September's posting in the ever turning Circle Journal

Hi everyone. Posting the various steps in the latest round of the Circle Journal that I'm thoroughly enjoying taking part in. It's so exciting to receive these different journals and open up the pages to such varied art work. It's also quite a challenge to take someone's beautifully made art Journal and put your own ideas into it. But one thing I've learned about Art Journaling is to be true to yourself. And that's how I tackle each one. I have tried, and continue to attempt something a little different each time. This is taking me out of my comfort zone at times and also means I'm not always over the moon with the end result. But each page I complete in each Journal has been approached with great enthusiasm and respect to the owner. So here is the double page spread I did for Gabrielle!

I do love this idea that I first learned from Dina Wakley and Dyan Reavely, of making a background, choosing a focal image and then painting over the space around the focal image. I've done this many times with silhouettes but now playing with using a variety of images. These flowers are created using a StencilGirl stencil. I just drew inside the outline as will be seen in the following pics. Hope Gabrielle likes it. 

I started by scraping, with a credit card, various PA Fresco chalk acrylics across a double page spread: Banana, Tangerine Twist, Bougainvillea and limelight (love these last two).

I kept overlaying the colours until I was happy then added layers of stencilling using the four colours - lighter colours over dark and vice versa. I also added my own marks, again with the same colours, 

 made with fingers and round paintbrushes. This was followed by adding Little Black Dress and Snowflake, and using bottles caps and the side of the credit card. 

Now I needed to decide on a focal image. 

I traced just inside a a StencilGirl flower stencil with black Pitt pen so it would show up easily for painting. I added the stencil word 'Grow' from one of JoFy's PA stencils. It's important to use an open image so the background can really show through when painting around it. Which I did next. I used a mix of Blueberry and GlassBlue Frescos to do this. I used the Glass blue to stencil a pattern (Tim Holtz Gothic) over the Blueberry. 

I used a CW stencil to add some white dots around the image just to break up the heaviness of the dominant colour. Outlined the images in white gel pen and added some doodles. But still wasn't quite happy with it. I knew it needed text  which I'd already planned to write cascading down the flowers. But, I knew it needed more! So out came the sprays: crafty notions white matte and perfect pearls 'biscotti'. I love these sprays and use them a lot over finished pieces but quickly realised that I'd probably overdone it. I wanted some of the stencil image in the background to shine through more. So armed with a baby wipe and kitchen paper I started the arduous tack of trying to wipe away some of the spray. I'm still not overjoyed but I'm happy enough with it. I love the way the reds and oranges really pop and I love the GlassBlue stencilling coming through against the Blueberry background. I hope you like it too and would love to know if you popped by!