From Gelli Plate to Art Journal Page

 

All my time recently is going towards a new book I want to publish at the end of November. Yesterday I stopped for an hour or so to make a couple art journal pages. Both of them started with a gelli print. I love the way this one turned out! Let me walk you through what I did. And remember you can click on any of the photos to see them displayed larger.

The swap called for two art journal pages, 5" x 7" each. I decided to go with the two gelli prints you see at the bottom of the photo. I like the colors and the brightness and happiness of each. Then I went to my collage drawer and started pulling out pieces I thought would make a nice page. For today's post let us focus on the page with the pink leaves. 

I love all the layers of color on both prints, but you know how I like to add more! More texture and more color! And I have learned overtime to add the splatters before I add art that includes faces. Hahahahaha! So out came these two bottles of Daler Rowney Acrylic Ink - turquoise and fluorescent pink. Along with a water spray bottle and a fan brush. 

Using my trash plate, I added a few drops of the pink right onto the plate. Then picked up the color with my fan brush and tapped the brush against a finger causing splatters to form on both pages. You can see the pink here.

I was concerned the turquoise might be a little too dark, so after dropping some onto my trash plate I sprayed a little water into the ink. Then repeated the process with my fan brush as I did with the pink color. 

I love how that turned out but I wanted more texture. More layers. I wanted the girl stamp I was using to stand out so I didn't want to clutter this page up too much, but I did want more layers of color. Distress Ink from Tim Holtz was the perfect answer. Remember that strip of punchinello I showed you recently? I brought that and a finger dabber out to use with this squeezed lemonade ink. Using my dab and stab technique, of course. Hahahaha! Not full coverage, just in a few areas. A hint of color and texture. 

These gray dot borders were made with a Zig Clean Color Dot marker. Really cool pen. It has a 0.5 mm nib on one end and a sponge dotter applicator on the other end. I think I am going to order this in a few other colors. Went down fast and dried quickly so I could move on to the next step. Using a technical pen from Zebra Pen, I added some definition to the leaves, the stems and around that lower row of dots. 

But I wanted some of those dots to stand out more. Jane Davenport's Paint Over Pens worked great! I was able to just dot on some more color to the center of some of the dots. 

I get questions all the time about what white pen I use. There are so many on the market and many of them don't work well across the board. This Sharpie water based paint pen works on everything I've tried it on. Here I used it to add veins to the leaves. And I came back in later and add the dots along those vein lines to add more texture to the pink leaves. 

Ta-da!

Don't you just love this little face? She is a digital stamp I found on Pinterest. I printed her out and colored her with Copic markers. After running her through my sticker machine, I trimmed her out and stuck her in place. The butterfly is available on a collage sheet from Joggles. Same thing - sticker machine, trim and stick. The sentiment is from a Studio Light Jenine's Mindful Art Collection set. I like the way this looks, uncluttered with the focus on the little girl. But it didn't look complete. 

If you follow my art you already know what my final step is. Ink those edges. That really ties the whole page together. And completes it. Here you can see the Fruit Punch color I used from the Dyestress Ink line. All around the edges and a little scuff over the edges in some places but it still didn't sing Done!!! to me. 

But this does. Using a black Archival ink pad, I went around the edges in a few places. Adding more ink but keeping a good bit of the fruit punch looking through. And I love it! And it all started with that one gelli print I made a few months ago. Sitting in my drawer just waiting for the right moment to shine!