Art Journal 2014: Part 4

Ah, the continuing saga of trying to complete my Art Journal before the end of the year....

What's that? You haven't seen my other pages. You can find them HERE, HERE, and HERE.

And a few more....

Muse:   This page came together when I found the picture of the band Muse's lead singer in my magazine file. The colors of the photo matched so well with my background of green and blue. So found other supporting collage elements and went with the different meanings of the word.

Muse is the name of the band. A Muse is an inspirational figure of mythology. Then, the music just followed along with the theme and the parrots and palm trees...? Well, they just matched my color and it satisfied my craving to use up stickers. (Yeah, still trying to use up a gazillion stickers!)

Like this page. I thought my collage turned out pretty good.

The Spider:  There are several things going on here. First is the background. I just got a couple new colors of ColorBox spritzers and I wanted to try them out. They are a permanent dye ink and once dry they don't move around like the Dylusions ink. So you can't lift the color. I added Glacier Lake and Golf Course to my already acquired Moody Blue. In testing them out, I decided a couple things. One, the color is deeper than I expected. It's not bright like the Dylusions. I imagine they may be pretty much like the new Distress Spray Stains in color line. Second, they seep through my pages and can be seen from the other side. This stuff soaked deep into my mixed media paper. Light mists (like I attempted with the stenciled vines) didn't seem so bad but trying to create a background was messy to the other side.

Again, going through my magazine file, I found the spider. I also had loads of spider stamps sitting in arm's reach from my Halloween stash. The colors reminded me of a tea party for some reason and the vines inspired a garden with lots of spider friends among the flowers.

I added spiderwebs as well as a Unity stamp of mushrooms that is pretty new to me. I tore out dictionary paper into circles to create my flowers. I added old alphabet epoxy stickers to make the middles and just free-handed the petals with a sharpie. The dictionary paper had been colored with Dylusions inks. It's hard to see in the bottom photo but I added a layer of Silks acrylic glaze over the tops of the flowers to give it some shimmer. The Silks Ice isn't really a color as much as a clear coat shimmer. I really like the effect it gives to flowers, wings, and other delicate things.

The Slow Lane:   Background for this page began as a mop-up for the Golf Course Color Box spray I used in the previous spread. So this is the color. It looks much better dried than it did when I put it on there. (I know, I know...it's another green/blue page. I just can't stop!)  Amazingly, I found a scrap of cardstock that matched the color! So I decided to make leaves out of them. I was originally going to use a feather on here but used this bird from Stampers Anonymous for a bit of contrast.

This leaf stencil is from Joggles and I just put it down and stamped the little dots right through it. I used Forest Green StazOn and then outlined it with a Uniball white pen. I love the subtle look of it. I like this one.

Here's two more completed pages that I think are ok but not that great. Just to prove that I can and will use colors other than blue and green!

Getaway:   A play on the word. A vacation getaway or the getaway car. Still testing out new stencils.

The USA:  So what would happen if you didn't do anything to a mop-up page? I just left the ink as it had been and added my collage items/stickers. OK but seems messy to me. Probably won't be doing that anymore.

I have a few more background and mop up pages started so I'm well on my way to completing this thing before Jan 1. Wish me luck.
--Wy
"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."  ---Hal Borland