A Garden is the Music...

...flowers are the notes.

Hello!

Today I'd like to share with you my latest journal page.  I like journaling.  It's not for anyone else but me and is a way to experiment and learn about how different products and media work.  I learned a lot on this page, but first, the page itself.  Well, the two-page spread (but we'll call it a "page" for convenience sake.) 

Pretty colorful, yes?  I wanted to convey leaves and flowers blowing up and around in the breeze, and I wanted them made of different materials.  Of course there had to be birds and a white picket fence (it's my dream to own one and a house that fits such a fence). 

Lots and lots of pictures and techniques, and I won't spell them all out (I'd need more space), but the birds were made using my newest favorite technique to color them with Neocolors and coat them with three layers of UTEE.

Real music and book pages were used for some of the leaves and flowers, cardstock for others...

... a MacDonald Plaid Stamp grocery store coupon book from the 1950's was used for some...

...and there's even a bit of the back label from a bottle of Scotch whiskey. 

The base coloring was done with Gelatos over gesso, and some general stamping was done first before the flowers and other die cuts were applied. 

The fence was painted with shimmer paint, and I did some general doodling on many of the flowers.

Most everything was smudged around the edges with charcoal pencil, while the page edges were smudged with Gelatos.

I wasn't happy with the page until my daughter suggested I put a textile on it (I love textiles on paper projects), so I applied a small piece of vintage lace that my mother gave to me with spray adhesive which dries very hard and allowed me to spread a bit of clear glitter glue on with a finger.  It doesn't show up well, but it gives a lovely sparkle in real life.  There's no real reason why there should be a piece of lace on a design like this except maybe to indicate that a lace tablecloth blew off of the clothes line where it was drying.  Yes, that sounds plausible.

Pearls and Liquid Pearls finish things off.

Thank you for joining me today as I learn about this thing called "art journaling," and here's wishing you a lovely, colorful, sparkly day.






Things I learned on this piece:

1)  Don't use waterbased media as the base color when you're going to apply upper pieces with waterbased gel media.  It smears the color below (which can look nice too but is frustrating if you liked it to begin with).
  
2) Also don't use waterbase ink to stamp background images.  You lose those too.

3) Cardstock is too thick for something like this with lots of layers.  At least it was for me.  These flowers would have done well on a canvas and I would have done well to use thinner paper for the paper elements on the page.

4) Invest in another bird cage die.  I'm getting tired of this one.  :)

Happy crafting!

Challenges entered:

Altered Eclectics - Anything Goes
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Carnival (I think of the colors as such)
Fussy and Fancy #95 - Bingo Board (almost everything's there, but let's go with Pearls, Free, Lace)
613 Ave. Create - Anything Goes

StampNation - Inspiration Challenge Week 3 - Inspiration photo