Encore - More Than You Realise

Encore Posts

Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook.  I'm calling them "Encore" posts and they're formatted differently (all the way down the centre), so you can spot them easily.

Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

Hello all!  Since you enjoyed the Wallflowers so much, I'm throwing in a quick encore post with some journalling which also used the coneflower stamp and die.  And it has a timely spring-like feeling, I think.  This was made as part of my Country View Crafts DT duties, and it appeared there in February 2016, just over a year ago.  Here's what I wrote back then...

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Hello all, it's Alison (butterfly) here from Words and Pictures, and I've been playing in one of my old books as a journal again.

This started out going in one direction, and then shifted, and I'm a bit surprised about where it ended up, but I suppose these colours are a bit of a foretaste of spring.

Initially, I was just gluing down some paper scraps left over from another project to get them out of the way... then I added a coat of gesso to soften and blend everything.

This Tim Holtz woman used to bob up on my early journalling efforts quite often, but she hasn't been out for a while.  I stamped her in Pumice Stone and clear-embossed over the top to give her a subtle presence on the page.

Over at the other side, I did the same with the fabulous large flourish stamp (also a TH one).

I'd been playing around with the wonderful cone flower for something else where it didn't quite work, so I tried it out on these pages and rather liked it.

I started to build up layers of colour, using mainly Fresco Chalk Finish Acrylic paints, first in blues (Smurf, China and Blue Glass)...

... then some (slightly surprising) shades of mauve and lilac (Wisteria and Purple Rain, and eventually some Blueberry).  There's some Wilted Violet Distress Ink in at this stage too...

... a layer of Ground Espresso stencilling (which barely made it through to the end)...

... and finally a step into brights with Hey Pesto, Zesty Zing and Limelight.  From a distance I confess it does look slightly like the final stages of a very impressive bruise!!

But close up I love the effect of the layered colours.

Shading around the main images helps them pop.

I used the same paints to light up the woman's eyes, and I love how she emerges out of the purply shadows.

There's lots of splatter...

... mainly in Ground Espresso, I think.

The inking around the edges gives us a really nice look of aged weathering.

And I really like the effect of the embossing resist of the flourish under the paints too.

I used some Small Talk stickers and, as I did with my recent tag for the Backgrounds theme over at Country View Challenges, I used a white pen to doodle lines around them.

I love how this completely changes their look.

So there you have it... another journalling journey.  I'm not always sure about the results, but I do enjoy the process and the learning, and I think that's what journalling is really about.

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I'm busily creating characters to inhabit the Tudor Tavern, so there's not much else apart from some watercolouring going on craftily (and I'm not getting much done on the visiting front either - apologies).  But I will share those characters with you once they're ready, and in the meantime I'll be back on Friday for the new monthly challenge at A Vintage Journey.  Hope to see you soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison