oriental

It’s been quite a while since I did some work in my dictionary and I had set myself the goal to complete it by september.

With 6 more letters to go and september approaching very fast it was high time to get started again.

First off I choose the 6 words for the remaining letters and prepared the pages:  glued some pages together for extra strength and torn out the ones which I didn’t need.

Oriental was the word I choose for the letter O as I have a set of oriental stamps.

I started out by adding a coat of gesso to the pages,which I sprayed with  red Dylusions sprayink, I was surprised that it didn’t become a solid vibrant red page, but instead was patchy and rather dull, even a second coat didn’t do the trick. Maybe the glued dictionary pages absorb the ink??

Instead of figthing it I went with it.

I added black stickers I had which felt very oriental to me, I used both the positive and negative (no waste here) and a text sticker with the quote Life is too short.

A few weeks back I would have stopped here, but after Clare’s workshop I’m getting over the fear of layering and added some more to the page.

I wanted to add some japanese lettering and tried to make a stamp, but this was too fiddly so I gave up, instead I printed the letters on a piece of tissuepaper (I glued a piece of tissuepaper on regular printer paper and held my breath when I ran it  through our printer because I was scared that it would get stuck, luckily for me it didn’t this time, but  if anyone has a better way of printing on tissuepaper please let me know in a comment below)

I tore the letters and glued them down with some matte gel medium, of coarse the ink reacted with the water in the gel, but that’s fine with me.

I also printed out this japanese lady and glued her down in the center of the book.

Thought this would be it, but still wanted to add something.

And that something was some delicate cherry blossoms, so I sat myself down and made a cherry blossom stencil. This is the try-out, just perfect:

Then I ran one problem into the other with stenciling this on the page, the pink and green were hardly visible, so I thought delicate white flowers,  but the white was not that clear either, then black maybe? Better, but still wasn't that happy about it, so while the paint was still wet I added gold glitters to make them stand out more. 

Still not sure whether I like it, but maybe it's best to let it rest for a bit and have a look at it later and decide then.
What do you think?