, along the left hand bottom corner through a honeycomb design. I added a bit of this in Buttercream as well along the right side to create a faux beeswax appearance.

I stamped the sentiment, PD010 Art Mistakes, in Stazon Jet Black to finish the page.

So now we have two facing pages for my art journal. Cohesive design makes it work together!

Sally Lynn MacDonald

www.SallyLynnMacDonald.com

Take a look at my Palettini Collection, designed exclusively for Technique Junkies

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