BOOKS AND BLOSSOMS FOR CREATIVE CARTE BLANCHE

Greetings all!  Welcome to a new challenge over at Creative Carte Blanche!

It is our mission to inspire and support each other in this community.  We love to share our ideas, our techniques, our knowledge of products and get to know everyone who is traveling this art journey along with us. I hope you will join us and share your talent with us.

It is not our intent to recommend one product over another.  We, like everyone else, have certain products that we have found we love but they may not be the same ones you love.  So, please, by all means, use what you love and share them with us!

This month, the lovely and multi-talented Hels Sheridan is hosting our art adventure.  I think Hels is known for many things but particularly her beautiful dimensional flowers that she so often uses on her art pieces.  I for one love them!  So her theme of "Books and Blossoms" is a perfect theme from her.

I decided to create a couple of simple art journal pages for this theme because sometimes less is more and I really wanted to experiment more with my concentrated watercolors.  More about those in a minute...

I began by brayering white gesso and then some DecoArt Media Cobalt Teal Hue and a touch of Hansa Yellow Media Acrylic Paints onto the surface of a child's paper back book that I am altering into an art journal.  I let this dry and then moved on to the next step...

I brushed Matte Medium (any brand will work) onto the surface of the art journal pages and then pressed a piece of Tim Holtz' Terminology Tissue Wrap over the surface of the two pages. I chose this particular Tissue Wrap because I thought it was perfect for the "Book" portion of the theme; book text glued into an altered children's book!

I didn't want the book text to overpower my images that I would soon be adding to the pages, so I randomly scraped some white gesso over the print and let it dry.

Now for the "Blossoms" portion of the theme.  I sketched a flower pot and placed the stems from Tim Holtz' Flower Garden stamp set where I would want them to be arranged in the pot.

Next I painted the flower pot to look like a terra cotta pot using DecoArt's Media Fluid Acrylics.  First I brushed on a coat of Vermillon followed by Transparent Red Iron Oxide to add depth and shadows. Then I added Burnt Umber lightly along the shadowed sides and in the center to represent the dirt.

Next I masked the gentle curve of the flower pot so that when I stamped the stems in place using Jet Black Permanent Archival Ink, they would not stamp over the pot.  Next I painted the stems with DecoArt Titanium White Fluid Acrylics to cover any orange pot or brown dirt going up the stems.  When I paint them with green paint, I wanted them to be a uniform color of green up the entire stem.

Next I stamped three different flower tops from Tim Holtz' Flower Garden stamp set on top of the stems (using Jet Black Archival Ink) and heat set them.  

I broke out my Dr. Ph Martin's Concentrated Water Colors and began brushing color onto the flowers.  The concentrated colors are really vibrant and fun to manipulate with water and a small brush.

I moved from flower to flower, adding color, shading and bringing them to "life".  Then I heat set them dry.  Now, if they were to be touched with water again, the water would activate the watercolors, so I sprayed them with Krylon's Workable Fixative to seal them.

Next I sized some images of vintage seed packages that I saved on my computer.  I cut a piece of scrap paper to the size of the seed packets, cut the printed images a little larger than the kraft paper, wrapped the printed imaged onto the kraft paper and glued them in place using 1/4" Scor Tape.  I then distressed them using Ranger Vintage Photo and Ground Espresso Distress Inks on the edges.  I would be using a couple of them shortly on my art journal pages...

I wanted to add a little color to the background of my pages.  So using Ranger's ink applicators first with Peacock Feathers Distress Ink followed by Fossilized Amber, I created a soft, gentile background.  The left side is colored, the right side is not.  You can really see how the inks warm up the background.

I decided to use this sweet vintage girl from Tim Holtz' Found Relatives cards on my art journal pages.  I cut her out and colorized her using Neocolor II Watercolor Crayons.  This was a little tricky as there is a slick finish on the image.  So, I sprayed her with Workable Fixative first to sort of seal her and hopefully give some "tooth" to the surface.  It helped a little and I was able to add the color from the crayon and then smudge it in place using my fingertips.  When I tried to use the water brush, the color would just bead up.

Here is the arrangement of the vintage little girl amongst the seed packets and some little foliage from one of Wendy Vecchi's Build A Blossom stamp/stencil sets.  They are colored with a combination of the concentrated watercolors and the watercolor crayons.

Here is a photograph of the art journal pages at this point.  I have also added black acrylic paint around the edges of the pages to frame them.  But the top right has a very distinct bare spot.  That is where I planned for my sentiment to go.

I sketched "BLOOM" in place and then computer generated "where you are planted" to be cut and glued underneath "BLOOM".

I outlined the letters with a permanent black pen and then filled them in using a small detail brush and DecoArt Carbon Black Fluid Acrylics paint.  I really love how the black letters and black blocks pop on the page!

And once again...here are the finished pages.  Books and Blossoms ...
Bloom where you are planted.

I hope that your creativity blooms as you contemplate what you will create using this theme.  Then join us at Creative Carte Blanche by linking your project to our blog.  That way, you can share not only your art but your techniques and your step by step with everyone else.  It's so fun to learn new things from each other.