A PA Challenge entry

A warm welcome to all.
It seems very trivial to post this entry to the current PaperArtsy Blog challenge Here in the light of the awful events that have taken place in London and the devastating impact this dreadful act of hatred has had on so many people. And yet, the trivial everyday actions of us all must carry on 'as usual', though we might be numbed for a time by these senseless acts, to show these unseen, unknown enemies of peace and democracy that we are not cowed by this. I know that I hugged my husband, daughters and granddaughters, and wider family and friends, a little more closely to me today.
And therefore I post this recent art work based on the current PA challenge: Doors, windows, Architecture.  I chose to create a rather whimsical 'window' through a page in my small, square 8" X 8" art journal.

I love art journaling. It gives me such freedom to explore different media and different ideas but I often find myself coming back to a particular set of techniques that is heavily influenced by the very talented, generous, encouraging Kate Crane. And this project was just such an example. As it progressed (apart from creating a window I had no idea where it would end up) I became very aware of Kate's influence on it,  to such an extent that I wondered if I should even enter it in the PA challenge under my own name. It made me wonder if there can ever be a truly original idea in art? Surely we are all influenced by other artists, especially those we admire! Yet, there is a fine line between influence and inspiration and copying. Thus the page title! Kate generously allowed me to contribute this to the PA blog but I want to make clear that many of the techniques I explain here were hers first! You can see Kate's own gorgeous work Here. So how did I begin?
As I wanted each page to contrast with each other, allowing the contrasting colour to peep through the window (Kate's idea I've borrowed many times) I set about choosing some of my favourite PA Fresco chalk paints. Of course one of the pages would be in my 'go-to' colours of pinks/ oranges/ yellows.

 

I've used DecoArt Tinting base to add opacity to the more transparent colours and to help create different tones and hues with just the four colours. Another Kate technique. I dry brush these paints onto the page taking time to blend them until I'm happy with the result. It's very easy to blend Fresco paints. 

Again these were blended using the Tinting base with the paints. I'm addicted to this Tinting base. 

The next layer (after marking out where the window would be cut) was some stencilling, using a variety of stencils with the same paints as I used on the blended paint layer. Another very effective technique I learned from Kate. I also scraped a little of one of the blue paints across the page, just a few times. This would help bring both pages together once the window revealed the lower image. I used an old credit card to do this. Then similarly on the following page.

I generally apply layers in a sequence of paint, stencil, mark making, stamping. Sometimes repeated and not always in that order.  I've also added paint on both pages using a little piece of Lego, raided from the grandfairies' stash of Lego. Hope they don't miss it. A great tip from Kate! 

So here you see the mark making with bottle tops, edges of a credit card and more 'stamping' with odd bits of Lego. Kate is famous for her mark making tips and has a good collection of bottle tops. I'm an avid collector now myself! 

This is a close-up of the lower page revealing different marks made with Little Black Dress and Snowflake as well as the blue paints. Now for some stamping.

And a little doodling. A further tip I picked up from one of Kate's DVDs is to add marks with Ranger's Liquid pearls. This is the first time I tried that. Lovely. You can see that I have now stamped the houses in place which will become the main focus on both pages, although only one will be visible through the window. The stamps Ive used are: a mini PaperArtsy house, MN 23 ( I use that one all the time' love it)  and a Carabelle-studio stamp: sa60150. Now I needed to stamp out all the main images on PaperArtsy smoothly paper. The 280gms is perfect for this. I also stamped on some Tumblefish Studio background papers as I wanted to add collaged papers to the houses.

Here I've stamped the mini house several times (sorry, no number on the card) and some of the whimsical flowers from a new set by Elenazinski Art who designs for PaperArtsy: ZA07. I intended to paint the flowers using similar colours to the painted pages but use the collage papers for the little houses.

Now for some fussy cutting before choosing appropriate paint colours and cut out collaged images for the pages. 

Having cut out the window that I had previously marked, I used the collage papers to create a border around the frame. This would later be doodled on to really make it pop. 

It now only needed added text to sum up my feelings about using so many of Kate's techniques.

I love these pages. I love creating windows or cut away pages that offer a glimpse to the page below. It looks so intriguing.

So, what do you think? Did I cross the line? Id love you to leave a comment with your thoughts. Until next time! Happy Crafting!