Journalling with Frescos !

Hello and welcome to today's Inspirational Post ! It's Sue here with you today, when I sat down to create something for this post Mr Mojo flew straight out of the window ! I read on Dina Wakley's blog recently that when this happens the best thing to do is just do 'something'. Leandra from PaperArtsy was demoing the brayering technique on Sunday at The Stamp Magic show, so with this in my head I picked up my brayer and away I went !

I started by taping the centre of the pages with masking tape and giving the pages a coat of Gesso. I used neutral tones to begin with of Fresco Finish acrylic paints and brayered them on to the pages. The journal is made with watercolour paper so the pages have texture which gives the appearance of canvas when you start to paint on it.

Following on from the neutral tones I started to add some colour, moving the book around and brayering from all edges.

Using Snowflake Fresco Finish I knocked the colours back a little, not brayering over the entire pages but in patches.

 Thinking that it still needed something I used Autumn Fire Fresco Finish around the edges.

I demoed a technique on Sunday at the Stamp Magic show on the PaperArtsy stand where bright colours are stencilled over white. I love this technique so decided to indulge myself ! Using Snowflake Fresco Finish I stencilled some flowers over the pages. This blocks out the colours below and allows you to use translucent paints on top.

 First colour I chose was Blood Orange and replaced the stencil over the white and stencilled again.

Another technique I love is the 'bumping' technique, I replaced the stencil but then moved it slightly down and stencilled over the flower with Snowflake.

I started to build the colours up on top of the white layer, using Yellow Submarine, Tango and Brown Shed Fresco Finish paints, keeping the darker colours towards the centre of the flowers.

For extra definition I used Claret Fresco Finish in the centres.

I thought I was happy with the flowers at this stage so I then started to stamp across the bottom using Darcy Wilkinson's stamps and I've painted them with Limelight and Hey Pesto Fresco Finish paints. I added a little Yellow Submarine to the larger leaves and stamped the little dots using Leaf Green Archival ink.

I changed my mind about the flowers and thought about a technique that Lin Brown shared recently. I used Grunge Paste with the PaperArsty dotty stencil and dabbed mica powder on top of the dots. You can't really see in this photo but the mica powder does add a sheen.

The wonderful sentiment is from one of the Sara Naumann stamp sets. I've also added some doodling with a white Sharpie pen.

The little tag is stamped onto some brayerd card and I've stamped the word Bloom in the centre. Before I stuck it down I used a Gelato from the Steam Punk set and created a shadow. The beauty of Gelatos is if you have used too much you can wipe some away with a baby wipe as they react with water.

If you've stuck it out to the end, here is the finished page !

I hope you've enjoyed today's Inspirational Post and remember you've still got lots of time to join in with the current challenge of Small is Beautiful.

Sue
x