Spring Forward Art Journal with Karen Bearse

Today I am here playing in my art journal. This month’s theme is “spring”.  I wanted to show how any chippies can make a spring theme, even grungy rust can be made spring like.

This fun & colourful page is shimmery & luscious in real life. Too bad it is hard to photograph shimmer!

I started by cutting my art journal page using the side of the stamp block by Dylusions. This block has a wavy edge which makes it easy to mark & cut. Using modeling paste through a stencil and adhering cheese cloth gave my background texture. Covering the page with gesso and scratching lines in it added even more. Once the background was dry it was time for some colour!

Using glimmer mist I spritzed my background. The key is to make sure colours that blend well together are next to each other. For example purple & yellow make mud so I want to keep them apart. Yellow & blue make green so they are perfectly fine to be next to each other. In fact you end up with a bonus colour where the 2 mix. I spritzed away and then set my page to dry naturally. I find the colours are richer when they air dry.

Next was to add some copper highlights using a heavy body acrylic paint and piece of craft foam. Put a small amount of paint and just scuff the surface of the raised embossed areas. The paint hits the high points & leaves a lovely metallic shine and helps the images to pop.

I used the clock chippie to illustrate time, as in changing the clocks. First I cut it in half. The clock was heat embossed using Stampendous Spoon of Rust emboss powder. It really gave my clock that rusty grungy look. I wanted the chain circle to really pop and help my photo be the focal point. My photo has the same colours as the background so embossing the chain in black helped solve this problem.

To finish I cut out my title and adhered it to my page. Using a white paint pen, adding some doodles

helped the title to stand out & have a more fun look. Adding some metal gears & flowers rounds out the page nicely. Thanks for joining me today! I hope you enter our challenge this month & get inky!

Karen

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Chain Frames

- Roman Clock Face

Other Supplies Used: 

- Glimmer Mist- Amethyst, It’s Yellow, Dragon Fly

- Metal gears & key charm by 7gypsies

- Stencil by Donna Downey

- Cheesecloth

- Modeling paste

- Gesso

- Word Play die by Sizzix

- Flowers by Recollections

- Emboss it by Ranger

- Spoonful of Rust by Stampendous