Getting messy

I am having so much fun with the Art Journal Caravan that I decided I also wanted to do a real paper and paint art journal in addition to my digital one. This also meant digging out long forgotten supplies and deciding what to use for the art journal. When I was rooting through my supplies I came across a spiral bound 12x12 scrapbook I had picked up at Big Lots about 5 years ago with the notion I was going to use it for something....guess what, I found the something I am going to use it for *LOL*

Here is what the outside looked like before I started making it my Art Journal *grin*



Well, I soon changed that into this :



Now the inside paper seemed pretty sturdy, but having read about Gesso and having watched all kinds of Art Journal tutorials on YouTube, I decided I better gesso the pages before using any wet paints on them. In preparation for this I made a trip to Hobby Lobby in Louisville on Friday to purchase some Gesso and Gel Medium (which they didn't have and I ended up buying Mod Podge Matte instead of the Gel Medium) for collages.

Anyway, so I gessoed the inside of the cover, the first page, and the first double-spread pages after the first page (page 2-3). So this is what that looked like:



You might notice the wax paper inbetween the gessoed pages and the ones before and after. This was a good tip I picked up and I am glad I did or my pages probably would have stuck together *LOL*
So then I decided to use watercolor crayons and color the first pages. I also stamped a few images on them. Here is the result:



I wasn't too happy with that, the pink was way too pink for me, and the colors on the right hand page looked weak. So I decided it was time for some tweaking. I pulled out the acrylics (cheap FolkArt brand) and playing with them a bit, I finally achieved a result I liked. After the paints dried thoroughly I collaged some ephemera to the page.



Then I used some distress inks to blend in the collaged items, added some dried flowers and then stamped the title for the main theme of the page in black. I outlined the bird with a white Sharpie Poster Paint pen and I also journaled with my black Pitt artist pen around the collage of the girl. So here is a close-up of the finished page.



I am really happy with the way this came out and I am looking forward to working more in my paint and paper art journal.