Sky Dreaming

Hello all!  I know I've been very quiet here on the blog and vanishingly absent around Craftyblogland, but I'm finishing out the month with a bit of a surge by comparison.  I've just done some Creative Card Making for A Vintage Journey, and there are at least two more posts to be squeezed into May after this one.  And then I suddenly remembered my resolution to join in at Art Journal Journey at least once a month this year...

The lovely Erika a.k.a. BioArtGal is the host there for May and her theme is In the Sky/In the Air.  Coincidentally my page Having Fun Flying for last month's Having Fun theme would have fitted in perfectly for this, if I'd only known!  But I'm back with a summer sky for dreaming in.







It's a very simple page, so for once it's a pretty short blogpost, you'll be happy to hear!  It's done in the journal with some sort of sizing on the pages which makes the inks do really cool things.

In fact, it's not really an art journal at all.  It was an old notebook left over from Cestina's work days, which I helped myself to.  You can check out other spreads making use of the special ink+paper effects in this book here.











For this one, I did my usual wrinkle free distressing, using Faded Jeans, Stormy Sky, Broken China and Tumbled Glass Distress Inks, and then added some Stormy Sky Distress Oxide smooshes over the top of that.













The wildflower and grass stamps are both by Tim Holtz, one stamped mainly in Olive Green Archival...

















... the other stamped mainly in Leaf Green Archival.
















I used a dip pen and some Prussian Blue drawing ink to add the wording.

















If you look closely, you'll see I tried it in white pen first.  It didn't show up well enough, but I rather like it as a ghostly shadow of the phrases.















The words needed an echo somehow, so as well as doing some ink splatters with the same Prussian Blue ink, I then added some hand-sketched meadow flowers of my own.














The dip pen gives them a lovely quirky line, thicker and thinner according to the ink flow.

And I added some white acrylic flower heads by dipping a wooden skewer in some white paint and dotting it around.













The flock of birds flying away are stamped in Watering Can Archival, and now I'm free to let my dreams float away into the summer sky.







Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll be back very soon with another new offering for you.  It's going to be a busy end-of-month!

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
John Lubbock

I'd like to join in at Art Journal Journey where the theme this month is In the Sky/In the Air