Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Creating Backgrounds for Art Journal pages with Elisa

Hi everyone,

Here's hoping you had a fantastic Easter break with friends and family and that you may have had a 'little' time for crafting!!!

It's my turn on the Off the Rails Blog for a tutorial and I decided to show you a few techniques for creating a background on an Art Journal page. These techniques can be used on layouts and off the page projects like Canvases as well etc.

First i'd like to show you the finished Art Journal double page that I created using the April moodboard.



Firstly! head off to your local op-shop or trash and treasure markets...grab a few old books and sheets of music to use as a base for an interesting background. Just check the book for 'racy' scenes....if you know what I mean, I ended up with such a scene stuck on a page a while back and only noticed at the last minute, first time i had to censor my art journal ....lol!

Gesso strips of the book pages to your page in the desired area, in the end it was about approximately 1 inch thick.




Wait til your gesso'd book pages are dry then grab your favourite stencils or masks, I used a WOW Words or Whatever Stencil and a Crafters Workshop stencil. The Words or Whatever stencil I specifically chose due to the flow of movement in the pattern, like a wave across my page, exactly what I wanted. I used 'Snow White' Colour Blast Texture Paste to leave a shimmery white wave of colour across my page, perfect for a watercolour resist technique!



Here I am completing the 2nd page with the first stencil, I tried to match the pattern from the other side so it looks like a flow from one side to the other.





After drying after the first layer, we are ready for the second layer and second stencil. I used a different coloured texture paste called 'Bling' by Colour Blast Australia. I placed it in several areas across the page. The third colour paste is called 'Deep Water' by Colour Blast. Love those awesome shimmery texture pastes which can be found here - http://colourblastaust.com.au/






In the next photo you will see the different results from the multi layering of the stencil and different coloured texture pastes.

The next step and technique that I have used is a 'masking fluid' pen, I have used the pen to create flowing lines and words 'be creative' in the background (use this pen or masking fluid to resist any liquids, let the masking fluid dry thoroughly, then you are ready to add your watercolour paint, sprays or distress stains. For my Art Journal page I used Tim Holtz distress stains in lines up and down the pages spraying with water on top to blend them slightly. Once dry I then sprayed a few shimmer sprays over the top in gold and white.




Once the colours have dried to your satisfaction, it is time to remove the masking fluid. Gently rub with an eraser or your finger or get a steel craft knife and gently lift the end of each line or word and remove the masking fluid which has dried to like a rubbery consistency.

Below are some close - ups of how I finished off the page, some light stamping, a piece of chipboard and a fussy cut hummingbird stamped image plus the application of microbeads in different colours using Gel Medium. Also I sprayed over the top of the whole coloured section with gold shimmer spray.






You can see from the photos above that the masking fluid has added gorgeous white lines and patterns which draws the eye across the page from the left to the right where the hummingbird is situated and the end of my title of Be Happy, Just Love, Be Creative, One of a Kind and Dream....


Well that's it for my Art Journal Background technique tutorial, i hope to see you try a page or two for yourself. Time to get messy!!!




By
Elisa Ablett

http://2crazycrafters.blogspot.com.au




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