Sing Song Art Journal (Part 4)

In case I haven't mentioned it before the Sing Song Art Journal (yup, decided I'm just gonna call it that) is one of those Strathmore Visual Journals labeled for Mixed Media. I saw them last year on a great clearance sale in a Micheals store. It's 5.5" by 8" and the cover says it's a medium weight paper with a vellum finish. Whatever that means. It's acid free and recommended for all varieties of mixed media supplies. It contains 68 pages.

99 Red Balloons: I was staring at a page of orange spots. More bubble wrap orange from my canvas. Note to self: remember not to mix so much paint for a small area! So I sprayed a combo of blue and turquoise over it just to be different. It began looking a lot like an underwater scene and I started thinking about seaweed and stuff until the song hit me. That super 80's classic 99 Luftbalons by Nena. But I had both German and English versions on my mix and the one that came up was the English version. So many good phrases in this song that I knew the whole spread would be just this.

I was just going to draw some balloons on the page and scatter them about. Maybe add some clouds. But when I discovered I couldn't really draw a balloon *sigh*, I thought I'd just punch some out of red paper. I had no punch shaped like a balloon and I don't own a die-cutting device. But the highlighted quote above whispered hearts to me. So my balloons are upside down hearts. And I figured since I was punching, I might as well do all 99. There really are 99 on the two pages and I numbered each one. I highlighted the 99 with some glitter pen and added a ribbon to it.

I was almost sorry that I covered up such a nice background but this is something I've been wanting to do: cover the pages with a repetitive image, just cram it all in there. And of course, I had to put the Star Trek reference on the page! ;)

 Send me an Angel:  I started with some of my favorite colors; lime zest, cut grass, and vibrant turquoise. Note: you can see one of the drawbacks that I have with this journal right along the wire binding. Sprays tend to leak through when I use too much. It only annoys me once in awhile, though.
Having sprayed that Smooch Spritz on the bleeding heart page and really liking it, I decided to go for broke here. Even though you can't really tell from the photo, the turquoise part of the page really shimmers! I then used my Dylusions White Linen with the star stencil again when this inspirational song came up. "Send Me An Angel" by Real Life was an 80's song (that I loved) that didn't do very well when it first came out so they re-released it in 1989. I still have my cassette single of it...yup, it's got that wonderful deep turquoise lettering on it with a black background.

Don't ask me why I love this song but I do (it's very techno sounding and I tend to like that). But I didn't want to bog down this layout by adding black to it. So I left the background  with glimmer and white stars and just added my many heart and wing stamps (a set from Hot off the Press that I don't think they make anymore). Wrote in the words with Sharpie and then stamped a little text stamp here and there for a bit more interest.

 I colored in the large hearts with more Smooch Accent ink but I didn't get the opaque coverage I was looking for. It's okay though. I just like the colors of this spread and how I can hear the song in my head when I look at it. :)

--Wy
"If I could find a souvenir, just to prove the world was here. And here is a red balloon...I think of you and let it go."   --Nena, "99 Red Balloons" English version.