WHAT HAPPENED TODAY WANDERLUST WORD PROMPT PAGES

It's hump day and I'm playing "catch up" on some projects.

Our latest Wanderlust 2016 Word Prompt Pages had the theme "What happened today..."

I took that quite literally to mean what I actually had been doing the day I started my pages. 

I had started Spring cleaning my entire house and that became my inspiration for my art journal pages.  

I began pulling some tissue papers and napkins with various colors and images to use in my background.  I had absolutely no idea where the pages were going but it's always fun to get a background going.

Here is the beginning of the background; tissue papers and 2 ply napkins (with the excess backing papers removed) torn and laid randomly in place.  They are glued and sealed using DecoArt Media Matte Medium. 

I kept adding layers of napkins and Matte Medium.

Once I had all of the papers in place and they were dry, I started wiping some DecoArt Fluid Acrylics Titan Buff over the surface using a baby wipe to soften the colors and meld everything together a little better.

Then I followed that up with some starker DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics Titanium White to give more contrast.  Finally, I added some DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide.  I am in LOVE with this stuff!  It adds such a richness, warmth and aged feeling to the pages with just a few swipes of a baby wipe.  I love how the little bird in the nest is peeking out of the right side and soon I would come to love it even more as I began working with my focal point ...

While my background was drying, I decided to start working on my focal point.  The first thing I thought of was Dina Wakley's Scribbly Birds stamps.  I think they are so cute and I wanted to use one for my pages.  The stamp was a bit too small so I scanned it and enlarged it to fit on my page.  Then I added a head kerchief and broom to fit my "Spring Cleaning" theme on a separate bird.

I traced it onto a piece of heavy cardstock and brushed over it with DecoArt Media Matte Medium to seal it.  Then I could add paints, watercolor crayons, colored pencils; whatever I wanted to use.

I decided to use a combination of Neocolor II Watercolor Crayons and a Detailer Waterbrush, Prima Colored Pencils and a Black Permanent Micro Ink Pen to outline.  I also added polka dots to the kerchief using a stylus and DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics Titan Buff paint.

I cut out the housecleaning little bird and glued her in place on my art journal page.  Then I penciled in the nest underneath her, the tree branches and the leaves.

Here are the pages before I painted in the details of the branches and leaves.

The first things I painted were the brown things: the nest, the branches.  These were done with DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics Raw Umber, Titan Buff and Burnt Sienna.  The leaves were basically painted in with the colors in the photo above.  I combined all of the green DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics to colorize the leaves.

I added highlights on the leaves with the combination of the DecoArt paints shown in the photograph above.  Here you can see the progress of the art journal pages.

Next I penciled in "Spring Cleaning" and colored it in using a Permanent Black Micron Pen.

To add a light black mist to my pages, I used Tim Holtz' tool and a Black Soot Distress Marker.

Next I randomly added a crackle effect from Andy Skinner's faux crackle paint stamp from his Steampunk stamp set.  I love this stamp!!!  It's perfect for backgrounds!  

Then I added Seth Apter's text stamp from his ConText stamp set to add a little more interest to the background. Perfect for filling in the empty spaces without cluttering the pages too much.

I finally added a few musical notes that I drew in using a Black Permanent Micron Marker and it's all finished!

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you'll make some time to play and let your creativity take over!