So, I attended another class for my Happier At Home art journaling class.
This month, the book talked about Body. The author talked about such things as being cognizant of smells in your home, acupuncture and jumping every day. I found this chapter a little difficult to relate to. In fact, I hate to say it but it seemed a bit too forced for me. Like the author was really searching for something solid to say about Body in terms of happiness.
Regardless, I had fun once again at our monthly class. This week we began similar to our January page, by laying down gesso then spraying with inks on a wet page. This time, I tried to really make the inks spread and blend, so I wet my page excessively with water before applying the inks. I tried to keep the bottom edge more dry, however, to maintain a splattered look. A nice surprise was the irridescence of the lighter blue colour shining through.
Once the inks were dry, we applied moulding paste using a diamond stencil. I am starting to really like the texture that this moulding paste adds to my pages. And I am learning how to control it a bit better each time I use it.
The next step was to add this really cool gold glitter effect on our page. I cannot remember the name of the product we used, but it was meant to be mixed with a lot of water before applying it. However, I tend to experiment with products to push the limits a bit, so I chose to use it full strength with a dry brush. Applying it mostly to my diamonds, it made them stand out a lot more and pop off the page. Together with the blue irridescent ink, I was loving the overall glitter of this page.
Using some Tim Holtz distress inks, we then used a number stencil to add another 'layer' to the page in various places. I found it difficult to hold the stencil in place while rubbing on the distress ink, so I decided to do it in only a few places, but I love the resulting effect.
There were a number of fun ephemera pieces that finished off the pages for this month. I quite lost myself in the process of adding all those gadgets and bits and finding ways to be creative with them, that I forgot to take many pics along the way, so I only have a finished page to show you now...
Among the bits and pieces were a corrugated cardboard frame wrapped in twine, layers of washi tape, layers of stamps (in black), gold ribbon, a paper clip, an envelope that we distressed and tucked under some kind of carbon frame-type thingy with a man's name typed along the top (for added interest and intrigue), paper flowers, fabric flowers, a plastic moulded flower and some word strips that we trimmed from the pages of this chapter.
I am loving using all these new materials and look forward to learning more new and interesting techniques from our instructor.
I must also add, that we are to be including some pics of ourselves on each of these pages. However, I don't typically take pics of myself, so I had a recent little session with myself and snapped a few that I hope to start adding to my pages. I must also admit that I did it while sipping a hot chocolate at Starbucks and therefore had to be fairly stealth in taking good shots without drawing attention to myself and leaving the other customers whispering under their breath...
