Thursday, April 11, 2013

Evolution of a page - Fun with tissue

 Hi all,
Thought I'd record the progress of a page, for the blog and for myself, just for fun...not often we stop to 'freeze' those moments between layers ;)

I started this journal spread with a technique inspired by my online friend and fellow Aussie, Giovanna http://giovannascott.com/ in this video http://vimeo.com/giovannascott/purpose

As I've mentioned before, I adore using tissue in my mixed-media work. I haven't quite used it in this way before, stamping a bold black & white background sheet, ripping it up into strips and using it as a base layer (I mostly use it in the top layers and often use the existing image or pattern to add extra dimension).
 So...after separating the top layer from a 3 ply tissue, roughly stamped it all over.
 Tore it up into strips and glued it randomly onto the page.
 Filled in some spaces with oil pastels and rubbed them in.
 Dripped some blue ink and sprayed some orange/yellow through a doily stencil. Didn't quite come out very well as the oil pastels provided too much resist. Oh well, all part of the fun with mixed media. Moving on....;)
Then I randomly stamped some text in black ink and white paint using bubble wrap.
 A close up.
 I pushed my boundaries a bit with my colour choices. It was all looking a bit bright for me and I wanted to dull it down a bit to let my chosen images stand out so I smudged white paint around the spread with my fingers.
Then I glued down my main magazine image. Isn't it beautiful? I have had it in my images folder for years, waiting. It's so serene...I feel peace just looking at it...

I chose the flowers for their colour relationship to my page (oranges and yellows are not my usual choice) and the words all seemed to fit into a loose meaning to this spread. 

I have to apologise for the terrible photos (especially the lighting in this one). They were all quick shots with my mobile phone. Didn't want to disturb the creative flow when I finally managed to sit down at my craft table to keep going with this page.
Then for the fun part - doodling! Without much thinking, I painted some white vines which I thought were not prominent enough so I outlined and dotted them with a black gel pen and proceeded to add shadowing with a black watercolour crayon.  Added some doodling around the words to finish off.

Well that was fun, will have to do it again (may be will pull my camera out next time) ;)
Until next time,
Lena :)