Enjoy The Little Things

Oh well, where should I start from? I was lucky enough to be the winner of the random draw at the Scraps N Pieces Challenge Blog. I was over the moon when I read my entry was the lucky winner. My birthday was coming up as well (it was actually yesterday) :-)  

The present I received, as you can see at the picture bellow, is absolutely wonderful!! A stencil, a stamp, a watercolor journal, a glue, an acrylic at a color I didn't have up to now and an amazing card, with nice wishes at the back and I loved so much the artwork at the front (it reads BEWARE creative brain AT WORK). I have already made 2 copies of it, an A5 size and I have placed it at the wall behind me at work and an A4 size  that's going on the door of my creativity room at home.

I can't thank the girls over at Scraps N Pieces Challenge Blog enough, and I will definitely be taking part at the next, and future challenges.

Now, as I mentioned, my birthday was coming up and my man's present was to chose a range of art supplies. I had to do it last weekend in order to have everything available for my birthday. I went online and felt like a kid at a candy-shop! I was working on my list for hours! I made lists on several different shops and in the end I chose the list that I preferred the best LOL.

I don't mean to brag about it, but  I can't hide my excitement either! This is my present and I am presenting it because today I will show you what I made with  some of it:

There were stamps, stencils, mists.... I also threw in there the set of Silks Acrylic Glaze shown bellow (called Goodnight Kiss). I had no idea what this was exactly, apart from the fact that these are good to paint on silk , I guess. Oh well, I won't be doing any painting on silk but I couldn't wait to use this product. These are very shimmery!  

 

So, the following Art Journal page, was created because I HAD to use these paints. They are so shimmery, that I could only think of the sun.

 

Before I start describing it, let me tell you that this page is miles away from perfection. It's full of imperfections. But in order to learn from my mistakes, I have added at the end the list of the "learning/ what didn't work / what to try next time". It's ok to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, in order to improve, right?

Step 1: The background:

First, (after gluing 2 pages together from each side to make them sturdier and a layer of gesso), for the background I applied Tim Holtz Distress paint - Salty Ocean with a baby wipe. Then, some random stamping using a harlequin stamp (that was also included in my present) with Tim Holts Distress paint - Chipped Sapphire, and some random stenciling with TCW384 Well Rounded stencil and Tim Holts Distress paint - Picket Fence. Finally I used some Modeling paste with my favorite Purple Acrylic paint and the  "Burlap" stencil shown below and applied randomly all over the pages.

 

Step 2: The sun

I colored a page of aquarelle paper with Dylusions - Lemon Zest, Tangerine Dream & Cherry Pie), Then, I drew a sun with thick rays and cut it. I glued it on the page using Winsor Newton-Matt Medium .... big mistake! Not a problem with the particular medium, not at all, I have used in most of my creations, but very difficult to glue such a thick paper on acrylic with this type. It took me a lot of effort to make it stay, some of it also got dissolved adding too much medium, I became ugly (Learning #1). Also, because Dylusions are activated with water, when covering the sun with the gel medium (cause I wanted to make it a non-porous surface) it was bleeding out and I had to wipe it constantly (Learning #2). Then it was time to use my Silks Acrylics Glaze, Emperor's Gold on the rays and Love Struck on the sun. I am really happy with the result! It doesn't show much on the picture, but it's really shimmery and pretty.

Step 3: the little monster and putting it all together
Also, in my present, I chose the stamp bellow.

I have to admit, I love all the Stampotique stamps and I find it hard to get them in Greece. At this point I own my first stampotique stamp, this lovely little monster and therefore I HAD to use this as well. I couldn't wait!

I colored it with my Faber Castell Watercolor Pencils (I LOVE working with them and the next Scraps N Pieces challenge is about watercoloring so I know I will be making something) and cut it. Then stamped it on the page and glued the colored image on top of the stamped image, This technique helped me keep the small details such as the legs of the birds and the hair of the monster.
The I wrote my quote on the sun rays. Again, here I am not very happy with the writing of the positioning of the words but at this point I had decided to just enjoy the process. I like the curly letters but I don't know what I was thinking when I made this calligraphy attempt on the word "little".
Anyway, I did some "false stitching"  on the sun and the rays and tried to put some white highlights on my letters (very poor result. My Homework task is to read and practice this white highlights on the letters). Oh and I did some shading around the sun a nd the monster using my FaberCastell Big Brush markers.

So, here's the outcome:

 



Learning #1: don't try to glue thick aquarelle paper with gel medium.
Learning #2: next time try to seal down Dylusions with a medium in spray form. 
Homework: successfully highlight letters

Until the next time remember to Enjoy The Little Things!!!