Oh So Blue

It is time for the next monthly challenge at Stamps and Stencils and I am the hostess this time.  I decided to call it Oh So Blue and here is how I described the challenge:

This time of year it is easy to start feeling blue now that the festivities surrounding Christmas are over and winter is making its presence known with less sun and more miserable weather so instead of giving in to it let's celebrate blue. Create a primarily blue mixed media project that includes some stamping and/or stenciling. You may add one other colour to your creation but it must be mostly blue. 

For a split second I regretted the theme of this challenge because blue isn't my favourite colour but it was my Mother's favourite colour so I thought she would have loved this, especially since she was very creative/artistic.  She liked blue so much that in addition to her blue clothes and her blue dishes, she had an 800 piece collection of blue glass that I inherited when she passed away.  Since it wasn't something that excited me and I sure didn't want to dust all that blue glass, I chose a few special pieces to keep for myself and give to my siblings and then I sold the rest.  Sadly, many of the pieces were reproductions and not worth as much as she thought but she had fun collecting them all and it made her happy so that was a good thing.

On to my project and I decided to make an art journal page.  There are no process photos because I did this during the holidays and quite frankly did not think of it - oops.

I have been using a Canson Mixed Media wire-bound book as my art journal but have found that I need to glue two pages together because they have a micro perforation and they are not particularly heavy.  So I did that again and it was looking quite fine until I added a coat of Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso.  When it dried, I saw vertical strips of bubbling in random spots.  I debated starting over but then decided to leave some as is and split some open on the top layer to provide a little interest and dimension.  It is also rather warped and while I am going to add it back into my book as it is I would welcome any and all suggestions on how to prevent that.

Next I used some Golden Light Molding Paste through a Dylusions Dotted Flowers Stencil and a TCW Mini Geometric Art Layers Stencil to create some texture.  I also added some drips with Golden Clear Tar Gel.

Then I gave the page a coat of Lake Wanaka Fresco Finish paint.  On top of that I added a coat of Space Cadet Fresco Finish paint, removing some of it with a baby wipe after a few seconds.

Once the paint was dry I spritzed it in random spots with Tumbled Glass Distress Spray Stain.  Then I added some Dylusions Vibrant Turquoise Ink Spray and followed that with some Sun Up Blue Pearlescent Acrylic Ink from Daler Rowney (the camera really picked up the shimmer from this ink).

Next I used some Jet Black Archival Ink from Ranger to do some stamping with a Recollections script stamp called Haunted and a butterfly set from Hampton Arts called Vintologie.

The next step was to fussy cut a couple of large butterflies from some Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap called Melange that I have had in my stash for ages.  I glued them on the page and coloured them with Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink using a water brush.

The word "fly" was stamped using Jet Black Archival Ink and an alphabet set from Studio G that I found in the clearance bin at Michaels.  The remaining words for the sentiment was made on my computer.  All the text pieces were inked with Blueprint Sketch.

I thought the ink on the text and the butterflies looked a little lot purple and when I cleaned the water brush tip on a piece of paper towel, it split and I could see the pink in it so I knew I was right - drat.  Shaded Lilac DI does the same thing I discovered a while ago.  Anyway, since I really wanted blue and everything was glued down at this point, I just carefully went over the Blueprint Sketch with Weathered Wood Distress Ink to try to tone it down a bit.  It is definitely better than it was but still not as blue as I hoped.  I think Tim should have called this one Blueberry and we would have all known it was purple.

Finally I drew around the edges of the butterflies with a white Prismacolor pencil and then used some Wendy Vecchi Cornflower Blue Archival Ink and the top from my little water spray bottle to create some circles.

This page looks better in real life and I am happy with the texture on the page while still keeping it flat enough to put in my book.

I am going to enter this in the following challenges:

Shopping Our Stash - Color Me Monochromatic (or Pink)
We Love 2 Create - Anything Mixed Media/Creative Goes
Rhedd's Creative Spirit - Altered Art or Mixed Media