The Journey

Right now, I am feeling so influenced and empowered by many people's work. I've been reading through this book, looking at this woman's work, being challenged by this new blog, and working towards this goal. This piece is a sort of culmination of all these influences with a bit of me thrown in. I listened to this song while I worked--love this song (I know I'm dating myself here!)

Anyway, here's how I did it. I started with a piece of duck cloth and applied gesso to the front and back. Apparently when you do this, the cloth shrinks (I think the fibers condense making the piece harder). I had originally cut my pieces to 8x8 to make an album when I found this out. So if you have a certain finished size in mind, be sure to cut extra to allow for shrinkage. You can trim when it's dry.

So, next, I painted the entire piece with some watercolor paints. I used plain old Crayola's for this (my own pack that I don't allow the kiddos to use--I know, mean mommy!). I used lots of water to mute the tones. I didn't even wait for this to dry before proceeding to the next part--I have no patience for that stuff. I took out my Hot Marks tool; had to dust it off quite a bit. Now comes the fun part. I dug out a hot shade of pink from the boys' crayon box (they won't miss it, it's pink!) and melted it onto the canvas. The drips made lots of cool splatters, and I found that if you shake the tool at the canvas you can get a mist of smaller splatters. Be sure to protect your work surface (but if you didn't like me, the wax does cool and peel right off the laminate, thank goodness!) Truth be told, I got a little carried away with this part, and when I stood back to look at my piece, it looked like a wad of bubble gum had just exploded. Well, it was straight to the laundry room with paper towels and the iron (which also needed dusting off). I simply lay a PT over the wax spots and swiped the iron over it. The wax melted and was absorbed into the PT leaving behind a soft bit of color. Oooh, me likey!

For the next part I tried out a little technique from Claudine's book noted above: packing tape transfer. I wasn't sure that this would work (I tried the heat transfer technique first and it flopped). But, ooh-la-la! it worked amazingly! Here's what you do: Find the image you want to transfer; for me it's the JOURNEY clip art that I downloaded from Rhonna's blog above. Print it with a laser printer, or make a copy at a print shop (inkjet won't work here--the inks will run). Burnish a piece of packing tape over the top of the image, then flip it over, mist with a water bottle--give it a good soak--and then rub the paper off. This was like magic to me. You will be left with the image on your piece of packing tape--so cool!

A bit of typing in word to create the journal strips, a die cut butterfly (SU! Sizzix) that I had already made for a prior project, and a stamped flourish blinged with sticky rhinetsones and Stickles. The dangle on the butterfly is an old earring that I was missing the match to (knew I was saving that for something!).

My challenge to you: pull out your paints, crayons, and old jewelry and create something beautiful. Add a photo of you, and some words of meaning and hang it where you can see it everyday.

Enjoy!!