Help

Last week I started  these 2 pages for my junk journal.

I was on a roll, but...
I got stuck.
Why do I always stumble upon this invisible wall?
I start a page and am satisfied on the progress and how it is looking but then suddenly I get afraid to add anything more to it, afraid of ruing what I already have.
Anyone any suggestions on how to overcome this issue or suggestions of what to do next with the pages, feel free to leave me a comment below.

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.

letter N

Hi,

I’ve just completed the letter N in my dictionary for the alpha/dictionary challenge over at The Craft Barn.

This time there were not a lot of words that grabbed my imagination, originally I was going to use number or numerical, but I noticed that already a few people had done that and decided to choose another word: nest.

I liked the process of this page, I didn’t have a plan to begin with ( I only knew I was going to use this stamp of a girl with a nest of birds on her head). But one thing led to another, very organic. I’m still very much procrastinating to add more layers to a page because I already like what I’ve done and am afraid of covering it and ruing it, but usually it turns out better and if not, so what, gesso over it and start over, right. 

The small leaves were punched out of a real leaf.

Don’t forget to check out my sweepstake

sunset city skyline

I started this page last night and am overwhelmed with the result so far. 

So much that I need to go to the art supply store and get me a rectangular shaped canvas to put this on, that's how much I like it.

I'm guessing this is gonna be one of those pages of procrastination :-)

procrastinating...

This week was all about finishing art journal pages.
I don't seem to be afraid of a white page: I spray, stencil, paint something on but then stop.
I procrastinate, overthink everything and can't seem to progress with the page. So now I just said to myself stop thinking and just do.
And I must say I'm pretty satisfied with the results

Here I had sprayed some stencils from Crafters workshop. I picked up by glueing some parts of doilies and leaves to the page, gave it a wash with gesso and then all of a sudden the word "flourish" came to me. So I added the definition and made these flowers out of bookpages

On this page I only had stamped the brick wall using an embossing folder, the rest was still blank. I had this idea in my head of creating a butterfly out of a bunge of small butterflies. So I used this page for it and I sprayed a sunrise and pasted a dozen of butterflies on top of it.

This page started out with the black page where I already had a stencilled image with metallic paint, I cleaned of my stencil on the white page. So I took this further into a night&day theme.

Originally this page was something totally different, but I didn't like it, so I gessod over it and redone it. I had bought these napkins with embossed circles on it a while ago and glued that to the page, then I just HAD to go with the circles. These butterflies were lying there and screaming out to me to be used. I'm very glad that I did redo this page, because now I'm very pleased with the result.

This is the last page I have to take on. The problem that I have is that I already like it the way it is, but I know/feel it isn't finshed. I'm afraid of ruin what I already have when I add something.

I will show the result when I've figured out where to go from here.
Until next time, bye for now.