Yellow Wallflowers

Hello all.  I'm so happy you're as excited by my new PaperArtsy word stamps as I am - thank you for your lovely comments.  And now, welcome to a New York-based post, though these pages were actually created while I was still at home.  There's no die-cutting machine in the travelling stash, of course, and I really wanted to try out the new Tim Holtz Wildflower Thinlits before I disappeared to the other side of the Atlantic for a couple of months.  So here they are...

I did promise I'd do better with my yellows for the Art Journal Journey theme of The Colour Yellow this month, so this page spread is also fulfilling that pledge.  And for all that I'm a reluctant user of yellow, I found myself really loving it once I'd worked it into the natural world.

These daisies nestled against the brick wall make me very happy.  Get yourself a nice cup of coffee and enjoy the journey along the yellow brick road...













I was playing in the same altered book as for most of my recent pages.  I'm very sad I couldn't squeeze it into the travelling stash, as I was on a bit of a creative roll with it. 












I started by roughly gessoing over the text, before adding some texture sand paste through the Wendy Vecchi brick stencil.

I used Antique Linen Distress Spray to add some warm Cotswold stone colour to my "walls".  (See, I'm getting in there early with some yellow tones... more to come!)













I cut several stems from the new Tim Holtz sets out of watercolour paper and had a little play to see what might go where.














Then it was out with the Distress Stains to watercolour the wallflowers.














There's Antique Linen, Scattered Straw and Wild Honey involved for the yellows...














... but also Weathered Wood and Pumice Stone for the centre of the flower head, as well as for shading.














The stems have Pumice Stone, Old Paper and Peeled Paint in the mix, and some of those colours also wandered up into some of the petals for some more shadows and detail.














I mostly tried to leave my white space on the petals untouched, but there are just a couple of spots where I added tiny touches of white acrylic afterwards.













That includes the centre of the flowers, where I used a white paint pen for the highlighting and my dip pen and some walnut ink for the shading and floret detailing.













And there are some white pen detailing touches on a few of the other petals too.














I decided the tall, slender die-cuts would be twiggy stems in bud, so that gave me another chance to add a touch of yellow - though I'll confess it's back to the most delicate of Antique Linen yellows, rather than the full-on version!













I did make sure there was plenty of yellow spatter across the brickwork and book text... mainly Antique Linen and Wild Honey, if memory serves.














And I chose the primrose-toned word stickers from the Finnabair Art Daily collection.













That's the Daniel Smith walnut ink again, framing and shadowing the words...















... applied with the dip pen and then shaded out with a water brush under each sticker.














I also added some dip pen detailing to the leaves and stems.















There are some deeper shadows at the foot of each cluster of flowers...













... as well as some inking around the edges of the pages, which looks great over the brick texture.














And some Antique Linen script stamping to contrast with the typed text of the book pages.

And that's pretty much that.

Yellow is said to be a lovely cheerful colour (which makes it a little worrying how rarely I'm tempted to use it!)...












... and there's no doubt that these pages made me happy in the making and also make me happy in the looking.  Maybe I need to use yellow more often?

I had such a lovely time "colouring" the flowers.  I'd planned to do some die-cutting so that I could bring lots of unpainted ones with me and have them to play with here.













Sadly, time ran away from me in the packing process, so I'll just have to be patient and wait until I'm home again.







Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope you're all enjoying a lovely Sunday.  The weather's not due to be great, so I don't think it's going to be a good day for much New York walking on my one day off.  I hope to get out and about during the morning.

But then in the afternoon I'm looking forward to having a bit of time to come and see what you've been up to lately.  Happy Crafting all!

It takes as much time to build walls sturdy enough for wallflowers like you and me to lean against, as it does for us to bloom.
Ayokunle Falomo

I said I'd be back with something yellower for Rike's theme, The Colour Yellow, over at Art Journal Journey - and here I am!
With the word stickers, as well as the book pages in the background, I'm entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, where this week they are looking for Typography
At Happy Little Stampers,they are having their usual Anything Goes with Dies challenge, so I'd like to play along there
There's also a Watercolour Challenge over at Happy Little Stampers, so with my Distress Stain watercoloured flowers, I'd like to join in there too