Thursday 18 October 2012

Art Journal Page–Music and Flowers

Having completed the front page of my new leather art journal, I have now created a double-page spread in mixed media.

Music means a great deal to me; it has great emotional impact, and I have been privileged in the past to take part in group music activities, especially choir singing, which is an incomparable experience, adding something that merely listening cannot provide. Music is a gift from God and it is like being given a gift of flowers – fragrant, full of variety and colour, bountiful, beautiful, and ephemeral – but the memory lives on. Music is flowers for the ears and for the heart. This is what I wanted to express in my page.

I glued a sheet of music onto the left-hand page and trimmed it down to size. For this I used Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive as it’s the strongest wet glue in my possession and it dries quickly. I then sprayed the open page with some DIY glimmer mist (a little Wild Honey Distress Re-Inker and some Perfect Pearls mixed with water in a small spray bottle). I sprayed a small amount in another colour (Chipped Sapphire) and immediately blotted it so the dark colour didn’t dominate. After drying it with my heat gun, I applied some Salty Ocean Distress Ink (from the Summer seasonal set) with an Inkylicious Ink Duster through my Increasing Circles stencil. Over the yellow of the background, this blue distress ink turned a good shade of green, which was the effect I wanted.

You can also see some of the embedded petals in the hand-made paper of the right-hand page. This detail shot shows the shimmering effect of the glimmer mist nicely.

I sketched the outline of the text, and the border, in pencil, and started to paint the text with titanium white acrylic paint.

This is not brilliant quality paint, and needed three coats to give decent coverage.

To finish the text, I outlined it with a black Zig pen (08 size) from my zentangle set.

The next step was to start painting the border, for which I again used the titanium white acrylic paint (3 coats). While doing this, I also painted some flowers in white over some of the stencilled circles.

To finish the border, I filled the gaps with black acrylic paint (this went on a lot better and needed only a single coat), and outlined the border with the black Zig pen. I added a row of white dots in acrylic paint just inside the border, and again outlined them with the Zig pen.

To complete the page, I added a butterfly from my stash. This was cut with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, and had been sprayed with Dylusions ink sprays. I hand-embossed the wings from behind to make them slightly convex, and added some spots of white acrylic paint, and then attached it to the page with Pinflair gel glue to prevent the wings from becoming flattened.

The glimmer mist gives a gorgeous silky feel to the page, and the acrylic paint can be felt as a slightly raised texture. When embellishing the page, I tried to avoid the petals embedded in the hand-made paper, so that they became part of the design.

11 comments:

  1. I love your page Shoshi. Very clever way of bringing the music and spreading it out to 'hold' the words and the border matches perfectly - well done you.
    Ann B
    xx

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  2. What a lovely start to your journal. I love the use of sheets of music and recently bought a little book of sheet music to use in collage. When I ripped the first page out I felt a bit guilty as I was thinking that someone somewhere should be using it to play the music but I suppose making a piece of art out of it is better than it sitting in a dusty shop somewhere. I love the way you have used it on an angle it looks very effective.

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  3. They looked nice before but they look quite stunning now Shoshi, love them - a lot! Crafty hugs, Anne x

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  4. Very beautifully done and the wording is fabulous. The glimmer mist gives a lovely sheen to the sheet. That butterfly is stunning too. I'm liking the idea of embellishing book pages the more I see it done :0)

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  5. Amazing. You put a lot of work into that. I don't do journaling but would live to get into card making and proper sewing. Sorry you don't think the parent problem can be sorted. That must be a real worry x
    Famfa x

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  6. I love what you've done with the sheet music. The pages are so vibrant and I love the edging - very striking. The words are beautiful and poignant - when my mum was in the later stages of Alzhiemers I don't know what we would have done without music - it uplifted her, or calmed her, and provoked positive responses from her when she was unable to respond to anything else - music has such amazing powers - ipods should be available on the NHS!!! Thank you for sharing your beautiful art work.

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  7. Phew I made it back at last, Shoshi and I'm so glad I did. Your page is beautiful and I love seeing it grow. You have a lovely way with words, I love that sentiment. Music can lift your spirit can't it and I'd love to sing in a choir but can't hold a tune to save my life although that doesn't stop me trying. I love to hear music of all kinds.
    I like the way you've added all the detail in white, it really makes everything stand out. I started a journal after a workshop and hoped to continue it but the ideas don't flow for me. I so enjoy seeing other peoples pages though.
    Hope you have been having a good week.
    Hugs Lisax

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  8. Lovely pages! As someone new to art journaling, I so appreciate the step by step that you have provided.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for a lovely comment. I tried to leave one on your blog but was unable to do so. Wishing you well in your venture in Africa.

      Shoshi

      Delete

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