Art Journal Page–Dare to be Different Part 1

This project is being worked in conjunction with the Valentine card I made for my hubby, using similar materials and techniques. Please see the previous post for details.

Another page for my small leather art journal. Working with the Stampotique Originals Kitty Squad stamp set for my hubby’s Valentine card, I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I decided to do an art journal page while I was at it. This is a technique I intended to try last year, and I’ve given a lot of thought to it, and could imagine how all the coloured kitties would look on a rainbow background.

This is how it looks so far, and below is a description of how I reached this point.

I began, as before, by arranging the stamped kitty masks on the page and drawing round them lightly in pencil.

I then stamped the kitties over the outlines, using my stamp positioner to stamp in the right place. You will see that there are four on the fold of the book, which was rather difficult to do, and there were gaps in the stamping which I filled in with a permanent black drawing pen.

Then I arranged the kitty masks in order, and began to glue the backs, using my Zig two-way glue, which makes a permanent bond if you use it straight away, but if you leave the glue to dry before sticking the piece down, it is removable, like Post-it note glue.

Here are the masks all stuck down onto the page. You can see that the centre ones aren’t sticking too well, because of the fold of the book.

Rather than using Dylusions spray inks as I did for the Valentine card, this time I decided to use Dylusions paints, which are acrylics. The colours are wonderfully intense, and their appication was easier to control; in addition, this did not make the page so wet. The next photo shows the beginning of the painting, using Postbox Red. I found it best to stipple the paint on so that it would not go under the masks, or move them out of place.

The painting complete.

I was then able to remove the masks, and because the page wasn’t so wet, they came off without disintegrating.

The page with the masks removed, in more detail.

Now the fun began! Time to replace the masks in a different order. I tried to arrange them so that no two colours were next to each other but this wasn’t always possible. I wanted to make as much contrast as possible between each mask and the background. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I stuck them back down onto the page with soft matt gel medium.

Here’s a detail shot. I quite like how the detail of the stamp is somewhat obscured byu the paint; I had thought of going over them, but in the end, I thought they were more subtle as they were, especially as this was the background of the page.

I drew a feisty Zentangle cat, who looks more than ready to dare to be different, and added a touch of colour using Inktense pencils.

In order to draw the Zentangle patterns, I had to make the cat large enough, and it was too big for the page, so I scanned it and printed out several different sizes and cut them out.  To give them a bit more definition against the background of the page, I stuck them onto a piece of white card and cut them out again, leaving a narrow white border. As I was trying them on the page and arranging them experimentally here and there, I decided to use two – one smaller and one larger, layered. I stuck them down with regular matt gel medium, and had a bit of a job getting them to stick properly, as they were quite thick. If they start to lift, I’ll stick them back with Pinflair gel glue which more or less fixes anything!

This is how the page looks so far. There will be some text on the right hand page saying “Dare to be Different,” probably in black and white, and I will paint a black and white border to tie the whole design together.

Over the next few days I hope to do some more work on this page, but I have one or two other projects demanding my immediate attention, during the course of which I shall be reviving my Card Factory.

I love the Kitty Squad stamps – they are quirky and fun.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!