blog post catch up letters B and F - Trial and error

Finding a word for the letter B was a no brainer, what else could I pick  than butterfly.

I started out by cutting the pages in the shape of a butterfly and spraying the background with Dylusions spray inks, however I wasn’t satisfied with the result, the colors were too dull for me. As I was undecided what to do next I laid the page to rest for a bit.

But yesterday I found it was time to finish this letter, so I decided to go drastically to work and gesso the whole thing and start over again.

I sticked to spraying the background and this time I was happy with the results. But now what…

I grabbed some butterfly stamps and die cuts to get some inspiration and the die cuts it was, I used scrap paper which I use to clean of my brayer during gelli printing.

When die cutting an intricate design as these butterflies I find if I insert a layer of baking paper in between the die cut and paper, this makes it easier to remove the paper without tearing.

F = feather

For this page I started out by making some feather stencils.

I spray inked the background and added some stamps and I was very glad with the result, wanted it to leave it this way but I had made these stencils so I was going to use them.

I sprayed the feathers, but this didn’t work out at all as planned and as I had feared, it was all smugged because my stencil couldn’t lay flat in the book. No panic I thought to myself, this is just an oops as Carolyne Dube would say (Outstanding Opportunities Presenting Suddenly )

So tried to work with it:  outlined the design with black marker, no… didn’t work, went over it with Liquitex Ink! phtaloblue, but still wasn’t doing it for me.

So out came the gesso again. It didn’t obliterate everything but that was fine by me, I liked it that way. I spray inked over it, added the stamps and this time stopped there. I’m not sad that I didn’t do this the first time, because there’s a nice depth to the page that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

I must say I am pleased with the end results, I’m above all glad I finally finished them. Now on to the S and E.

Sometimes you just have to do and don’t overthink things, not every single piece will be a masterpiece.