Breathe - Art Journal page with Melinda Sweetman

Hello fellow Colour Blast lovers!! Melinda here with you today and I am sharing my latest DT project which is another art journal page! Here is a bit of a sneaky peek

And I am playing along with the September challenge which is

So, remember, you have until the end of the month to load your project into this album on Facebook using the prompts provided!

And here are my step-by-steps (I did MEAN to have a process video, phone was loaded and ready to go but I forgot to press record!!)

First up I picked a page in my art journal that I had applied some left over products from another project onto some time ago! My White Heavy Gesso and a paint brush and applied a very random (I did not cover the whole page) layer of gesso.

Next up, I of course heat set that first, some stamping for texture. I grabbed my archival black ink and a couple of stamps I wanted to use and again, randomly applied those across my page.

Again with the heat gun! And next was some actual texture! Here I grabbed my Colour Mica Powders in Espresso and Polar. First I mixed the Espresso with some White Heavy Gesso (I accidently discovered you get this beautiful grey colour when you mix these products together!) and then applied randomly through a stencil. 

I cleaned up that mixture and again with the gesso but this time Polar Mica Powder. I had left the stencil in place so again applied this colour randomly over the stencil, both over lapping the other colour and some by itself.

I love how this stencilling came out!! Remember, the more colour you add the bolder the colour you will get mixing it with white gesso!

I left that to dry naturally and started work on my chipboard. I picked a single word for my title and decided to emboss it using the gorgeous Just Blue Colour Embossing Powder. First up however, I wanted a "cleaner" colour so I applied a quick coat of gesso and let that dry.

Next up, I grabbed my embossing ink dabber, applied liberally, added embossing powder in Just Blue, shook off excess and heat set. So pretty!

While embossing I decided that the background needed some more colour so I activated my Just Blue Colour Shimmer Cube by adding a little water. When that was ready to go I applied the watercolour to the page, spritzed with more water and turned and titled the page until I got the colour where I wanted it. 

Time to put the finishing touches on! Before I stuck anything down however I decided that I had this new stamp that I HAD to use so I stamped that 3 times onto some tissue paper, heat set and tore around.

Using some different fibres, my title and 2 of my butterflies I came up with placing that I was happy with and stuck everything down. Wet glue for the fibres and title and matt medium for the butterflies.

Oops, I nearly forgot my last 2 finishing touches!! I grabbed some tiny blue beads and matt medium and stuck some of those down around my title - I feel like I now need some shells!  

And then I grabbed my fan brush and my Roadbase Colour Spray for some black splatters!

I love, love, love how this came out! I challenged myself when I started this page to keep LOTS of white space - which is VERY unusual for me in my art journal. I was lucky enough to have Fiona Paltridge create a page in my journal and one of the things I really loved about it was that not every single inch of the paper was covered so I though I'd give it a go myself!! Here are a couple more close ups!

Swoon, I so LOVE all that texture!

That's it for me for today so have fun playing with your fun Colour Blast goodies and make sure you pop into the FB group to share your creations, we love to see what is being made!!

Happy scrapping!

Melinda

xx